Celebrating Our City: The Best of Tipton Campaign

When an impromptu idea catches on like wildfire, you know it's something special. That's the story of the Best of Tipton campaign, where Kaylee and I watched in awe as what started as a thought transformed into a community celebration that honored the standout individuals and businesses of Tipton. We're peeling back the curtain to share the entire journey, from the nervous anticipation of getting enough nominees to the tidal wave of community support that flooded in, showcasing the best of what Tipton has to offer.

Technical glitches and finding the perfect online voting system became an unexpected side quest in our campaign saga. But isn't that just like the Tipton spirit—undaunted in the face of a challenge? The behind-the-scenes chaos turned into a triumph of community engagement, as we saw an incredible number of votes cast within the first day. It's a chapter filled realization that our residents are as invested in this town's success as we are.

The final act of our tale is one of joyous celebration and a little bit of star-struck wonder as we connected with the beating heart of Tipton's local scene.  As we wrap up the episode, there's a palpable excitement about the stories yet to be told by our winners and finalists—real people who make Tipton the vibrant community we love. Stay tuned for those episodes; they're going to be as sweet as South Pole's ice cream, the undisputed dessert champion of our polls.

View the full Best of Tipton Results: https://hardendigital.com/best-of-tipton
Support the Digital Wrap-Up: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1525549/supporters/new
Latest Social Media News: https://www.socialmedia6.com/

Transcript

Riley: 0:24

Welcome back to another episode of the Digital Wrap-Up. My name is Riley and I'm the host and I'm the CEO of Hardin Digital and Design. Excited to be back for another episode. This is the second one of 2024. We are on a roll two for two with a weekly podcast in 2024, so hopefully we keep that going. Have an exciting episode this week we're going to be talking about the Best of Tipton campaign that we started back in at the end of 2023, really ran through all of December with nominations and votings and now the results are in. So we're going to talk about some of the results, the process for us, what we got out of it and kind of just overall how it went. So joining me for the second week in a row is Kaylee. Welcome to the show.

Kaylee: 1:15

Hello, thank you.

Riley: 1:16

Yeah, I know you're excited about this weekly podcast appearance, but I know we already have January planned out and you are not on at least one show.

Kaylee: 1:27

So I have to be on the third one Potentially. Oh my gosh, everyone's going to be so tired of me.

Riley: 1:33

I know there is at least one with Hannah, so you'll not be on that one, but I can't remember what the fourth one is. So, but yeah, best of Tipton one to talk about that today. It's something that we you and I came up with and officially, I don't remember whose idea was it. Was it yours?

Kaylee: 1:54

I yes.

Riley: 1:55

Okay.

Kaylee: 1:55

It was like a spur of the moment, I was thinking about it and I mentioned it and you're like, okay, let's do it. I'm like, oh, okay.

Riley: 2:02

Yeah.

Kaylee: 2:02

I guess we can Like this was just a throw it out there kind of thing. But yeah, let's go Okay.

Riley: 2:08

Yeah. So one thing about me which I know like Kaylee knows this or probably is picked up on it, and probably Hannah too just working with me is, once I get something in my head, I just run with it like immediately, like the podcast. Yeah, let's drop everything else we're doing and only focus on this brand new idea. It really is like that. I'm trying to think of some examples, but I mean I can tell you yeah, go for it.

Kaylee: 2:35

When we did the online apparel and online shop it was so committed. I'm like I have things to do, but you're like we need these designs today because I'm trying to put these online in 24 hours, and you just stayed up all night and committed.

Riley: 2:52

Yeah, that was a, that's one. I mean, it's just like stuff Once I have something in my mind, I want to just go and tackle it and get done with it. And I know it's a downfall, because I don't ever especially Kaylee, I don't ever consider her time and what she's doing with her other projects. But yeah, this kind of what happened with the best of Tipton.

Kaylee: 3:13

Yeah, we did it all week. We put the whole thing together and like a week I feel like.

Riley: 3:18

Yeah, so there's a lot of planning we had. I think we sat down and you know, knowing me, I was like, all right, let's plan this out right now. Kaylee hadn't really formulated the full idea, but we're like, I like the idea, so we planned it out. I think that same day we didn't launch it for a while. We to my credit, we gave each gave ourselves enough time to fully plan it out. We had the initial planning meeting, but then we had, you know, steps that we needed to do over the next two or three weeks. So it wasn't all just last minute there was we wanted to do it right.

