Best of SJ Readers' Poll: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best of SJ Readers' Poll is and who runs it

A business nominated in the Best of SJ Readers' Poll is competing in SJ Mag Media's own readers' choice program, not a third-party contest. The organizer is SJ Mag Media, the publisher of SJ Magazine, and the ballot sits at sjmagazine.net, the publisher's own domain. That matters for anyone planning a push: there is no outside voting platform with its own account system or rules layer between a supporter and the ballot. The form a customer fills out is the publisher's own.

The market is South Jersey. The publisher frames the poll as a celebration of everything that makes the region a great place to live, work and play, according to its readers. The vertical is best-of, the familiar readers' choice format where local businesses compete across categories and the audience decides the winners. The publisher's own description of the ballot runs from the best hotel down the Shore to the best bagels in town, which gives a sense of the range without listing every category.

The facts below are the fixed points a nominee can rely on.

The dated record for the Best of SJ ballot

The confirmed edition years for this program are 2023, 2025 and 2026. That is a recurring pattern with a gap: no 2024 edition appears in the confirmed run, so a nominee should not assume the poll has run continuously. The next edition, if the pattern holds, would fall in 2027, but the publisher has not announced a 2027 cycle in advance.

The one hard date on the current ballot is the close. Voting ends August 4th at 5 pm, which the publisher states on the ballot page itself. Both the month and the closing hour sit inside August, so the voting window is a summer one, and the final afternoon is the moment that actually decides the outcome. The opening date for the current window is not printed alongside the close.

What the publisher has not put on the page is just as important for planning. There is no complete category roster, no stated rule limiting repeat votes by one person, and no published eligibility text for nominees; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. A business that needs those details before committing time to a push has to read the live form rather than rely on any summary, including this one.

How a supporter votes in the Best of SJ Readers' Poll

The mechanic is deliberately simple, which is good news for any nominee asking customers to participate. A supporter begins at the ballot page on sjmagazine.net, moves through the best-of categories, picks a favorite in each one they want to answer, and submits. There is no separate nomination phase to worry about on the current form; the publisher presents it as a straight vote, cast your ballot for your favorites across the lineup.

Because the ballot is hosted on the publisher's own site, the supporter's path is short. Nobody needs an account on a third-party voting platform, and nobody needs to leave the publisher's domain to finish. The practical consequence for a nominee is that the link they share should point directly at the ballot page, not at a homepage or a news article, so a customer lands on the form itself.

The deadline is where nominees most often slip. Voting ends August 4th at 5 pm, an afternoon cutoff rather than a midnight one, so a reminder sent on the final day has to land before the workday ends. A nominee who waits until the evening of the fourth to remind customers has already missed the window. Whether the form allows a supporter to return and vote again on another day is not stated on the page.

Where the Best of SJ poll sits among New Jersey readers' choice ballots

South Jersey is not short of readers' choice programs, and the Best of SJ Readers' Poll is distinct from all of them in one way: it answers to SJ Mag Media alone and runs on the publisher's own website. The nearest neighbours on this site are all separate programs with their own organizers. The Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice belongs to a Gannett daily paper at the Shore. The Best of Bergen Community's Choice Awards and the Bergen & Morris Top Dentists cover the northern part of the state.

Closer to this program's own territory, the Best of Jersey Shore Contest targets the shore towns, and the Jersey Bites Monmouth County Readers' Choice is a food-focused ballot in Monmouth County. The Best of New Jersey program runs statewide. None of these share the Best of SJ's ballot, its organizer or its South Jersey focus, so support earned in this poll cannot be carried into any of the others.

For a nominee, the practical difference is audience. SJ Mag Media's readers are the people voting, and the publisher's own coverage of South Jersey life, from shore hotels to bagel shops, is what frames the categories.

Strengthening support before the August close

Support in this ballot comes down to how directly a business can move its existing customers onto the form before August 4th at 5 pm. The ballot is short to complete and sits on the publisher's own site, so the highest-value action is a direct link: a customer who clicks straight into the ballot is a finished vote, while a customer who has to search for the poll usually is not. Pair the link with a specific ask, naming the category or categories where the business is nominated.

Timing matters because of the afternoon cutoff. A reminder campaign that peaks on the final morning has hours to work with, not a full day. Spreading reminders across the window, with a final push before 5 pm on the fourth, fits the ballot's structure better than a single late appeal.

On outside help, SJ Mag Media has not published a rule for this ballot addressing purchased or automated support, so a nominee who is weighing that option should read the organizer's own terms first. The general picture of what support services do and do not promise is on buy award votes, and the honest limits of any such purchase are worth reading before spending anything.