Winner(s) of the Summer Series 2015: The Youngsters Win!!!
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Winner(s) of the Summer Series 2015: The Youngsters Win!!!

17th September 2015

The future is with the youngsters. That’s what they say. And it’s true. Even though I still think ’oldies’ (like myself) have a future as well. Youngsters are important. Because they have that future, but more importantly to me, because youngsters tend to look at things differently.

Young people have a different background. They didn’t grow up with a Commodore 64 or a beeping modem, they grew up with the internet. Google was (almost) always there for them. They simply have a different perspective.

This perspective was one of the reasons we decided to dedicate this years Summer Series to the youngsters. We invited them to talk about their experiences in the first two years off their working life. And they did!

We got in some great articles. Our judging team enjoyed spending time on reading the articles. One of the judges Bill Slawski put it like this in an e-mail to me:

“Thank you, Bas I feel like I’ve learned a few things reading those. It’s good to get a freshfaced perspective like that every so often.”

Tweet this:
[Tweet “It’s good to get a freshfaced perspective every so often – @bill_slawski”]

Oscars3

Thank you judging team

Before we go any further, I’d like to thank the judging team who put in time and effort to take a thorough look at the articles. THANK YOU TEAM!

We have a winner!

The stories from the youngsters were indeed inspiring, all off them. We couldn’t be more happy with the results. Every article was insightful and inspiring. Some more than others of course :).

How did we decide?

Our judging team looked at all the articles and scored them on a few different levels: Originality, Writing Style and Content. They could give each article a score from 1 to 10 per category and an overall score (Overall like-ability).

The total scores divided by the number of judges made for the end score. After that. we looked at social shares. The average number of shares per day that a post was live, were added to the judging scores, which made for the final list.

The categories best posts

I’ll announce the winners below, but wanted to highlight the different categories, also because the different posts sometimes touched different elements of what we were looking for.

Originality

When it comes to originality a few posts stood out:

Cancer and Canonicals: My 2 Years in Digital” from Paul Hunter, a Digital Account Coordinator at Liberty Marketing in Cardiff, definitely was original, his life story is. As judge Steve Morgan says:

“Can’t believe his transparency – amazing stuff!”

But more posts scored high in originality, like “Jack’s Adventures in Twitterland” by Jack Telford and “3 Lessons in Online Marketing I Learned From an English Football Team” by Daniel Slomka.

Judge Marcus Tandler about Daniel Slomka’s post:

“One of my favorite articles”

Judge Lisa Williams said about “Jack’s Adventures in Twitterland”:

“Loved it! Specific, great insight and like that he’s outlined his approach and created a teaching moment. Well done.“

Writing Style

Writing Style of course is important in blogging, so we asked the judges to look at that as well. Judges were critical, but also saw a lot of potential. Especially the post “Why honesty is the best policy when it comes to digital marketing” from Rosie Arnold was rated very high on style.

Laura Crimmons says:

“I like how she intersperses observations of the industry with her own insight and takeaways”

Content

A post shouldn’t just be personal and be written well, the content should be outstanding. After all, what do people read for most of the time? To learn! The article “Are we blinded by Digital?” by Hannah Thorpe was spot on in this section. All judges agreed on that.

Ned Poulter explains:

“Very professionally put together piece, well structured and incorporates interesting tidbits of information to continue to peak the readers interest. Perhaps loses it’s way a little in the middle, but ultimately a very insightful and interesting post that follows up with a well thought out underlying message. Great stuff!”

What does a winner get?

In the end it all has to come together. Writing, originality, personality. It has to make sense. That is why there will be an overall winner. Which you can read about in a minute…

But first I’d like to explain about the winner(s). Yes we have more. In a second I will announce who won the contest, but I’m going to only show you the top 3. Why? Because we believe everyone did amazing and below the top 3, everyone is on the 4th spot for us.

But also, because State of Digital would like to offer these three youngsters a regular spot on the State of Digital team. All three of them!

And the winner? The winner will be presented with an Amazon check, to spend to his or her own liking.

THE WINNERS

So, the winners. You’ve waited long enough. Here is our top 3 summer series articles!

1. Cancer and Canonicals: My 2 Years in Digital by Paul Hunter (endscore 177.1)
2. Are we blinded by Digital? by Hannah Thorpe (endscore 170.2)
3. Jack’s Adventures in Twitterland by Jack Telford (endscore 165.9)

We congratulate all of them, but of course especially PAUL HUNTER as winner of the State of Digital Summer series 2015.

Congratulations Paul, Hannah and Jack, we’ll be in touch!

Congratulate the winners:

[Tweet “Congratulations @pm_hunter with winning the @stateofdigital Summer Series!”]

[Tweet “Congratulations @hannahjthorpe with your top 2 spot in @stateofdigital Summer Series!”]

[Tweet “Congratulations @jacktelford with your top 3 spot in @stateofdigital Summer Series!”]

Finally a thank you to all entries for the summer series. We loved having you around and we hope you stick around as well!

Read back all the articles here

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Written By
Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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