Riley: 3:52

Yeah, because we knew there was the potential for it to be something big and rewarding for us and the citizens of the community here in Tipton. So, kaylee's idea where'd you get the idea from?

Kaylee: 4:06

Well, I used to work I'm sure I've mentioned it a million times I used to work for the Harold Bulletin in Anderson. They do a best of Madison County. Then there's also one in Kokomo, that's the best of Howard County, and the salon I go to wins that one every year and they were posting about it, like people that I know from the salon were posting about on Facebook, which is where I saw it. I'm like you know there's nothing like that tipped in. My worry was that we're not a big enough area, because at least the one in Kokomo best of Howard County. There's like hundreds of categories, it seems like. So they have a lot more businesses, a lot more people to nominate, I guess.

Kaylee: 4:51

So, I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to make it a full project, but it seemed to go well.

Riley: 5:03

Yeah, I mean we. I know we kind of talked about best of Tipton last week in the podcast, but the chamber in regular years has done the Chamber Tipton County Chamber Awards but they didn't even do that this year for several reasons. We've talked to them about it but for whatever reasons they didn't do it for and even those are a little different than what we did.

Kaylee: 5:30

Yeah, they just choose them and it's chamber number specific right.

Riley: 5:36

So if you're not a member of the chamber, you're probably not going to get an award from the chamber. And also, that's very business focused where, like ours, is more. There are some like you know best coffee shops and things like that, but it tries to focus more on there's a whole section I think the biggest like section is of people, so it varies a little different from what the chamber was doing in itself too, but yeah, there's nothing like it and I think we found out quickly. You know, kayleigh said one of our fears was having enough people or businesses to do. But out of the, how many official categories do we have like?

Kaylee: 6:18

37, maybe 38?

Riley: 6:21

Yeah all of them, except one, had more than five nominations.

Kaylee: 6:26

So yeah, and some of that was our fault. For, like, maybe best apartment complexes wasn't the way to go because there are only five or there might be a sixth, but they're very small. It's not like we're in a big city that has thousands of apartment complexes, Because we've learned a few things along the way. I got a comment on my personal Facebook when I shared, and it's a guy named Tyler.

Kaylee: 6:54

he works at Napa auto parts and shout out to Tyler because he's not going to listen to this. But he was like, really, napa is not exactly a hardware store. I'm like, well, somebody nominated you, so I don't know what to tell you.

Riley: 7:08

Yeah, there's. There's a couple of those that kind of we didn't set limitations on who could be nominated, or like yeah we weren't clear, yeah, or clear enough on some of them. Yeah, like the home improvement one. I know this is one that kind of bugs me, but like Ace Hardware, I don't know.

Kaylee: 7:29

That's where you get all the materials. They're not a home improvement.

Riley: 7:34

It was not a home improvement store, it's home improvement company. Right, you know, like the people, the contractors that go out, we should have done best.

Kaylee: 7:40

Contractor or something like we've learned a few tweaks we need to make, or more categories that we could have done that. I honestly just went in on the best in Madison County and looked up last year's categories.

Riley: 7:54

Yeah.

Kaylee: 7:55

And took those and then deleted the ones that didn't apply to Tipton County. So yeah, we learned some things. Especially, I think a couple of people commented like hey, can you do volunteer organizations or yeah best volunteer in town or something for all the people who don't necessarily work for somewhere.

Riley: 8:13

Yeah, and it's something we, those people in those specific industries, are that area of business Like that's their every day. Of course they're going to think about that stuff. You know, when we're dealing with 38 different categories, it's yeah, we're probably going to forget some. That might be a little obvious. And I mean we responded and said yes, sorry, totally missed out that one.

Kaylee: 8:37

And we could have done like best welder fabricator because of the county we're in. That wasn't on the one from Madison County, so it didn't even like cross my mind to add more.

Riley: 8:47

Yeah, which that's all right. I think still overall positive result from most people. I mean, no matter what you do in life and business, there's always going to be people that somebody's going to have an issue?

Kaylee: 8:58

Yeah, no matter what.

