9th Annual Best Of Business Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best Of Business Awards is and who runs it

A business nominated in the 9th Annual Best Of Business Awards faces a specific problem: the ballot is a readers vote, so visibility with CoVa BIZ Magazine's audience decides the outcome, not a judging panel. The program is run by CoVa BIZ Magazine, a publication serving Coastal Virginia, and the magazine states plainly that it takes pride in recognizing the best businesses and business people who make the region such a great community. Readers do the nominating and the voting, which means a nominee's own customers and network are the electorate.

Supporters reach the ballot directly at covabizmag.com/best-of-business-awards/, with no outside contest platform standing between them and the vote. The magazine's masthead, its contest categories and its rules all sit on the same domain. The magazine lists a Virginia Beach address at 1264 Perimeter Parkway, Virginia Beach, VA 23454, which anchors the publication in the market it covers.

Facts at a glance

Because the publisher and the platform are the same organization, the rules a nominee must follow are printed in one place, on the ballot page itself. That is also where any mid-cycle change would appear first.

The dated record: editions, windows and what is not printed

Editions of this program are confirmed for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, each visible on the magazine's own contest pages. The magazine's earlier material describes the Best Of Business Awards as an annual design, and the 2019 cycle is documented in detail on the publisher's site: that year the magazine invited the Coastal Virginia business community to nominate businesses across a wide printed category roster, then advanced the businesses with the most nominations to a voting round. The 2025 cycle carried a voting period of January 3 through February 17, 2025, which shows the window has moved around the calendar between editions.

For the current cycle the magazine prints a voting period of March 2 through March 20, 2026, and states that contest winners will be released in the August/September 2026 issue. The ballot page for the live cycle is titled as the 10th Annual edition, the edition that follows the 9th Annual program this page is named for.

What the magazine has not published for the current cycle is a nomination round schedule or an eligibility rule covering who may submit a ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2019 rules show the program has previously run a nomination phase before voting, so the absence of a printed nomination window for 2026 is a real gap for any business planning its outreach, not a detail that can be assumed from the last edition's dates.

How a supporter votes on the CoVa BIZ ballot today

A supporter's job on this ballot is a direct readers vote at covabizmag.com. CoVa BIZ relies on readers to nominate and vote, and the ballot asks participants to read the rules and regulations before taking part. During the printed voting period of March 2 through March 20, 2026, a supporter opens the Best Of Business Awards page, finds the business or business person they want to support, and submits a vote in that category.

The clearest published precedent for the per-supporter rule comes from the 2019 edition, when the magazine allowed individuals to vote as often as once per day in any category. If that rule carries into the current ballot, the practical behavior it rewards is a daily return: a supporter who votes once on day one and never comes back contributes a single vote, while one who bookmarks the page and returns through March 20 multiplies their contribution without any special tooling.

Because the ballot sits on covabizmag.com itself, there is no third-party platform between the reader and the vote. That keeps the supporter's path short, but it also means the magazine controls every term of participation on its own pages. A nominee coaching supporters should point them at the live form rather than at instructions from a previous year, since the category list and any voting terms are printed only on the current ballot.

Strengthening support within this ballot's rules

Winning support here comes down to repeat visits. The 2019 rules allowed a vote once per day in any category, so the most productive thing a nominated business can do is give supporters a reason to come back daily between March 2 and March 20, 2026: a counter message, a staff-wide reminder, a note in a customer newsletter. On outside help, the organizer's printed guidance amounts to one instruction, to read the rules and regulations before participating, and those rules live on the ballot page.

Ask the people who already know the business: customers on your email list, staff, vendors, the people who would vote anyway if reminded. A daily nudge that names the exact category to vote in removes the guesswork that loses votes on a long ballot. For tactics that fit public readers-choice ballots generally, see our votes guide, and the paid-support question is addressed on our award votes page.

Keep the ask honest and tied to the magazine's own terms. A ballot whose rules are printed on the same page as the vote button gives a nominee no excuse for guessing, and a supporter drive that follows the printed daily rule is the version of outside help no organizer can object to.

How this ballot sits beside its Virginia neighbours

Coastal Virginia readers have several readers-choice ballots to choose from, and this one is distinguished by its publisher. CoVa BIZ Magazine covers the business community specifically, so its Best Of Business Awards is a business-to-community vote rather than a general everything-in-town poll. The nearest editorial sibling in the market is the Best of Coastal Virginia Magazine program, which comes from a different publisher with its own categories and calendar.

Elsewhere in the state, the Best of Arlington ballot serves the Arlington market, the Best of Charlottesville and Daily Progress Charlottesville Readers' Choice serve the Charlottesville market, and the BroadwayWorld Central Virginia Awards and BroadwayWorld NOVA Awards cover theatre rather than business. None of these share a ballot with the BOB Awards, so a vote in one carries no weight toward another.

For a business with locations across Virginia, that separation matters: each program answers to a separate publisher, a separate calendar and a separate rulebook, and a win in the CoVa BIZ ballot is a Coastal Virginia credential specifically.