Rules

THE RULES

Welcome to the Small Business Influencers 2012 produced by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com (collectively referred to as "we" or "us").

Influencer Categories

The six Influencer categories are as follows:

• News Outlets (media companies, newspapers, magazines, broadcasting companies)

• Corporations (providers of products and services to the small business market, and non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and advocacy and support organizations)

• Journalists (individual journalists, reporters, editors, broadcasters, bloggers, podcasters, freelance writers)

• Leaders (executives, academics, government officials, or key employees who are part of organizations serving the small business market)

• Experts (mavens, authors, speakers, consultants, advocates, professionals such as lawyers or CPAs)

• Apps (software applications, software as a service or SaaS, mobile apps, tablet apps)

Even though there are six categories, in order to achieve Top 100 Influencer status, there will not necessarily be equal representation from each of the six categories.

Eligibility

To be eligible, people must reside in or organizations must be based in North America. Entrants must be involved in supporting, assisting, serving or enabling small businesses, through products, services, information and/or expertise used by those in the small business market.

Final judging will be based on the impact on and degree of influence that nominees bring to small businesses.

Nomination Period

There will be a period for the community to submit nominations. Each person and organization is eligible to be nominated in one category (i.e. the same person or organization will not be included in more than one category). If a person or organization is nominated in more than one category, we will decide in our sole discretion, the category in which to place them. There is no fee and no purchase is required to submit a nomination. The nomination period runs from May 1, 2012 through July 15, 2012 at 11:59 pm Pacific time (Los Angeles time).

Voting Period

After the nomination period has concluded, there will be a period for the community to vote and show support (which may include commenting and submitting videos) for the Top 100 Influencers (top 100 overall, not top 100 in each category). The voting period runs from July 16, 2012 through August 5, 2012 at 11:59 pm Pacific time (Los Angeles time).

Any person may cast votes. The same IP address can vote once per day per nominee, with a 24-hour reset (i.e., each 24 hour-period you may vote once for each of the nominees).

You may vote for as many nominees as you like in a 24-hour period. But you cannot cast multiple votes for the SAME nominee in any given 24-hour period.

You may vote for yourself, your organization and your favorite Influencers, and then use the share buttons and badges to encourage your networks and followers to do the same.

Voting Disqualification

It is permissible to encourage others to vote for you, your organization or any nominee. However, you may not buy votes or promise or reward people with monetary compensation in exchange for voting. Violation will result in disqualifying votes and/or complete disqualification, as determined in our sole discretion, and our decision is final.

We reserve the right to disqualify votes that are machine-generated or follow an "unnatural" voting pattern, or show other irregularities, as demonstrated by our server logs. The decision to allow or disqualify votes for irregularities will be made in our sole discretion, and our decision is final.

Judges

Our esteemed Judges in a given year are not eligible for inclusion on the same year's Top 100 Influencers list, but will be deemed "Influencers Emeritus." The Judges are tasked to vote for persons and organizations who, in their opinion and judgment, have accomplished something to influence the small business community in a meaningful way. Judges have agreed to abstain from voting for persons, companies or organizations in which they have a financial interest.

Top 100 Champions

Inclusion in the Top 100 Influencer Champions list will be accomplished by a combination of community voting (40%) and voting by our Judges (60%). We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to break ties in excess of the top 100 in order to reduce the number to achieve the Top 100.

The Judges may in their discretion determine that an additional number receive "Special Mentions."

The official Judges' announcement of winners will be made in August 2012.

Community Choice

In addition to the Top 100 Influencer Champions, there will be Community Choice Awards given to the top 5 popular-vote getters in each of the six categories. The Community Choice Awards are a special recognition based 100% on the number of popular votes, and are separate and distinct from the Top 100 Champions. The list of Community Choice winners will be available immediately upon the conclusion of voting by the community.

Award Benefits

Champions, Special Mentions and Community Choice winners will receive, according to their respective designation, the following:

- Recognition online and in press releases.

- The right to display winner and nominated Web badges

- One admission to the Awards Gala networking and ceremony in New York City (additional admission passes may be purchased).

- Champions receive an award trophy.

- Champions, Special Mentions and Community Choice winners are eligible to purchase additional trophies, reprints, photographs and other official indicia of their winner status.

Countdown Clock

The countdown clock will be set at the start of the nomination period, and then once again at the start of the voting period. We will post on the website when the nomination and voting periods have concluded.

Disclaimers

We reserve the right to extend the nomination and voting periods (e.g., if the website experiences technical difficulties and people are unable to nominate or vote for any extended period; that would be one reason among other possible reasons which could warrant extending the voting period).

We also reserve the right to edit nominations and place them in a category which is different from the category originally submitted.

We also reserve the right to screen nominations and, in our editorial judgment, not include on the website's official nomination list, persons and organizations which have been nominated by someone in the community, if insufficient contributions to the small business market appear in the submission. We apologize if this offends anyone, however we do not have an unlimited amount of space on the website which can be dedicated to the nominations.

We also reserve the right to add to, delete from and amend these rules at any time and without prior notice and to waive any and all provisions in these rules and any irregularities in the operation of this initiative.

Updated: May 1, 2012

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