Riley: 8:59

So, yeah, getting into kind of the process and how we did it, you know it was completely from scratch, so we are trying to figure out which way, how to do the nominations, how to do the voting, how to what were the rewards going to be, the awards that they get? All that stuff we really just sat down and planned it out in a Google doc. It was that simple and we didn't want to over complicate. It is the big thing, because we could have made it way more confusing or complicated to try and make it perfect and do all that, but we just wanted to get it launched and going and see if they'd even catch on. Yeah, and we learned.

Kaylee: 9:45

I mean, something that I noticed is that, since it was the first year, I don't know if everyone quite understood that nominations were not actually votes.

Riley: 9:54

Yeah.

Kaylee: 9:55

So I'm hoping that next year that part at least would go more smoothly. But we were just following, yeah, the general timeline of what other people had done of nominations for this long.

Riley: 10:09

Yeah, and I think people realize that now you know because there was what 700 ish nomination forms submitted versus the more than 5000 voting forms submitted now. So I think people realize they're separate now. But it's just, you know wording and how to communicate this type of stuff is Obviously it's the first year, so it's we don't know. A lot of times you have to dumb stuff down Like that's. I say that a lot. It's not calling people dumb by any means, but like just explaining it in the most basic.

Riley: 10:45

Simple is the easiest terms. Yes, so you know, we looked into different nomination forms and different voting platforms, and one of my things from the beginning was I wanted the voting to happen on our website. Right, I wanted to drive traffic to our website, which is that's just the whole point of us doing Not the whole point, but that's just the marketing background.

Riley: 11:10

Then me is you know, we kind of wanted to get something out of it and make people more aware about what hard and digital and design does. So, yes, driving people to our website is important and we found one a voting software but it didn't really work for what we needed for nominations so we had to kind of have it there. And then we turned out and we just made a simple Google form for the nominations because it was the easiest it was. It is what it is. We could link that directly out on the Facebook post and go from there Worked fine.

Kaylee: 11:49

Yeah, I think it was great. I don't think we would need to change that.

Riley: 11:52

No. And looking back now to like we can embed Google forms on our website for next year, so we can keep it all the same spot, you know once nominations go down, then we replace the Google form embed with the voting system.

Riley: 12:08

Yeah so, oh well, but Google forms work great. We, like I said, received over close to 700 nominations lots of repeats. Then we took the top five nominations for each category, put them as finalists, and then we, when we first sat down, we found a survey software that we could use on the website, and then, a month later, when it was time to actually build out the survey slash voting system, that software or service was no longer in use.

Kaylee: 12:45

Yes, so, and we found a panic for you the Friday before.

Riley: 12:51

you know, I didn't want to work on it over the weekend, so it was like the Friday before Going live with the voting on Monday morning and I was like God it was it was a couldn't figure it out, and then we couldn't find anything even remotely similar.

Riley: 13:06

Yeah, and I was. You know this is getting really technical, but like I was getting into the weeds of trying to find stuff like that you could just link to, like you know, survey monkey, like those type of things, and our websites hosted on WordPress, and I like I was just so Irritating and annoyed that I didn't think about, like searching for WordPress specific plugins they would do this and you know, after an hour and a half of searching, I was like I made the realization and found a nice, really nice.

Kaylee: 13:36

WordPress. We could just put it directly into the website within like five minutes of searching WordPress plugins.

Riley: 13:42

So that was a very irritating day. But and then, you know, we started building out the survey and then we had issues with it not saving after a certain number of Questions. So we built it out as a survey. But it's the voting form. You pick one of the five From each category, and then we had issues with it's just so many issues with that whole process.

Kaylee: 14:06

Yeah we redid it three or four times. Yeah, and it's not like it was hard, it was just time consuming, yeah.

Riley: 14:11

I was, I was. I Did this after, you know, being irritated about the whole finding the survey system. Then I got through it all and it didn't save After I was probably like 75% of the way through entering all the different Categories and all the different names for each category and I just was like I give up.

Riley: 14:31

I literally stopped and Kayley Kayley had to take over for me but Finally got it to work. It was a thing in the very back-end, like the PHP files of the WordPress website that, like, I Googled it and found it and I was luckily able to do it. Like, once you start messing with those like back-end files of a website you can get into.

Kaylee: 14:54

Yeah, I'd have been so scared I mess up our whole website. Yeah, Well.

