Twin Cities Business Best of Business: How Voting Works & How to Win

Why a magazine for executives runs its own 'best of' ballot

Twin Cities Business is written for people who run companies, not people who eat at them. That distinction drives everything about Best of Business. Where a typical readers' choice ballot asks the public to pick a favorite pizza place, TCB asks its own business readership to pick the accounting firm, the law practice, the marketing shop, or the commercial bank they'd actually recommend to another company.

That's a narrower, more specialized audience than a citywide consumer poll draws. A vote from a fellow business owner or a finance director carries different weight than one from a random resident who saw a link on Facebook.

The program lives at tcbmag.com/votebestbiz, separate from TCB's regular editorial coverage. Minnesota runs several other programs with a similar "best of" label and a very different audience: the statewide Minnesota's Best ballot and the regional Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area program both skew toward everyday consumer categories rather than B2B vendors.

What Gold, Silver, and Bronze actually mean across 100+ winners

More than 100 businesses receive recognition in a typical Best of Business cycle, split across Gold, Silver, and Bronze tiers rather than one winner-take-all slot per category. It's closer to how a state fair judges baked goods than how a single-winner popularity contest works.

The one number TCB hasn't released yet

A per-category count, exactly how many Gold slots exist, or which categories are new this cycle, hasn't turned up anywhere TCB has published it. Confirm the current list on the live ballot rather than assuming it matches a prior year. TCB has room to add or retire categories as the Twin Cities business landscape shifts, and guessing wrong wastes a nomination.

The voting window runs nine weeks, but results wait until June

Nine weeks. That's roughly the span between December 20 and February 21, the confirmed voting window for Best of Business. It opens right as most Twin Cities companies close out year-end business and shuts well before spring, a full four months before anyone learns who actually won.

That gap between close and reveal matters for planning. Winners aren't posted to a live leaderboard the moment voting ends. TCB holds an in-person event each June at Nicollet Island Pavilion, the riverside venue on the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis, to reveal results. A firm asking "did we win" in March simply has to wait; the magazine hasn't said yet.

Compare that cadence to a sport-driven fan vote like the Hobey Baker Award Fan Vote, where a single national college hockey honor gets decided and announced within weeks of the season ending. Best of Business runs on a magazine-publishing calendar, not a game-day clock.

Reaching a B2B audience takes a different campaign than a restaurant poll

Friends-and-family outreach works fine for a pizza shop chasing votes on a consumer ballot. It does very little for a commercial insurance brokerage. The people who can cast a meaningful vote for a Best of Business nominee are other business owners, executives, and TCB subscribers, not a general social audience.

That reshapes where the outreach happens. A LinkedIn post to a firm's own client and vendor network reaches exactly the kind of reader who already gets Twin Cities Business in their inbox. A direct email to existing clients asking them to vote, with the actual tcbmag.com/votebestbiz link attached, does more work here than a generic Instagram story ever could. Firms running LinkedIn-focused poll campaigns for other B2B recognition programs report the same pattern: the win comes from a tight professional network, not sheer reach.

Chambers of commerce, industry associations, and existing referral partners are the other lever worth pulling. A CPA firm's referral partners, a law firm's outside counsel relationships, an agency's past clients: these are people who already know the work and have a real reason to spend thirty seconds voting.

From ballot to Nicollet Island: talking about a win honestly

A "Best of Business" claim only means something once TCB has actually said so at the June event. Before that, "nominated" or "on the ballot" is the accurate word, not "winner." The Nicollet Island Pavilion reveal is the closest thing to an official record this program has. No separate leaderboard page updates live as votes come in.

Precision protects a business more than enthusiasm does. "Best of Business, Gold, [category], [year]" is a claim a reader can check against that year's event. A bare "TCB's best" with no tier, no category, and no year attached isn't something this guide can verify, and it risks overstating a result the magazine hasn't published in that form.

Vote-promotion support can help a firm reach the clients and contacts it already has, pointed at the right tcbmag.com/votebestbiz page during the December 20 to February 21 window. It can't manufacture a Gold medal or guarantee a June stage appearance. See how online contest votes work to understand what a campaign like this actually involves, and check is buying votes legal before any budget goes toward a Twin Cities business award push. Award-focused campaigns generally, including this one, are covered in the award vote campaign guide.