It has been a while since I have written for this blog. During this hiatus I have been working on a wide area network project that has been all consuming and it is budget time for us. Our Web 2.0 initiative has continued with modest growth. Two additional departments have started blogs, our web page now automatically feeds our Facebook (thank you CivicPlus for incorporating this feature in your product), we have 127 followers on Facebook , we have 56 followers on Twitter, and we have launched a YouTube channel.
The blogs have been interesting to watch develop, as both groups have put a considerable amount of thought and planning into launching them. The first department that approached me about a blog was our Drug and Alcohol department. I was given the opportunity to speak to this staff at their department retreat earlier this year. They had already started to utilize Facebook for their Youth Advisory Board. The group was enthusiastic about the opportunities to get their message out that Web 2.0 presents. Their next move was to work on a blog. They weighed the options for feeding content to the blog, would they have different authors or would they all feed ideas and research to a single author. They choose to have material authored by different authors, but to publish everything as a department. Another important point is that the blog replaces a 20 year old publication, providing a significant cost savings. Their blog, Network News, can be found at http://networknewsonline.blogspot.com/. The second blog, still in development, will be the work of our Planning department. The purpose will be to cover the County’s use of stimulus money. Originally the department was using a consultant to put this together, believing that it would be too time consuming to setup and update. However, after a short conversation, they have realized how easy it is and have moved it in-house.
Finally, I would like to thank those that have recently contacted me about using my blog posts in presentations and articles. I really appreciate the recognition.
Great news and progress Bill. It is good to see products are adding integration with sites like FB. Would love to hear more about how people are interacting with the blog. It is interesting as you get a lot more data than when you run the traditional newsletter