Bulletin Board Blogging

When I started my own Blog, I had another in mind. Long before I saw a reference to it in Hugh Hewitt's book Blog, I intended to start an employee newsletter Blog. An electronic extention of the cork bulletin boards we keep in the break rooms. A newsletter that has no schedule, no deadlines and allows information to be disseminated when it is most timely.

We are a month into this Blogging project, and it is starting to grow beyond my expectations. Ours is a manufacturing company, which means that not every person works with access to e-mail. Our company is still small so a person can still reach everyone on a one on one basis, but it is getting harder.

In the first month, There have been the simple posts, such as company picnic date, job openings and new hires. I have been able to address issues of policy and spread information that helps employees with the utilization of their benefits. I have now begun to move key policies, such as our Ethics Policy, up to the Blog creating a permanent link area so that employees will be able to find these easily.

Last week I added Bloglet to the page so that employees could add their e-mail addresses to a mail list for notification of new posts. The addition of Bloglet was both timely and useful. Sometimes you just simply get lucky. When I originally announced the Blog, I warned everyone that this is where they would get their news regarding plant closings for weather or other events, and God blessed us with a spring blizzard on Sunday. As I guessed when I came to the site meter on Sunday evening, the site had done more than weeks worth of its average traffic that afternoon, and Bloglet subscriptions had gone from three to 13. So I gave people what they were looking for, information they could plan by. Much to the disappointment of some, there was no day off, but you can't have everything.

There is still much work to do. To my satisfaction, many of the early Bloglet subscriptions were supervisors and managers. Although I have invited everyone in the company to submit posts to the Blog through me, I have yet to have any volunteers. The time has probably come for me to help some folks with their volunteering. The trick as always will be to try and make it fun.