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

Four counties, one ballot, and a footprint that isn't the Shore

Camden. Burlington. Gloucester. Atlantic. That's the actual coverage map for South Jersey Magazine's Best of South Jersey readers' poll, and it's worth stating plainly because it's easy to assume a "South Jersey" program means the Shore towns. It doesn't, not exclusively. This ballot reaches inland communities across all four counties, voted online at southjerseymagazine.com.

A business's first real task here isn't campaign strategy, it's confirming the basics: does the business actually sit inside one of these four counties, and does the right category exist for what it does. Get that wrong and the rest of the campaign is aimed at a ballot the business was never really eligible for.

Three South Jersey programs, three different footprints

South Jersey's readers'-choice landscape isn't one ballot, it's several. Best of the Jersey Shore Contest is built around the coastal towns. Best of New Jersey runs statewide, covering the whole state including the south. South Jersey Magazine's own Best of South Jersey sits between those two, a four-county regional footprint that includes plenty of towns nowhere near the water.

Why picking the right ballot changes everything downstream

A Voorhees insurance agency, for instance, has no realistic path onto a shore-town ballot built around beach and boardwalk businesses. That same agency fits cleanly into Best of South Jersey's four-county footprint. Matching the business to the right program, before writing a single vote-reminder message, avoids wasted effort on a ballot where the business was never actually in the running.

What the Top Dentists category confirms about the rest of the ballot

South Jersey Magazine's 2025 Top Dentists list is the one confirmed, named category output in the program's public record. It tells us something useful: this program runs at least some specialized professional-services tracks alongside general business categories, not one flat list covering every kind of business the same way.

Whether that same specialized structure extends to other professions, law firms, financial advisors, isn't confirmed here. A business in a specialized field should check the current category list on southjerseymagazine.com directly rather than assume it fits under a general "services" category by default.

For the broader mechanics behind a readers'-choice push, award-style vote campaigns covers ground that applies whether a business is entering a general category or a named professional track like Top Dentists.

What a multi-county business should watch for entering this ballot

A business with locations in both Cherry Hill and Egg Harbor Township, say, sits inside two of the four counties this program covers, Camden and Atlantic respectively. Nothing in the confirmed program details suggests that's a problem, but it does raise a real question: does each location get its own listing, or does the brand compete as one combined entry across the region?

That isn't spelled out in South Jersey Magazine's public materials, so a multi-location business should confirm the answer directly on southjerseymagazine.com rather than assume either structure. Getting it wrong wastes campaign energy, either by splitting supporters across listings that don't actually exist separately, or by missing a second, valid entry entirely.

The safer default treats each physical location as a chance to reach a different, geographically distinct set of regular customers, but confirms with the magazine whether that maps to separate ballot entries before building two different campaign messages around it.

Building a campaign that matches the actual four-county reach

A vote-reminder message that just says "South Jersey" risks confusing supporters who might assume it means the Shore. Naming the specific county, or even the town, cuts through that ambiguity fast for a program with this particular footprint.

Fabricated votes or bot traffic put more than a single cycle's standing at risk. South Jersey Magazine's readership overlaps closely with the actual customer base of the businesses it covers across Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, and Atlantic counties, a region small enough that an inflated or fake-looking result tends to get noticed by the same people the business depends on for real repeat business.

See how online contest votes work for the general mechanics behind a campaign like this one, and read is buying votes legal before committing budget to a Best of South Jersey push. Confirming the county, the category, and the current cycle's rules on southjerseymagazine.com is the honest starting point.