I discuss a lot of personal issues here in my blog. However, it is not that often, outside of an upcoming webinar or Best Blog contest, that I talk about this website, its products or its people. But once in a while a confluence of efforts results in something that truly pleases me, and doggone it, just like a proud parent I have to brag just a little. So here it is.
When it came to prompt coverage of last week’s Annual WCRI Conference in Boston, I think as a news service WorkersCompensation.com crushed it.
I wrote last week that I had been prevented from attending the conference, as my flights were but a couple of the 5,000 cancelled by last week’s latest and greatest nor’easter. I was pretty unhappy about that; I enjoy this conference and was looking forward to writing about it a bit. Still, we did have a good presence in attendance. WorkersCompensation.com Columnist Peter Rousmaniere was there, and reporter Liz Carey made the trek by dogsled to guarantee her arrival.
We launched our expanded news center just over one year ago, on Monday, March 13, 2017. Up until that time our news area consisted primarily of press releases, state announcements, republished blogs and this blog, From Bob’s Cluttered Desk. The expanded news service added 3 important areas; Featured News, which consists of all original content by a staff of WorkersCompensation.com writers, Experts View, content home for Rousmaniere and other industry thought leaders, and, later, the CompNewsNetwork Pulse Poll. Our goal was to be the most comprehensive free resource for current news in the workers’ compensation industry.
Our emphasis has been more toward what our Senior Editor, Dara Barney, refers to as “evergreen” content; timely news stories that have useful application far beyond a regulatory hearing or statutory update. Still, for topical events such as WCRI, we have worked to make sure that current news is actually current. We’ve had some bumps along the way, but our original offerings and timely content continue to evolve and strengthen. And this week at WCRI was a demonstration that our comprehensive information effort has the ability to get out front and lead.
Ms. Carey and Ms. Barney did (IMHO) an outstanding job of getting timely and useful news content out during the WCRI Conference. Additionally, Safety National’s Conference Chronicles blog, which is automatically published in our Blogwire, did a great job of covering the sessions. Between our original content and the Conference Chronicles blog, WorkersCompensation.com has already featured 12 articles on this important conference. Looking at other key workers’ comp news services as of this writing (Sunday night), I don’t see a single WCRI story. Anywhere.
And that, for us, is crushing it.
There were some blogs that did a good job of covering the event in a timely fashion. Joe Paduda was his ever-reliable self and one such example at ManagedCareMatters.com. Tom Lynch at WorkersCompInsider.com and James Moore of the CutCompCosts.com blog were others. But for unbiased news outlets, so far, we were it.
And that pleases me to no end.
Don’t get me wrong. Our goal is not to compete with other workers’ comp news services. They fit well in the spaces they occupy. I respect those sites and have good relations with them. Our desire was to satisfy an unfilled niche. As an information service provider for the workers’ comp industry, having timely and unique content was a must, and offering quality original writing in a cost-free environment was something that we believed was needed in the industry. And with over 2,000 new subscribers in under a year, I think we were right in our assessment.
Thank you for indulging me this Monday morning. I’ve always been proud of our operation and the people I have the privilege to work with. I just don’t often get (or take) the opportunity to write about the work they do. So when that work “crushes it,” I wanted to make sure I didn’t let that pass unnoticed.