The Bennys 2023: Salesforce Ben Content Awards

As we close the chapter on another year, it’s time to celebrate the best and the brightest in our community. The Bennys isn’t just an award ceremony; it’s a celebration of passion, expertise, and, above all, community spirit. 

So, let’s raise a virtual toast as we celebrate this year’s winners – true Trailblazers who have delivered exceptional content during 2023. 

What Are the Bennys?

The Bennys are our annual opportunity to distinguish the best content creators in the categories below, from admins to DevOps. What categories would you like to see next time around?

Each category will have a winner and two runner-ups. The winning criteria is based on a variety of factors, from creativity and expertise to audience lovability.

So, without further ado, we present 2023’s Benny winners…

Top Admin Content

Salesforce Admins are at the heart of our community, constantly innovating and helping to guide users. This year’s top spot goes to Stacy O’Leary for her thought-provoking piece: Can Chat GPT Replace Salesforce Admins?

This was closely followed by David Giller’s 19 Ways to Optimize Your Salesforce User Interface for Improved Adoption, and Jonathan Fox’s insightful The 6 Types of Relationships in Salesforce.

Top Developer Content

The world of Salesforce development can be a tricky one, as there are so many new features and enhancements to keep up in the Salesforce ecosystem. The first place for this category goes to Thomas Prouvot’s Salesforce Inspector Reloaded. 

We’d also like to mention Atlas Can for his Apex Finalizers Introductory Guide and Alex Crisp, whose Ultimate Guide to Salesforce Integration Patterns is nothing short of a developer’s best friend!

Top DRIP (Marketing) Content

Next up is our top marketer content creator. Salesforce has so many marketing products available in their roster, it can be difficult to know where to begin. From Pardot to Marketing Cloud, choosing a single Benny winner for this category was strenuous. Eliot Harper takes the top spot for 10 Ways to Secure Salesforce Marketing Cloud. 

Not far behind were Philip Schweizer’s comprehensive Guide to Customer Data Platforms (and Salesforce CDP and Ann-Marie Khor’s practical 7 Things That Trip Up New Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins.

Top DevOps Content

2023 was a standout year for DevOps, with Hayley Coxon’s Salesforce DevOps Center: Step-by-Step Tutorial clinching first place. Holly Bracewell’s Salesforce DevOps Trends Taking 2023 by Storm and Jack McCurdy’s The Salesforce Admin Role: Rise and Resurgence also had a significant impact.

Top Career Content

At Salesforce Ben, we have one goal: to help our readers progress in their Salesforce careers. It doesn’t matter which stage you find yourself at professionally, we strive to publish valuable content for everybody in the industry to enjoy.

This year, Michael Ferguson topped this category with Salesforce Certified Technical Architect – Is It Worth the Hype? Peter Chittum followed with Diversify and Differentiate Your Technical Skills Beyond Salesforce, and Ryan Kuhlman’s Top 5 Salesforce Books for Admins to Read This Summer was a summer favorite.

Top Architect Content

This section’s winner is Gayathri Shivakumar with her comprehensive Complete Guide to Salesforce Integration Best Practices. With notable mentions for: Eduard Panin and Bhavana Singh with The Art of Salesforce Code Review and Architecting Future-Proof Code respectively.

Top Flow Content

One of our expert authors, Tim Combridge, absolutely loves Salesforce Flow. He jumps at any opportunity to learn more about the exciting new features and share his discoveries – just as he did with his Flow Cheat Sheet. We applaud his efforts and willingness to spread the knowledge with others in the community.

Stacy O’Leary’s A Flow for Every Admin and Ksawery Lisinski’s Mastering the Art of Salesforce Flow Architecture: 7 Tips to Rule the Org both provided invaluable insights.

Most Popular LinkedIn Live Event

Common Mistakes with Salesforce Architecture attracted an impressive 1,745 registrants, making it our most popular LinkedIn Live session of 2023. In second and third place we have: Mastering the Art of Salesforce Flow Architecture: Best Practices & Tips, and Introduction to Salesforce OmniStudios Crash Course.

Most Frequent Contributor

A special mention goes to our most frequent contributor, Stacy O’Leary, whose dedication and continued input have been invaluable to our community. Thanks also go to Tim Combridge and Tom Bassett for sharing so much content with us this year.

Top Article on LinkedIn

Shumon Saha wins this category with Auto-Populate Salesforce Sandboxes with Sample Records, closely followed by Stacy O’Leary’s Can ChatGPT Replace a Salesforce Admin?, and Atlas Can’s  Introduction to Dynamic Apex. 

Top Video

Our 10 Salesforce Niches video was a massive hit, offering tips and insights for aspiring Salesforce professionals. We’d also like to highlight Every Salesforce Certification and the Ultimate Guide to Every Product.

Most Popular Meme

And finally, who could forget our most popular meme of the year? The Salesforce-Barbie mashup that brought smiles and laughter to our community!

Summary

We wish we could include every single one of our contributors, but there are just too many to count!

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy end of the year, and a great beginning to 2024. The Salesforce Ben community is made up of the best of the best, and we look forward to continuing our growth and seeing what next year has in store for us.