Red Hot Best of Northern Michigan: How Voting Works & How to Win

The ballot doesn't exist until someone writes your name on it

Most first-time entrants assume Red Hot Best of Northern Michigan works like a simple poll, find the name, click vote, done. It doesn't. Traverse Magazine and MyNorth Media run this as a two-stage program: nomination first, a public vote on that nominated field second. Skip the nomination stage and a business has nothing to campaign for in March, no matter how many loyal customers it has.

That structure is easy to miss because MyNorth doesn't headline it the way some contests advertise "two rounds" explicitly. It just shows up as the actual mechanics once a business owner goes looking for the ballot in February and finds an empty field instead.

See the Michigan contest hub for how this compares to the state's other readers-choice programs, and how online contest campaigns work for the broader mechanics behind any readers'-poll push.

What's confirmed, and what genuinely isn't

Here's the honest gap. MyNorth has made the 85,000+ combined figure public for 2025. It hasn't published a category-by-category vote count, a per-business tally, or a fixed calendar date that repeats identically every year, "early March" is the closest confirmed window this page can cite. Anyone claiming an exact vote total for a specific business is working from something other than MyNorth's own released numbers.

That's not unusual for a regional lifestyle-magazine poll; unlike a data-heavy statewide sports vote, MyNorth treats this as a readers' engagement feature tied to its dining and travel coverage, not a scored competition with public leaderboards. So the honest starting point for any Northern Michigan business is: expect participation on the scale the 2025 figure suggests, not a specific number for your category.

For the general mechanics behind any readers-choice-style push, award-style vote campaigns covers ground that applies regardless of which regional poll is running. A first-timer wondering about the legwork involved can also check how to get more votes online.

Dining, lodging, shopping, real estate, services, five different races

A Traverse City supper club and a Charlevoix real estate office never touch the same ballot line. MyNorth's five confirmed categories split the field by business type across the whole region, so a Leelanau Peninsula inn competes against other lodging entries from Petoskey or Harbor Springs, not against the bakery two doors down.

Regional identity beats town identity here

Up North isn't one town pretending to be a region, it's genuinely how Grand Traverse Bay communities think of themselves collectively. A Boyne City shop owner and a Suttons Bay winery owner both read Traverse Magazine for the same reason: seasonal tourism, four-season recreation, and a shared "north of the bridge" identity that a downstate Michigan business simply doesn't share. That regional cohesion is worth naming directly when asking customers to nominate and vote, generic "vote for us" messaging undersells what actually motivates an Up North audience.

A restaurant weighing whether to run both a local best-of poll and a broader recognition push might also check the restaurant vote campaign guide for timing customer reminders across a two-stage structure like this one, and a shop or lodging business can look at running a giveaway-style vote push alongside a nomination cycle.

What March turnout actually asks of a small-market business

85,000 combined actions across one regional poll is a lot for a market the size of Grand Traverse Bay. It means MyNorth's readership engages hard during the March window, and it means a business waiting until the vote opens to ask for support is starting late relative to competitors who lined up nominations weeks earlier.

A launch reminder as soon as nominations open. One mid-window nudge. A tighter push in the days before voting closes. That cadence beats a single loud post, especially for a seasonal business, an inn or restaurant with a mailing list built from actual past guests carries more weight in a readers' poll than a cold social push ever will.

Businesses serving visitors from outside the immediate region, a Leelanau winery with a statewide following, say, might also look at personal-brand vote outreach for framing reminders around a named owner or chef alongside the official ballot link. And for the baseline this two-stage structure builds on, genuine reader participation is worth reviewing before any campaign starts, alongside the legal basics of vote-based promotion.