Riley: 14:59

I had to take the chance because we had already gone that far and luckily I was able to figure it out. It's like a limiting. It limited the number of like Questions and like results that you could have on a web page, on the website. It was very weird and technical, but got it to work out and we're all good. So then you know, we did the nominations two weeks, then we did voting for two weeks and, man, do you remember like how many votes came in that very first day? It was over like it was like two thousand, I think it was close to two thousand.

Riley: 15:35

I think it was close to two thousand the first day we were like getting their concern that no one was gonna vote yeah. I mean that was our big concern all throughout was nobody's gonna do, it's gonna be a bust. And I mean We've had, we've done some things locally, like targeted locally, that have been a bust before, and so be it.

Kaylee: 15:53

But it went a little more crazy.

Riley: 15:57

Yeah, it was close to two thousand within the first 24 hours and I could actually I could probably go look at like Google Analytics and figure that out, but we were. I came back the next day it was probably close to three thousand.

Kaylee: 16:12

Yeah, it went up really fast in the very beginning 48 hours.

Riley: 16:15

We had over like three point five K visitors to the website and that's like an anomaly for us. That was out of this world, yeah.

Kaylee: 16:26

So People latched on and they ran within yeah, there were like a hundred shares on Facebook combined and like.

Riley: 16:35

It was.

Kaylee: 16:37

Which I'm glad.

Riley: 16:38

Yeah. I mean obviously, like there's this side of the community that's been missed out on in terms of community involvement, with things like this, and I know there's a new mayor in town and he like, even from the city standpoint, like there's this lack of communication or lack of initiative and things like that. Like there's people in Tipton that want to do things and be involved, but there's just been like no Places to do it or I don't.

Kaylee: 17:11

I don't know if I'm saying what I'm meaning, but I think also people just really like People in this community are very loyal to the community. Yeah and they like Having opinions and being involved and this gave them an avenue to do it place to do it. That wasn't Any way harmful. There's no way this could possibly go wrong. Like.

Riley: 17:36

I'm not Sorry for the echo there, but yeah, I don't know what's the result get released. Maybe, I don't know, we're recording this before the results have officially released. We're going to talk about it because obviously this will, by the time this podcast runs, the results will be officially out, but Hopefully nothing bad comes from it. People don't fight.

Kaylee: 18:01

I don't know how you like it's, like that's a business must be for fun.

Riley: 18:05

Like for it's for the sake of celebrating people and the biggest thing that we've been pushing from the very beginning differentiate from the chamber even further is that this is 100% voted on by the people. Yeah right, we didn't want it to be something that we had any say in, and people can come look, I we had no say in. It will show you that all the results and what we put out is what the people said. So I'm sorry if your feelings got hurt because you didn't win, like I can't do anything about that. But you know, get more involved in the community, get your name out there more. If you need help getting your name out there more, reach out to us.

Kaylee: 18:48

Well, and I saw a lot of times people would mention us when they shared it, so we can see how many people were Advocating for themselves. I saw it on Instagram and on Facebook of people sharing our posts and being like hey, I would appreciate it if you vote for me, and the more you push for your, for their business, the more people yeah, oh, did so. You can you can tell also just by going through some of the votes, or especially during nominations.

Kaylee: 19:18

Oh yeah, no like these huge chunks of people who probably all work together at a place that we're just going. You like they all got on the computer at the same time and we're like let's all submit this person's name for this. Yeah.

Riley: 19:34

Yeah, I mean, that was another challenge to a relaying the. You only have to nominate somebody once. You don't have to like the voting. Yes, you come back on multiple times and vote. You didn't have to keep nominating over and over, which again is the confusion between the nomination but if also we're saying the most nominated, if they wanted their person to be a Finalist yeah, I mean I guess technically. Yeah, it's just weird.

Kaylee: 20:01

We didn't expect that.

Riley: 20:03

I guess per se, like if there was an award for people from one company.

Kaylee: 20:08

Yeah like, or one company that had the most nominations. The long auto care.

Riley: 20:14

You got that in the bag, yeah there's a lot of things, but besides, you know the technical issues with. You know the actual voting system and getting it up on the website. Did you see any other challenges to it? Not really it.

Kaylee: 20:32

Once it started going, it kind of just ran itself. Yeah, I mean all we had to do was plan it, make sure Stuff was ready on the day it was supposed to be ready.

