Beating the Brackets in ‘Social Madness’

UPDATE: We are in the Nationals! We need to make the Top 20 by July 22 — vote daily and like, comment, and share daily on our social networks! All available here. VOTE WINSTANLEY PARTNERS. We are playing for the BERKSHIRE THEATRE GROUP.

You can also vote for some of our friends in the contest: Candice Bennett & Assoc., Nickerson PR, the Boston Celtics, Walgreens, Total Hockey, HSSWeDeliver, Zarwin Baum, and CBIZ, among others!

In a world gone social, how do you compete? Brackets, of course! Winstanley Partners, a Berkshire-based marketing and advertising agency, has made their way into Round Three of Social Madness, competing against other businesses from around the country.

A competition hosted by The Business Journals, Social Madness measures a company’s social media engagement through a variety of outlets. Activity on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages is measured, and votes are counted on bizjournals.com.

Businesses compete in small, medium, and large size categories throughout the summer, culminating in three national winners, one from each category, to be announced August 20. Winners of the 11-week challenge will win $10,000 each to be given to charity on their behalf.

The Business Journals, a division of American City Business Journals, publishes 40 business newspapers and websites in cities across the country. Companies within these cities compete against other businesses in their market; those outside of these areas are placed in the “At-Large” category, a national competition between similarly sized businesses. Introduced this year, the At-Large format has Winstanley Partners going head to head with a Los Angeles area hotel, a commercial construction firm in Louisiana, and an energy-smart lighting firm in the Pacific Northwest, to name a few.

Jaclyn Stevenson, Director of PR and Social Media, said the opportunity to compete against businesses of all different types has led to some unexpected benefits.

“Entering this contest has proven to be not just an opportunity to showcase our social media efforts, but also to see what companies in many different regions and industries are doing in the social realm to better their businesses,” she said. “Our participation has already proven to be a great opportunity for exposure, both for Winstanley Partners and for the Berkshires.”

Round Three concludes Monday, July 1 at 11:59 p.m. The winners will then be moved to smaller brackets, with Round Four ending July 9. For more information on Social Madness and to cast your vote, visit http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/socialmadness.

~By Erin Catharine