When I was growing up in the 1970’s, there was a local talk show on KIUP radio called “Coffee with Johnny”. Johnny was a woman who was a bit of a local celebrity, having been on the air since the 1950’s, and 5 days a week she would interview other locals about what was new and eventful in our small corner of the world.
Durango had “Coffee with Johnny”. Workers’ comp now has “Out Front with Mark and Kimberly”. The medium and location have changed, but the concept is about the same. News and a look forward offered in a friendly talk show format. “Out Front” is the work of Mark Walls of Safety National, and Kimberly George of Sedgwick. While they have been producing some interesting webcasts about new trends in workers’ comp, it is their Twitter Project that is the main topic of todays post.
Believing that Twitter is an excellent platform for sharing news and information, they have set out to help educate those less “Twitterphied” and help them understand and use the platform. According to their website, the Twitter Project is:
To help out those new to Twitter and to enhance the social media experience for the risk management and workers' compensation community, @kimberlyanngeo and @wcanalysisgroup created the @OutFrontIdeas #workerscomp Twitter Project. Our recommendations will lower the burden of entry to Twitter and decrease the learning curve for the industry.
The site goes on to explain the purpose of hashtags and how they can be used, as well as listing the largest collection available of Twitter profiles related to the industry. The page is a great resource for anyone who has questions about Twitter, but was afraid to ask. You can check it out here.
Twitter has been an excellent tool for my company. Our profile, @wcconnections, has over 3,200 followers which represents one of the largest groups for a company in the workers’ comp sector. Personally, however, I have been slower to adopt the medium. I do have a personal profile, @WorkCompKing, which I’ve never really used. It currently has a history of 8 tweets and 6 followers. I suppose I should dust it off and start tweeting my inner thoughts, albeit in 140 character increments.
At any rate, check out Mark and Kimberly’s Twitter Project. It has good information, and with your new found knowledge you can join us at 2PM eastern today for our second ever “Twitterchat”, discussing the recently concluded RIMS Conference. Mark and I will be joined by Tom Kerr and Stephen Sullivan, and we expect it to be an animated chat.
See you in the Twittersphere.
(PS – once you learn your way around, be sure to follow @WorkCompKing. That thing could start up at any time. Wouldn’t want to miss it 🙂 )