Riley: 20:39

Yeah, my biggest fear was something with the website wasn't gonna work, yeah, or like the website was gonna crash because we had so many visitors, which, and the grand scheme of things, 3.5k visitors in one day isn't a lot for website purposes, but for us it was. So it was like how God is the website gonna stay alive, like that'd be.

Kaylee: 20:57

Of course people were good on there. They'd follow the link get to our website. Nothing will be there.

Riley: 21:03

Yeah, you know, that's just always kind of like a back of the mind concern of Then we're gonna look like idiots, but all worked out fine, yeah. And then, like promoting it, we ran a couple posts over the two-week period and that's all we needed to do. The first one really was the, the kicker, yeah. And then we ran a couple of follow-up ones, got a few hundred more each time we posted and I think we could have posted more, but you were like we don't want to overkill it.

Riley: 21:31

Yeah, I mean getting 5,000 Results or votes still good yeah.

Kaylee: 21:39

But I know there are at least 15,000 people in this county, so we didn't hit everybody. Yeah, but look at like half of them are probably election results and like that's true turnout. Percentage of yeah, I mean, maybe there was more votes there were more votes for this than for almost every election in this county.

Riley: 21:58

Yeah, but people could vote multiple times like.

Kaylee: 22:02

Oh, that's true.

Riley: 22:03

All, was it 5,000 individuals or multiple people voting multiple times, that's that's legit.

Kaylee: 22:10

I don't think of that, I was just thinking it made the actual political elections sound really sad.

Riley: 22:16

Yeah, I mean, that's how it goes, though, but yeah, so no other challenges for me, so let's just go ahead and jump into some of the results. As of right now, we're at 5,029 total submissions.

Kaylee: 22:32

I stopped the countdown at 5,002 for actual winners because that was on the day it was supposed to end.

Riley: 22:41

Okay, yeah, I Know we talked about this last podcast, but I obviously forgot to take it off the website, so people were still trickling in and voting. Much so be it. I don't think any race was ever within the 27 votes that have rolled in since we stopped.

Kaylee: 22:58

No, there were. There were four races that were within 20 votes.

Riley: 23:03

Oh boy, well, okay, you have all the results at 5,000 then.

Kaylee: 23:08

I stopped at 5,002.

Riley: 23:10

Okay, cool, I don't feel bad then.

Kaylee: 23:12

Are you gonna go through all of them? No, no, no, no, no, no.

Riley: 23:15

I'm just gonna you cover yours and I'm gonna scroll through and look at any super close ones or like Low outs or just ones that kind of caught us off guard before. Like you do that, though, I do want to like say Overall the majority of winners for the businesses or local businesses. Right, that was something that you know. We don't have a say in it, but If McDonald's would have won best coffee, I would have been Frustrated.

Riley: 23:48

Yeah, because there's two or three other local coffee shops that, like the thing, is trying to support local.

Kaylee: 23:53

Like yes, there's a local people working at McDonald's, but it's a franchise for some of it like best cheeseburger, if the top five finalists would have been all fast food chains, I would have just excluded that. I'm not gonna lie, because that's not in the spirit of what we're trying to do. Yeah.

Riley: 24:09

I guess that local people work there.

Kaylee: 24:12

Yeah, and it's probably locally owned. I Mean, like subways, locally owned. Yeah, I know, I know that's a franchise.

Riley: 24:20

But I don't know, I guess I don't go to the other ones and conversate with people, the owners of right McDonald's and All that.

Kaylee: 24:27

but yeah, for the most part I think I just didn't want all of them for the food categories to be the chains.

Riley: 24:34

Yeah, which they weren't. So I was happy about that, because this, at the root of it, is just all things supporting local and that's what we wanted. So, yeah, so go ahead and get into some of your favorite anomalies or close races or just interesting facts.

Kaylee: 24:52

Okay. So if you listen to the last podcast, you know I like my miscellaneous stats. So here we go. There were 683 total nominations and then 500 and 502 502 actual votes. The category that had the most individual votes was for the ice cream and dessert category. There were three thousand and nine people who voted for that. So that's to me that was a lot. Because all of their desserts people and it was kind of like a landslide.

Riley: 25:24

Yeah, we can go ahead and say like one.

Kaylee: 25:27

Well, and they already know, they won because they close our shout out South Pole, yeah, closes in December, and we wanted To get a picture of their staff before they closed for the winter, so we had to kind of tell them in advance.

