Roll out the red carpet: Webfluential launches Africa’s first continent-wide blogger awards

South African startup Webfluential, a platform that aims to connect South Africa’s most influential web users, is launching Africa’s first blogger awards. The startup touts it as the continent’s very first awards programme that measures online and social influencers’ reach and influence through data analysis and is open to bloggers, Instagrammers, Tweeters and YouTubers across the continent.

“The African Blogger Awards are the first completely impartial, objective awards for online and social influencers on the African continent because winners will be determined by data analytics provided by Webfluential, and not through peer nominations,” says Mike Sharman, co-founder of the African Blogger Awards.

The Awards have been divided into 36 categories, providing the opportunity for influencers on these platforms to be measured objectively against their peers, and duly recognised for their achievements.

According to the organizers, the awards should also give brands and the marketing industry, including advertisers, public relations agencies and media buyers in each country, an impartial measurement of the most relevant online and social influencers to include in their campaigns, making sure that they achieve the greatest possible impact for their marketing spend.

Entry is free and open to anyone who is a permanent resident of any African country. However, those who want to enter are required to register their blog, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube profile (or a combination thereof) on Webfluential. It’s a pretty clever way for the platform to boost its Africa user-base and get itself segmented on the continent’s sphere of thought.

Entries for the awards close on 9 March 2014 at midnight GMT+2, and results will be announced on 16 April 2014 via the competition’s Twitter profile, @African_Blogger, from 11h00 GMT+2. Overall awards for Africa’s Top Blogger, Top Instagrammer, Top Tweeter and Top YouTuber will be announced on 18 April 2014 at a celebration hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“As the competition grows, we plan to host the awards ceremony in other cities on the African continent each year, in recognition of the enormous influence that the online community has on news, lifestyle, media and marketing across the continent,” says Murray Legg, co-founder of the African Blogger Awards.

Get your acceptance speeches ready bloggers and get those red carpet hair cuts done.