Best of Fallon 2019 – a few changes coming

Whether you have noticed the announcements or not, our annual Best of Fallon contest will begin March 1. While there will not be huge sweeping changes for this year, there will be a few minor tweaks that I wanted to explain here.

To many businesses (and people), winning Best of Fallon is a big deal. It should be a big deal. It’s a great distinction to be voted on as the best in their area of business. This year is no exception.

In year’s past all of the nominations and voting took place over the course of about a month. This year we are breaking that into two parts — a nomination period over four weeks and a true voting period for the finalists with the most nominations over two weeks. Whether you like the idea or believe it to be terrible, let me explain.

One of the biggest reasons for this is to try to level the playing field. Inevitably, these types of contests are bound to raise credibility issues when the results are published. How many times have you seen a winner that you feel has no business winning? Or as a business, what if you get a late start on hearing about the contest? What this process is designed to do is come out of the nominations with a handful of worthy entries into each category that the community can then vote on as the best.

The nomination process will be a simple fill in the blank.

Previously you may have had to slog through 20 or so entries to find the business you wanted to vote for. And, if it wasn’t there, you would type in the business you wanted to cast your vote for. The user experience is easier to navigate and asks much less of the voter, while at the same time, we are able to heighten our ability to detect fraud.

So now you’re saying we have to vote two separate times? Who has the time or would be willing to vote twice?

This is one of the objections staring us straight in the face. I have four kids who are all active and a demanding job. I understand not having enough time. Regardless of this, everyone struggles with time in today’s world. There’s simply not enough time to do what we need to get done. Even if the voting were the same as previous years, time would still be an issue. The plan is to keep this top of mind as much as possible during the process and remind folks that when you are able to nominate and vote, it’s there for you at any time of the day (or night).

What about our visitors that might place nominations? They surely won’t come back to vote.

Perhaps the toughest objection to overcome — I get it. You take the time and effort to get them to nominate while in Fallon, but it doesn’t count as a vote to win.

When the nomination period ends, we will also be enticing people to come back and vote with a prize that they can win by voting — because who doesn’t want to win something for free?

I could have easily doubled the length of this column to go into more detail about the changes and we’ll be helping folks with awareness along the way, too. The above is a general idea of the why and how and hopefully you can get a sense of the changes for this year. In the end, it really is designed to support the businesses within the community and bring a greater emphasis to an award that should be celebrated — and not just once, but over the course of a year.

More information can be found starting March 1 at lahontanvalleynews.com/BOF2019. If you have questions or comments about this, let me know. I’d be happy to discuss. In the meantime, good luck to everyone.

Publisher Rob Galloway can be reached at rgalloway@lahontanvalleynews.com.