Washington transit joins blogosphere

King County Metro Transit (Metro) has started the “KCNews” blog and the “KCNews” Twitter feed to improve communication with its riders and the media.

As Metro prepared for weekend forecasts of snow, by staffing up at bus bases and on the customer service phone lines, its communications team expanded the reach of its information to thousands of individuals and users of new media.

While the “KCNews” blog is initially being used for Metro information, it will be a source for a variety of information from all King County departments about their work on behalf of county residents. Like this weekend's Metro news, it will become one of the county's primary communications tools during an emergency, such as extreme weather or a catastrophic event.

The inaugural weekend of “KCNews” blog attracted 1,831 views/users. The blog combined with Metro's use of Twitter for the first time caused the number of “KCNews” Twitter followers to nearly double to 1,108, up from 600, last Friday. The account had 117 retweets (forwards of its posts), comments, questions and announcements by other Twitter users to an unknown number of their followers.