The Manchester Evening News Business awards were presented last night. Jeremy Vine hosting the evening. And just for the record the winners were as follows:

I always recommend  my clients enter awards. And the reasons? Let’s count the ways:

1. You get to ride on a nice bit of publicity! For example the Manchester Evening News have been trailing their awards for months. They’ve done profiles of the shortlisted companies.  And that’s not just the publicity that the awarding company is providing.
2. You add your nomination and short listing to your web site
3. You can blog about what you’re doing to get the award
4. You can keep your customers and key prospects informed about it
5. You can send your own press releases to other newspapers, magazines, radio and TV
6. You can send releases to blogs and online PR sites
7. Yes, this is a good thing to Twitter about!
8. When you win an award you can put the award on your site
9. You tell your customers and prospects and generally bask in great publicity
10. It makes your employees feel good to be part of an award winning company

And the main thing about awards is to make sure you’re pre-prepared before the awards night. So you prepare two press releases. One that makes the most of you winning and the other that looks positively on being a runner up. Then whether you win or not you’re ready to inform the world and get the related publicity the award gets when it’s announced.

And of course awards ceremonies can be useful for entertaining clients, suppliers and rewarding staff. After all you don’t have to organise much and yet you get to go to a posh do and have some good food, to network with other good businesses and only have to listen to the great and good for a little.

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