Golden Post Awards

This award celebrates government agencies that have cultivated a strong, recognizable, and consistent brand voice and personality across their social media platforms. Whether humorous, empathetic, bold, or professional, these agencies demonstrate how a distinctive voice can build trust, elevate engagement, and foster meaningful community connections. Submissions should highlight the brand voice in action—through posts, comments, direct messages, or interactions—and showcase how it resonates with and impacts their audience.

This award celebrates the best organic social media campaigns, recognizing creativity, strategy, and measurable impact achieved without paid promotions or third-party services. Submissions must feature a single cohesive campaign that leverages storytelling, community engagement, and platform-native features such as Stories, Reels, or analytics tools. Entries should demonstrate thoughtful planning, meaningful interaction with the audience, and clear, measurable results aligned with the campaign’s objectives.

This award celebrates the power of partnerships in achieving shared goals through innovative and meaningful collaboration across different social media presences and audiences. Eligible entries must clearly outline the partnerships involved, which can include local government, nonprofits, similar agencies, community partners, local businesses, or other non-paid stakeholders. Submissions should demonstrate how the collaboration advanced a shared objective, such as raising funds, increasing public awareness, educating on a topic, or driving community engagement.

Please note: If your collaboration involved using paid influencers, please submit under the Best Paid Campaign category instead.

The pinnacle of government social media excellence, this award recognizes agencies with a strategic, creative, and impactful approach to their overall presence across any social media platform. It celebrates consistent innovation, meaningful engagement, and measurable success across three platforms. Entrants must demonstrate how their efforts build connections, showcase creativity, and achieve real-world goals while leveraging the unique strengths of each platform.

This category uniquely features attendee voting! An esteemed panel of judges pick the finalists, and registered GSMCON attendees vote on one winner at the event!

This award recognizes the most effective use of paid social media to drive measurable outcomes. It celebrates campaigns that strategically used any-sized budget, audience targeting, and creative execution—including partnerships with paid influencers—to achieve impactful results. Submissions should highlight how the campaign allocated its budget, engaged audiences through compelling content and messaging, and delivered measurable outcomes aligned with its goals.

This award recognizes agencies that excel in creating educational or issue-based content that informs, supports, or protects their community. It celebrates strategies that tackle serious or complex challenges—such as public health, environmentalism, public safety, mental health, victim advocacy, child protection and more—with clarity, sensitivity, and purpose. The category allows for tones that may range from serious to lighthearted—whichever best serves your community and focuses on education and audience benefit. Submissions may include content from cohesive campaigns or standalone pieces, provided they demonstrate strategic planning, thoughtful execution, and measurable outcomes.

Please note: This category also accepts emergency preparedness campaigns. However, communications responding to an active crisis should be entered in the “Best Use of Social Media in an Emergency” category.

This award honors government agencies that excel in using social media to inform, engage, and support their communities during emergencies or crises. From natural disasters to public safety incidents, this category highlights the critical role of social media in delivering accurate, timely, and impactful information when it’s needed most. Submissions should demonstrate exceptional strategy, effective execution, and measurable outcomes, showcasing how the agency used social media to provide updates, combat misinformation, and foster community connection during high-stress situations.

This award highlights the strategic use of video as a consistent and impactful communication tool. Unlike campaign-specific categories, this award focuses on an agency's ability to execute a cohesive video strategy that engages audiences and achieves measurable goals over time. Submissions should showcase five videos, reflecting thoughtful planning, quality production, consistent posting, and sustained success, supported by analytics and standout examples.

This prestigious award celebrates the best of the best: a single social media post that captures attention, exemplifies excellence in strategy, engages its audience, and achieves a meaningful goal. Posts in any format—video, text-based, carousel, or otherwise—are eligible, provided they demonstrate innovation, audience engagement, accessibility, and measurable success. Submissions must be unique to this category and cannot be entered in any other category. Extra consideration will be given to posts showcasing authentic storytelling, creative formats, or innovative use of platform-specific features.

The Nextdoor Neighborly Award honors a government agency that exemplifies outstanding community connection on the Nextdoor platform. This recognition is awarded directly by Nextdoor to an agency that consistently communicates with clarity, transparency, and responsiveness while leveraging the platform’s tools to foster trust and connection. Winners go beyond posting updates— they show up for their residents, share meaningful content, and use Nextdoor strategically during both everyday moments and critical situations.

Presented by LinkedIn, the (in)Spiration Award recognizes a government agency that uses LinkedIn in innovative, mission-driven ways. This award honors organizations that treat LinkedIn as a powerful communications channel to craft thoughtful content, elevate public service storytelling, and engage audiences with purpose. Winners demonstrate how a strategic presence on LinkedIn can influence perception, build relationships, and advance organizational goals.