Riley: 25:43

So, looking at it, that was one I happened to stop on. That's sixty six point six percent of the three thousand plus votes. Yeah, that was by far the biggest Landslide, yeah.

Kaylee: 25:56

Well, the biggest landslide was real estate company, but there were only three options. Oh so to have I think they had like 75%, which is still crazy, yeah, but also most of the real estate agents that were nominated also work for that company. So they've not a lot, they've just done a really good job, yeah at. Being the best in Tifton County apparently and kicking out all the competition.

Riley: 26:23

So there's no other real estate agencies.

Kaylee: 26:25

I mean there are, it's just that's who got nominated. Yeah, so if everybody uses them, good for them.

Riley: 26:30

And that was who remix, a new yeah.

Kaylee: 26:33

And then Kim Satang, the owner, also won real estate agent. So clearly she just knows what she's doing.

Riley: 26:40

Yeah, I mean that's good.

Kaylee: 26:42

Um, let's see the closest races. I think these were the most interesting, because car salesman or salesperson and hair stylist they all person who won only one by 20 points, wow. And then specialty trades company won by 17 points and Best hair salon only one by 12 votes. Wow, that's crazy like that's potentially two people just voting six times like or one person voting sitting there 12 times on the last day, like.

Kaylee: 27:15

Yeah, which I think To jump back to like challenges and processes, if we threw around the idea of publishing like results halfway through or like giving updates of the standings, but For 38 plus categories that's hard to do, it's and I didn't want to do it because then I felt like people that were losing would just go hog wild and Then it would be kind of skewed for the people who were winning and actually had the most just like legitimate votes. Yeah then all these people who are only voting now more because they were losing.

Riley: 27:56

Yeah, and, like I Know, I technically talked about how to cheat the system on the last podcast. I'm not going to this time because, thinking about it, it's like if we use the same system next year, somebody remembers this they're gonna cheat the system. There were ways to quote-unquote cheat the system. If you know how to do it, I Don't think people tried that hard.

Kaylee: 28:20

No, I don't think anyone was that dedicated.

Kaylee: 28:22

But if we published the Current standings like halfway through or something people who really cared, which it's good they care, but then you could definitely draw in those people that are gonna go cheat the system and vote 50 plus times for the same thing, over and over and over and that, like the hair salon and the hair stylist ones, those were ones that up until like the last two days could have gone either way, yeah, and they went back and forth and that was kind of exciting to watch. Of you know, like who's it gonna be on. The ones that were super clear from the get-go, that was, I mean, yats, exciting that somebody won, but it wasn't as fun as the close races.

Kaylee: 29:05

Yeah so I liked those stats. And then the love bug food truck and cafe was actually in the top five. Five different categories thing, that's good. So Like I don't quite understand, they didn't get first place in any of those they were runner-ups in a whole bunch, but to be on there five times is crazy.

Riley: 29:29

Yeah, oh wow, this one Best specialty trades. Did you mention that?

Kaylee: 29:34

mm-hmm, that was one that was like by 17 votes yeah. Yeah, I mean that's good, Obviously the love bug is really good In the greenhouse and the fact that they do a lot of things well apparently is yeah, I mean kudos. That's the exciting.

Riley: 29:50

Yeah, unfortunate that they were in five different categories and didn't win either of them, but no, it's how it goes, sometimes Just scrolling through Seeing if there's other ones that kind of stand out here oh, that's best hairstylist. Yeah, make sense. Any other takeaways from you in terms of just overall how it went on? Not fun. I.

Kaylee: 30:26

Think it went great. Yeah, I think it was exciting for me too. I mean, I've lived here for years and some of the people I didn't even know Mm-hmm, actually most of them. So then I was fact-checking people's names and I still spelled one wrong. But you know, yeah, I was trying but looking up all of these people to make sure they existed and make sure their names were correct and that they worked at the place they were supposed to work at and that they actually no lived or worked in Tipton County. I learned a lot of people yeah.

Kaylee: 30:59

That now I could recommend or I could go talk to about something. So that was kind of cool. And then the fact that we'll get to go to them and give them their Little sticker. Yep, yeah, I think we'll get to meet, you know, 40 new potential Owners or people.

