Singapore Blog Awards 2012 – Blog your way to the Macau International Fireworks Festival!

The Singapore Blog Awards is here again!

This is the fifth year I am running the Singapore Blog Awards together with the omy.sg team. Time flies, seriously.

Yong Wei was still under 16 and was a finalist in the Best Youth Blog category in the first year. Now, he is working at omy.sg a few tables away from me.

This year, we have over $30,000 worth of prizes lined up for participating bloggers and voters, including a trip to Macau for the International Fireworks Festival; Panasonic cameras and camcorders; Casio Sheen watches and more!

Register your blog or nominate your favourite blogs now! Do not miss the deadline on 6 May 2012.

A few tips for bloggers taking part:

– you do not have to wait for others to nominate you, just register your blog directly. You have a public blog, you can’t be that shy! (besides, you cannot tell if a blogger was nominated or registered directly on the website)
– you can register for as many categories as you like if you deem them relevant
– omy.sg accept blog registration from foreigners outside of Singapore; get your foreign blogger friends to join too
– the new Best V-Log category accepts youtube pages or other video hosting pages and not just conventional blog hosting sites
– do not clutter all the registration in the Best Lifestyle Blog and Best Individual Blog categories; look through the other categories and join them too if they are relevant. The more bloggers there are in a category, the lower the chance of getting selected as a finalist.

Special categories to watch out for:

– Gmarket Best Online Shopping Blog: All ten finalists will get S$100 Gmarket shopping credits each! Three winners from among the finalists stand to win over S$1,000 worth of Gmarket shopping credits and products!
– Mary Chia Best Beauty Blog: All ten finalists will get to organise a spa party at a Mary Chia outlet for your friends – with expenses covered by Mary Chia! The top blogger in this category stand to win over S$5000 worth of products and services from Mary Chia!
– ST701 Best Blogshop: All ten finalists will get S$1000 worth of banner impressions on ST701.com to promote your own business. The top blogshop will win an additional S$5000 worth of banner impressions!

Create Your SuperPower Contest

You can download the official Singapore Blog Awards 2012 logo and superpower speech bubbles to come up with your own creative images. Submit your photo to campaign.omy@gmail.com and stand to win a mystery prize if the team at omy.sg likes your creation!

Here’s the official media release sent out today:

Singapore, 10 April 2012 – The annual Singapore Blog Awards return for the fifth year with more exciting events and prizes. Bloggers stand to win a trip, inclusive of air tickets and accommodation, to experience the annual International Fireworks Festival in Macau, among other attractive prizes worth a total of $30,000.

Organised by omy.sg (www.omy.sg), Singapore Press Holdings’ leading bilingual news and entertainment portal, and presented by Panasonic, the Singapore Blog Awards honour new-age wordsmiths who devote their time and energy to create and maintain informative and innovative blogs.

There is a total of 10 main categories, two celebrity categories and three sponsored categories. A complete list of award categories can be found here.

This year, omy.sg introduces the “Best V-log” award, a brand new addition to the 10 main categories of Singapore Blog Awards, created to acknowledge the increasing popularity of home-made videos shared on YouTube and other online video services as a form of blogging.

The two celebrity categories, “Panasonic Most Popular Local Celebrity Blog/Microblog” and “Panasonic Most Popular Overseas Celebrity Blog/Microblog”, will be determined entirely by public voting.

The sponsored categories are “Gmarket Best Online Shopping Blog”, “Mary Chia Best Beauty Blog”, and “ST701 Best Blogshop”.

Ms Lee Kuan Fung, Associate Editor of omy.sg, said: “Thanks to the growing support and participation from bloggers and the online community over the past four years, the Singapore Blog Awards has established itself as one of the biggest social media event which everyone looks forward to annually.

This year, we will be expanding the Singapore Blog Awards platform into an umbrella of social media events under the omy.sg’s Singapore Social Media Fiesta brand. Upcoming events include Singapore Check-In Bonanza, Singapore Twitter Frenzy and Singapore Social Media Day, spread across four months from now till July, reaching more audiences through various social media platforms.”

Nomination and registration is now open till 6 May, followed by a voting and judging phase which will end in June. This year’s Singapore Blog Awards will see a series of exciting events in the months leading to the finale event in July. These include three bloggers’ workshops hosted by Panasonic andomy.sg as well as a slew of other engaging events organised with other sponsors.

In line with the fifth anniversary of the Singapore Blog Awards, omy.sg would be acknowledging five “Super Bloggers” who have contributed to the blogosphere in their own unique ways. The identities of these bloggers will be revealed on the official Singapore Blog Awards site (http://sgblogawards.omy.sg) on a later date.

This year’s award ceremony will be held at Singapore Flyer, the world’s largest Giant Observation Wheel, where invited guests will get to sample the best of local hawker delights at the Singapore Food Trail, a unique 1960s-themed food street, while the winners of the respective categories are unveiled.

Members of the public can log on to the official SBA site to nominate their favourite blogs. Bloggers can also participate directly by registering themselves for the Awards.

The Singapore Blog Awards is part of a series of events branded under Social Media Fiesta (http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta), an omy.sg social media initiative.

This year’s Singapore Blog Awards is made possible by our generous presenting sponsor, Panasonic; main sponsors, Casio Sheen, Macau Government Tourist Office, Domino’s Pizza, Gmarket, Mary Chia, SOLD.SG, Singapore Flyer and ST701; sponsors, Golden Village and Singapore Food Trail.