Golden Post Awards

Rules & Eligibility for 2025

Entry Deadline

Your entry must be submitted by 11:59pm PT Friday, February 28, 2025. There are no extensions for the 2025 award season.

Eligibility

You may only nominate your own agency. If you want to recognize another agency, please reach out to them and encourage them to submit an entry.

Eligible to Enter

United States:

Eligible government agencies include the following agencies within the United States (and any departments, agencies, boards, commissions and elected officials thereof)

• City, town, township, municipality, borough, county, parish, tribal

• State

• Federal agencies & military 

• Special districts (such as water, airport authority, sanitation, visitor’s bureau, utility services owned by a government agency)

• Economic Development Corporation

• Library: City, county, state or federal

• Courts: Municipal, county, state or federal

• Public safety: Local/state
  
  

Canada:

Most federal, provincial and municipal government entities in Canada qualify to enter. Employees at academic institutions in Canada are not eligible to enter.

Ineligible to Enter

• Academic institutions, including school districts in the US or Canada

• Agencies outside of the US or its territories and Canada

• Any Golden Post Award program affiliate (award committee members and GSM council members) is ineligible to enter the competition – and may not advise any specific nominees on how to craft their entry – during their time of service.

• An agency that an affiliate represents is allowed to enter into the competition only if the entry did not have any involvement with the affiliate (including advising, developing the creative for social media, publishing, etc). This exception exists so as not to disqualify large agencies, such as state agencies and large federal agencies, that would have no relationship with or potentially even knowledge that one of their employees serves as an affiliate.  

• Judges may submit an entry in any category other than the categories they are assigned to judge. An agency may not submit an entry in a category if a judge represents that agency in that specific category. Any judge who has a conflict of interest with any entries in categories they are assigned to judge must inform the Awards committee co-chairs and recuse themselves from reviewing that entry.

Entry Requirements

GSM reserves the right to assess entries on a case-by-case basis to confirm eligibility, and to move any entry to a more appropriate category, provided the entrant has not already submitted in that category.

Note that entries submitted for "Post of the Year" and "Best Video Strategy" categories cannot also be submitted in any other category.

Eligible Dates

Only eligible social media activities that have occurred between January 1, 2024 through January 31, 2025 will be eligible for the 2025 competition. Content submitted to this year's competition – including posts, videos, and supporting examples – may not be resubmitted in any category in next year's competition. 

3 Entry Limit

Agencies may only enter a maximum of THREE entries, and no more than ONE in any category. Your first entry is free, and additional entries are $50 for your second and $75 for your third.

• Multiple individuals from the same organization may not submit separate entries solely to bypass the fees associated with a second or third submission.

• If it is found that a single entity has submitted more than three entries, only the first three entries (based on submission timestamp) will be eligible.

• Individual state departments representing the same state (such as a DOT and a DNR), can participate separately and don’t count toward each other’s 3-entry limit, provided that the office managing the social media presence (such as communications or marketing), or video, depending on category entered, differs.

• Police, Sheriff, Fire and Emergency entities can participate separately from their city, county or state entity, and don’t count toward each other’s 3-entry limit, provided that the office managing the social media presence (such as communications or marketing), or video, depending on category entered, differs.

• Multiple departments or offices within a single city or agency may consider themselves separate for entry purposes if their work is conducted independently (for instance, each having its own communications, marketing, or video team). In such cases, they do not count toward one another’s 3-entry limit.

• Federal, state, county and local entities with various satellite locations or branches of the same entity are considered the same entity for the purposes of calculating the 3-entry limit.

Judging Process

Golden Post Award judges include social media thought leaders and industry experts from all over the United States & Canada. Entries will be thoroughly reviewed and considered based on several aspects such as goals, strategy, tactics, results, engagement, customer service, inclusivity and overall creativity. 

We reserve the right to reassign categories deemed incorrectly entered, and we also reserve the right to pull/cancel any category due to receiving a lack of entries. We are committed to selecting finalists and winners reflective of the spirit of the awards, therefore lack of competition in any category will not guarantee an award. 

Finalists

Finalists in each category will be named in April 2025. Our goal is to name the top finalists in each category, and some categories may have fewer finalists depending on the judging and scoring process. All finalists will receive a certificate.

Prizes and Award Ceremony 

Just like the Oscars, one overall winner in each category will be announced during the GSMCON2025 event. There are no “places” in the competition, only one overall winner in each category. Category winners will receive an engraved trophy, and all finalists will receive a certificate. 

The Golden Post Awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort® located in Lake Buena Vista, FL.

Only registered GSMCON2025 attendees will be able to participate in the ceremony, so we encourage you to register for attendance! Registration for a virtual ticket also allows entry to watch the livestreamed award ceremony for those not attending the conference in person. 

While not required, attending the awards ceremony is a fun and rewarding way to support your peers and celebrate together! Finalists and winners are not required to attend, and if winners aren’t present, they will be notified by email, and their trophy will be mailed to their agency. Finalists who are unable to attend will also receive their certificates by mail.

Nominees, finalists and winners do not receive discounted GSMCON registration.