Learning is an every day thing. If we ever stop learning we might just as well stop breathing.

Well I learned a lot this past week. Our staff has been learning about uploading material to our website on a timely basis. We’ve created a Facebook page and we can be followed on Twitter. Now, as the old dog in this crew I have to admit some of this was a little daunting.  I do think I’ve grasped it though and Jess is doing an awesome job of administering our social networking sites.

Our website www.invermerevalleyecho.com, is getting a lot more attention too. One way of driving traffic to a site is to create a poll where people can say yea or nay on a subject. For our first week we got a respectable 20 votes. Not bad for a first run.

Knowing that Jumbo is a popular topic and hoping to increase responses to somewhere in the 100 range, we posted the question, ‘should the Jumbo Resort project be approved?’ last week.

It didn’t take long to learn that this was a hot potato (as if we didn’t already). Both sides felt that it was unfair to post such a simple question and not provide background information. We chose to leave the question as it was.

And then the fun began. Voting went viral, first by one side, then by the other. At the end of the one-week run we logged over 1,700 votes! There were votes cast at all times of day and night begging the question where did the votes come from? It seems to me they came from many different time zones. What a nice way to showcase our website to the world!

I invite each of you to come back, and to come back often. You’ll find a new story on the site most days. If you’d like to receive alerts about some of the new stories, ‘like’ our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

Something else I re-learned this week is looks do matter.  Not the ones your were born with but what you do with what you’ve got. My dog Button got her three month grooming and is once again a ‘Princess”. Not only do people react differently to her, she exhibits a different personality. So if you’re not feeling so good about yourself, go and get a haircut or a new outfit. You’ll face the world with much more confidence!