City badge winners announced! #visitUS

The results are in! Hundreds of you submitted lists, thousands more followed them, governors promoted, and celebrity chefs tweeted, but in the end, only three cities could win their very own badge.

Actually, there were so many awesome lists, we picked five (and it was so hard to narrow it down that far)! Here they are:

Baltimore, Maryland

With retweets from the mayor, the governor, the lieutenant governor, The Good Wife star Josh Charles, Charm City Cakes, and their Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman, Visit Baltimore won the follower count category with over 1000 followers! Check out their amazing list, featuring everything from the best Thursday night karaoke bar, to the uncanny Frank Zappa Statue.

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is for lovers! And for people who love museums, great dining, Edgar Allan Poe, and art gallery tattoo parlors. This list garnered a tweet from Virginia’s governor and almost 500 followers!

Des Moines, Iowa

We were super impressed by this Des Moines city list made by Drake University’s Social Media Strategies Class. They joined forces to write a bunch of great tips, got the word out, and got over 250 followers. Their list features fairgrounds, zombie burger joints, delicious cornbread and more.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

One of the tips on this list is: “Bone up on your skeletal knowledge at the Museum of Osteology.” Need we say more? This list, filled with gorgeous photos and lovely tips made us want to visit OK immediately. Bonus points for tweets from the governor and lieutenant governor!

Stamford, Connecticut

No small efforts for this small town list. We were blown away by the amazing effort and twitter promotion by list-maker Dave K, one of the first people to submit his list. Great job on the retweet by your congressman!

Congratulations to our winners! It was extremely difficult to choose just five cities, and there are many reasons why other cities would have been great winners, too. Overall, we wanted to reward a variety of factors, from big efforts from small towns, to great tips and photos, to follower counts.

But there were so many more we loved!
One of the best things about this contest was seeing all the friendly competition. Tourism boards, government officials, and even Paula Deen got in on the action!

Philadelphia (and Geekadelphia), Minneapolis, Bucks County, Savannah, Roswell, Lake County, Portland, Houston, Milwaukee, Portsmouth, Albuquerque, Charleston, Corpus Christi, Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Memphis, Nashville, Shoals, St. Louis – you were all on the short list. Thanks so much for your effort. We want to send you a token of our thanks, so list-makers, check your email!

Our city badge contest was inspired by the White House’s #visitUS initiative to boost tourism, but we had so much fun with it, we just might roll more out in the future (including one for our amazing international community). Thank you to everyone who participated. Stay tuned, and keep creating amazing lists! We’ll be rolling out badges for the winning cities over the next few weeks.