Best of South Tampa: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of South Tampa is and who runs it

Best of South Tampa is a readers' choice program that asks the community to name the best businesses, services and more in South Tampa, Florida. Tampa Magazines runs it, the same publisher that puts out Tampa Magazine, and the vote runs on tampamagazines.com itself instead of on any outside voting platform. The publisher titles the page simply 'VOTE BEST OF SOUTH TAMPA.'

The format is the classic local-media best-of vertical. A publication opens a public ballot, residents back the nominees they rate highest, and the results become a featured list that readers treat as a neighborhood guide. What distinguishes this entry in the format is its scope. It is not a statewide poll and it does not spread across several cities; the mission printed on the page is to find South Tampa's best, full stop. The ballot exists to settle which shop, restaurant, salon or service the neighborhood itself rates highest.

Facts at a glance

Because Tampa Magazines runs the vote on its own web pages, the deadline, the daily rule and the warning about uncounted votes all sit on the same page you vote on. That makes the voting address the single bookmark a supporter needs.

Confirmed editions and the current voting window

Tampa Magazines states that it launched the program in 2020, saying 'In 2020, we launched Best of South Tampa,' and its own pages confirm editions in 2022, 2025 and 2026. Each of those cycles carried its own headline and its own deadline. The 2022 ballot stayed open until Fri., Jan. 21. The 2025 edition ran under the banner 'Cast Your Vote!' and accepted daily votes until Thurs., Jan. 19. The current cycle carries the closing line 'Voting ends Dec. 21,' which places the live window in December.

Several details around that window are not printed. The exact opening date of the current ballot does not appear next to the closing deadline, and the publisher has not posted the roster of ballot categories anywhere on the voting page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Eligibility rules beyond the daily instruction are likewise absent, so a supporter with an unusual situation should read the notice printed on the ballot itself rather than assume.

What the publisher does commit to is the reveal. The 2025 winners list was slated for the April edition of Tampa Magazines, which means the gap between the December close and the announcement is filled by whatever counting and production the magazine does off-page. Supporters waiting on results should watch the magazine rather than refresh the voting page, because that page moves on to the next cycle once voting ends.

How a supporter votes today

The mechanic is as simple as it gets. A supporter visits the voting page on tampamagazines.com, picks a category, and casts a vote for the listed business. The page's instruction reads 'You can vote once a day,' so the same supporter can come back tomorrow, and again the day after, until the printed deadline. No account requirement is named on the page and no app is involved; the ballot is a web page on the publisher's own domain, reachable from any browser.

Two cautions belong with that routine. The page carries an emphatic warning that votes 'will not be counted' in some circumstances, and the sentence explaining when is printed on the ballot itself, so read the full notice before assuming every click lands. And because the roster of categories is not published in advance, the live ballot is where a given business's nominated categories show up.

For a business hoping to ride that rhythm, the ask to customers is simple and repeatable: vote today, and come back tomorrow. A daily habit beats a single announcement, because the ballot's own rule rewards the return visit. That is also why the days just before the Dec. 21 close matter so much in this program; a business that structures its reminders around the daily reset gives every willing customer the maximum number of counted chances the publisher's rules allow.

How this ballot sits beside its Florida neighbours

Florida carries a full shelf of reader ballots, and this program sits inside that family without being run by any of the others. The routes closest to it on this site are the Best of Florida Awards, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, Best of Orlando, Best of Tallahassee, Best of the Bay and Best in Destin. Each one answers to a separate publisher with a separate market, so a deadline or a rule that applies in Miami or Orlando tells you nothing about the Tampa ballot.

The meaningful differences are geography and hosting. Best of South Tampa covers a single neighborhood market and runs on Tampa Magazines' own web pages, while the Best of Florida Awards spans all of Florida and the Miami and Orlando polls answer to their own local publishers. A business deciding where to campaign should treat each ballot as its own contest with its own window, its own category roster and its own close.

For a South Tampa business, the practical takeaway is exposure. Winning here puts a name in front of the readers of Tampa Magazines, the same audience the April winners edition reaches, and the wider Tampa Bay market runs its own separate vote through Best of the Bay. A nominee that wants both audiences has to work both ballots on their own terms, because nothing on the Tampa voting page carries over to any of the neighbouring programs.

Rallying daily support before the close

Support in this ballot compounds, because the publisher's daily rule rewards repetition. A business that asks its customers to vote and asks again the next day, straight through the window that closes Dec. 21, collects far more than a business that posts once and hopes. The most effective asks are the ones tied to an existing touchpoint: a line on a receipt, a sign at the counter, a note in an email list, each pointing at tampamagazines.com/bost-voting/ and naming the category to look for.

Respect the organizer's own notice while doing it. The ballot warns that certain votes will not be counted, and the conditions around that warning are printed on the voting page, so any push that ignores the printed rules risks wasting the very clicks it generates. A steady, honest campaign built on real customers returning daily fits both the spirit of the ballot and the letter of its instructions.

For a broader playbook of outreach that does not touch the ballot mechanics at all, see how to get more votes online, and for the general position on paid support in reader polls, see buying award votes. No outside help of any kind can promise victory in a ballot whose host reserves the right not to count votes.