Keeping readers engaged today is about being first with the news and giving people a reason to return. Audiences are much more loyal to news brands when they can participate and feel like they belong to something bigger than a headline.

At Briefly News, our annual entertainment awards started as a way to celebrate South African talent. Over time, they’ve evolved into a structured engagement engine that turns readers into participants.

Starting with data, not assumptions

The awards don’t begin with a brainstorming session about who is “popular.” They begin with trends and analytics. We check traffic and search behaviours from our entertainment articles, looking at trending personalities across social engagement patterns.

The goal is simple: build categories and nominee lists around proven audience interest. That means the awards reflect what readers are already engaging with, not what we assume they care about.

Once categories are locked in, the team aligns around clear goals and deadlines. From an editorial perspective, the awards are treated as a major newsroom project with structured workflows and timelines.

More than an announcement

For the 2025 awards, we published an announcement article covering an overview of the awards and revealed categories and nominees. But, a single “X nominated in Briefly News’ Entertainment Awards” article does not always get the reach we want.

This led to a question: How do we maximise reach and increase reader engagement in this project?

Awareness alone does not drive scale. Activation does. The real impact comes from how the awards are integrated into our everyday editorial output.

Our writers continue producing the lifestyle and entertainment stories we know resonate and perform well. Within those high-performing articles, we strategically include clear calls to action encouraging readers to vote.

This approach allows us to capture organic traffic and redirect it into the voting hub. Instead of relying on one spike of interest, we create a steady flow of engaged readers moving toward participation.

We use a completely free online platform for voting, and each person can only vote once. This means we have to reach as many people as possible.

In addition to including a call to action (CTA) in articles, a voter link is also placed on the landing page.

Building a cross-team campaign

The awards are not run by editorial alone. We work closely with our social media team to extend reach beyond the Web site. While editorial focused on high-quality articles, our social media team posted announcements, CTAs, galleries, and picture posts on different platforms.

Social conversations often spark debate around nominees, and that debate sent users back to the voting platform.

Turning nominees into amplifiers

One of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned is the power of nominee activation. Every nominee is notified of their inclusion. This is not just a courtesy but a strategic step.

When nominees share their nominations with their own audiences, the impact is immediate. Fans mobilise and communities rally. The participants who share their inclusion in the awards show a significant increase in votes compared to those who did not.

In effect, nominees become distribution partners. Their personal platforms extend our reach into highly engaged fan communities we might not otherwise capture directly. It transforms the campaign into a hybrid ecosystem: editorial strategy + social amplification + celebrity audience mobilisation.

Year-on-year growth

The numbers reflect the model’s scalability.

In 2023, our inaugural edition generated 3.5 million impressions. The response proved the concept resonated.

In 2024, impressions increased to 3.9 million. More importantly, the depth of engagement grew. In addition to voting, fans also campaigned, debated, and returned regularly to check results.

By 2025, we expanded categories, including sports personality of the year. This reflected both audience demand and broader cultural conversations. The 2025 project has been the best year since the award’s inception in 2023, with a reach of nearly 4 million across all platforms.

Why it works

The success of the entertainment awards is rooted in participation.

Audiences today are used to scrolling passively. Voting interrupts that behaviour. It asks readers to take a position, express identity, and influence an outcome. That shift from passive consumption to active participation changes the relationship between publisher and reader. It builds emotional investment, community belonging, and repeat engagement.

From an editorial standpoint, the awards have also reshaped how we think about entertainment coverage. High-performing content can do more than inform; it can effectively mobilise.

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