As some of my readers may’ve seen, I accepted another blogging award in the past couple of weeks. I’ve tended to enjoy accepting these awards and “paying it forward” to other bloggers by nominating deserving bloggers for those awards.
However, I also realize that not all bloggers have the same attitudes I do about awards. I’ve heard of bloggers who have an indifferent attitude about awards, and bloggers who even dislike accepting them. Given the differing attitudes about awards, I think that a good follow-up to my recent blog award acceptance is to express my own thoughts about blog awards, and give room for open conversation about them in the comments section below.
So…blogging awards: To accept or not to accept?
Really, it’s all up to you. You, the recipient of the award, can choose to accept or not accept the award, and I think there are valid reasons to accept and valid reasons not to accept. And, if you accept the award, you can choose what that acceptance of the award looks like.
Therefore, instead of giving a definitive “you must accept” or “you must not accept,” I think it would be helpful to outline some benefits I’ve seen to accepting blog awards through award acceptance posts, as well as some pitfalls.
Among the benefits I’ve seen for accepting blog awards include the following:
- These award acceptance posts give an opportunity to share things about myself that I would otherwise not share.
- The award acceptance posts tend to give me an opportunity to highlight the work of deserving bloggers, through nominating said bloggers for the award.
- I really enjoy sharing good news about myself and my blog.
- Not that I have ever intended this to be a benefit, but it seems like my blog following grows by a decent amount after I accept an award nomination.
But, I have also noticed some pitfalls to the blog award posts. Here are a few pitfalls I’ve seen:
- Blog award posts, and particularly award posts where you need to nominate other bloggers for the award, take a lot of work and time. Honestly, identifying other deserving bloggers is the most time-consuming part of a blog award post for me, and formulating my own questions for other bloggers’ blog award acceptances is also a time-consuming process.
- While I enjoy sharing more things about myself, some questions from some blog award posts may require people to answer questions about themselves they might not feel comfortable answering in a public realm.
- I haven’t gotten to this point as a blogger yet, but I’ve seen some bloggers get nominated for awards often enough that accepting every award post would mean more award posts a month than they might like.
The decision on whether to publish an award acceptance post or not should come down to one thing and one thing only: whether you feel that the award posts are a net benefit for you and your blog, or a net drawback. If it is a net benefit, then go ahead and publish those award posts. If it’s a net drawback, then you may want to consider something other than a traditional award post—what you should consider depends on what the biggest drawbacks and benefits are for you. Personally, if I get to the point that I get so many blog award posts that it would be too time-consuming and get me too much away from the focus of my blog (outweighing any benefits), then I might consider doing something similar to what Ashley at Mental Health @ Home does—in some form of wrap-up post (for me, possibly a wrap-up post for the year, as opposed to a wrap-up post for the week in Ashley’s case), thanking bloggers who nominated the blog for certain awards.[1]
Am I missing any benefits or drawbacks to accepting blog award posts? Do you accept blog award posts, and why have you reached your decision? Feel free to talk about these things and anything else relevant to blogging awards in the comments section below!
[1] If you want to read a different point-of-view on whether to accept or not to accept blog awards, I recommend reading Ashley’s post on this topic. She’s coming at it from a different perspective than I do, but I think it’s worth the read: https://mentalhealthathome.org/2019/12/08/do-you-do-blog-awards/
