http://bookawards.smallbiztrends.com
Category: Business & Economy
Tags:
business
books
entrepreneurs
This is a voting site for the 3rd Annual Small Business Book Awards by Small Business Trends -- Reader's Choice version. These awards celebrate the best business books of 2010 for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
What makes this site interesting is the way we've customized Pligg. It's purely for voting and for nominating books to be included in the awards.
Two years ago we used a blog to get community input for the Awards. Last year we used an online survey tool for community voting. Both options were clumsy and limiting.
This year we specked out a site that would accurately count votes; allow a few paragraphs for a book summary; include an image of the book cover; link to book reviews or to an Amazon page; allow the community to nominate books if we hadn't already included them; and allow moderation of submissions so we could control spam and ensure compliance with the Award rules. The beauty of Pligg is that you can do all these things, and it's a proven stable platform.
Perhaps most important for the success of the Awards is that Pligg lends itself easily to including social sharing buttons -- something crucial for spreading word of mouth about the awards. Thus, we were able to include buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon and other options.
The design was made to look similar to the custom design the parent domain, Smallbiztrends.com, but more streamlined. We deliberately kept the look clean so that focus would be on the books.
We also wanted it to be a one-click voting process without the need to register. This has turned out to be a great move, because it encourages community participation.
After the voting is finished, we intend to adapt the site to become an ongoing database of small-business books.