Riley: 31:16

So yeah, I think that's the. The big thing for us is, in a way, this is an introduction and a foot in the door to a lot of Businesses or individuals who might know, people who own a business or like, who have a side gig and things like that. It now allows us to have a foot in the door, speaking with them, giving them their award and giving them their social media shoutouts, and all that when we might not have ever met this person or right you know so now I know like when people on the community page are asking about hey, who's a good plumber, we can say like hey, this guy one according to 33.3% of Tipton County.

Kaylee: 32:00

Yeah, this person is the best. No, I mean we're not kind of, but it's good information to know. Yeah, maybe our website, when all the list is up, would be a resource for people when they're looking for. Somewhere or someone to call.

Riley: 32:15

Yeah, most recommended. I mean, yeah, I. I hope they're like the businesses and individuals who rely on people Looking them up and checking out their website and their social media pages. Do something with the best of Tipton Slogan saying we're the best of Tipton, whether it's their Facebook cover photo or right they put the badge on their website Prominently, like that type of stuff can help.

Riley: 32:43

It's an award, even though technically we just Made it up, but it's voted on by the people and that's what I think prompts pain for, rather than pain for, google ads and being the highest listed search result or things like that. You know best of Tipton is the people of Tipton that they trust and they like and they care about, so yeah, yeah, we're been nice if we could like give them a whole little glass plaque. But that's a little expensive.

Riley: 33:14

Yeah, that's expensive. We really did consider it and like that was the thing I wanted to do, but we wanted to start small right.

Kaylee: 33:23

Because also, if it was a flop yeah and we committed to buying all of these little trophies.

Riley: 33:29

Yeah, I'd be bad, bad investment, you know. But something comes along next year and people want to promote it even more and Say there's an outside sponsor who wants to sponsor the plaques or something like that. Like I would absolutely be all for that. So I think it would add to the appeal of it even more. Like obviously got a lot of attention, but Having a nice plaque instead of just a window decal or something like that would be a nice touch. So if there is anybody out there, reach out to us. I'm be happy to plan that for next year.

Kaylee: 34:07

Yeah, have to be somebody who's not potential has no potential to be nominated for a category.

Riley: 34:14

Maybe I mean.

Kaylee: 34:15

I feel like that one would be very fair but they're not gonna get one automatically.

Riley: 34:19

I.

Kaylee: 34:21

Know, but I don't think people would see it as yeah fair like the, especially if that company did win.

Riley: 34:29

Hey, did you buy your votes yeah?

Kaylee: 34:31

I'm getting a lot like that's a lot of thought into a simple, fun voting she watches too many conspiracy TV shows, but yeah, I think it'd be really cool.

Riley: 34:44

But like this is kind of like a thing in the business world too is your minimal, viable product? We just wanted to have a simple, don't overcomplicate, just do it and see how it goes and then build on it if it's a success, which by all means this has been a success yeah, so One thing that you, I Geez. One thing that's a takeaway for me as well. As you know, the foot in the door with business owners and things like that is Obviously our social media has grown from this Close to a hundred new followers on Facebook. That's one.

Kaylee: 35:25

I thought that's cool.

Riley: 35:26

Yeah, then we also just recently had somebody submit a form on our website. That Is one of the finalists and they want to talk about social media and website stuff. So I'm not say I don't want to say like that was our main goal, because it wasn't but, like that's, a great After-effect of doing this is, you know, getting connected talking more business owners, that's.

Kaylee: 35:49

who know if? Who knows if half of these people even knew we existed?

Riley: 35:53

Yeah.

Kaylee: 35:54

Cuz once again. Like we work with a lot of just other businesses, so some of these individuals, if they're not a business owner or anything, they may not even know we were here.

Riley: 36:04

Yeah so but those are the people who might have family members that want a business or they're considering Starting a side gig and need help setting up their stuff. So, yeah, a lot of good takeaways. Definitely worth the stress. I Mean it wasn't super stressful. The survey and Setting up the voting form was the biggest stressor for me, but we got it all figured out. So, yeah, the results are live now. So if you're listening to this and you haven't seen the results yet, go to hard and digital comm slash Best of Tipton and it's best dash of dash Tipton. They say hard and digital comm. Yes, okay, I thought I just said a hard and digital slash. Now hard and digital comm slash best dash of dash Tipton and all the results are there and this video will also be on that web page so you might be watching it there right now. Yeah, any other final thoughts before we wrap up is Exciting, like that's just the biggest thing for me is. It was fun.

