When you start the program, you can nominate five posts per calendar week, up to 20 posts a month. One way to think of it is like having a weekly cadence: submit five nominations by the 7th, five by the 14th, five by the 21st, and your final five nominations by the 28th.
The goal of this weekly submission guidance is to evenly spread Boost nominations throughout the month. We want to avoid “dead zones” when there are few nominations coming in, content clusters (where we get a huge batch of one publication’s stories all at once), and backlogs at the end of the month with last-minute nominations.
Nominations for the month must be received by midnight UTC on the final day of the month. Any nominations that are submitted after midnight UTC on the final day of the month will be tracked as part of the following month. Best practice is to submit your final monthly nominations several days before the end of the month to avoid confusions with time zones.
What if I don’t nominate 20 stories a month?
Editors in the Boost Nomination Program all participate at will. There is no penalty for not using your full quota of nominations. That said, if you consistently do not nominate any stories, we may choose to end your participation.