Kaylee: 37:14

I think it was very funny thing. It was cool and I liked seeing People who I'm friends with already on Facebook sharing the nominations for voting and stuff and then being like so thankful. Yeah that they even got nominated and that they're being supported by their community, and just the amount of people who were just like even if I don't win, it's an honor.

Riley: 37:38

Yeah, I think that was cool.

Kaylee: 37:39

I think it has meant a lot to the local community and some people I talked to Like wouldn't have even known that they were nominated and, like their friends texted them and were like hey, did you see this? So they got people talking. I Don't know. I think it's kind of cool. The the fun part for me was seeing, like, the two sisters that were in the same category and the two brothers that were against each other yeah, family members that were both nominated. Like it is a small town, so I guess that should be expected, but I just think it was cool.

Riley: 38:18

Don't fight at the dinner table. Please Don't blame us for your family problems.

Kaylee: 38:23

Yeah, but I think it was a good boost, especially at the end of the year, towards Christmas time, like going into the new year. Now they're gonna get to be like hey, 2024, I'm the best.

Riley: 38:34

Yeah, yeah. So I Think that's it Just a lot of fun. Definitely something we're going to expand on, revise, do again next year. You know we talked about the categories and we'll have some additions, subtractions, whatever it may be to make it a little better, but definitely something we're doing again in some similar fashion. So be on the lookout for that. Again, if you want to support. You're not gonna buy your way into winning votes or anything, but you know you have any ideas that would help, leave us a comment. We're happy to entertain ideas, not saying we're going to do it or not going to do it. But yeah, maybe something to that would be a bit better benefit to the local community, whether it's a, A monetary donation or things like that, I don't know.

Kaylee: 39:32

I think obviously people were thankful enough just to be nominated, but and I think too, we could offer if anybody who is the finalist or winner wants to be on our podcast. Yeah, if you want to be on the podcast, just to talk about your business because a lot like some of these people we've never Worked with either, yeah, maybe they want to get their business out there.

Riley: 39:54

Yeah, definitely, the podcast is open to talking to small business owners, other people in the community. I had another grand idea as one of the awards Luckily Kaylee talked me down from this one was launching an entire another podcast for the Tipton community and we really struggle just to get one per Month sometimes so I know we did. We got one in December and now we're two in January, so we're on a roll.

Kaylee: 40:24

We're doing well now because we're planning ahead.

Riley: 40:26

Yes, getting other people besides me who is scatterbrained and has too much on my plate to help planning and keep me on task Very beneficial but I would love to hear from other people, even if they're just talking about, like, what they do.

Kaylee: 40:42

Yeah.

Riley: 40:43

I Think we can do it. I mean, I think it's not beyond the video all the time. But, as we you know, we're recording this before the results are announced and before we talk to people and give them their words something. Hey, congratulations. If you want to come on the podcast, let's set up a time you can come in, we'll do it. So, yeah, sweet, well, congratulations. Let's give everybody a round of applause. We did one.

Kaylee: 41:09

We've been waiting to push that button the entire time.

Riley: 41:12

Yes, so, side note, side tangent at the end here if you care about podcasting equipment and setup, great. If not, we'll see you next time. No, we we switched to a new software to record. We added headphones so that we can hear better and hear the quality of the Inter, the podcast, while we're actually recording as well.

Kaylee: 41:35

So and we look a little stupider.

Riley: 41:38

The setup I feel like I like for most people wear headphones and podcasts, so it's something that we're committed to the podcast and this is kind of sometimes I need a spark to Get reinvested in things and usually that means buying cool things. So Headphones is my personal Christmas gift to the businesses. I bought headphones for the podcast and New software and things. So hopefully the podcast continues to grow. And Thanks everybody for listening and supporting. Because of you, your support, were Feel more committed to doing this and it's something that I enjoy greatly. So thank you so much for supporting. If you do want to support even more, you can click the link in the show notes and there's a couple different ways to support the digital wrap-up. So thank you, kaylee, for joining me. To Kaylee for joining me two weeks in a row. You might be on in another two weeks, who knows and probably will see you again in February, but at the latest. So thanks so much for everybody tuning in and we will see you next week on the digital wrap-up. You.