Report to Our Readers – July, 2009

Back in April of this year, we launched the International HR Forum Blog.  It was a bit of an experiment.  None of us were experienced bloggers.  Some of the authors knew each other and had worked together; some met for the first time virtually during our initial conference call.  But we were all very excited to try a bit of the latest technology to reach out to the broad HR community and share our expertise and passion for international human resources.

After just over three months, we could not be more pleased with the results!

The Forum is catching on!
The Forum has had over 12,000 page views since its inception.  We are averaging between 100 and 200 page views a day, and over 3,000 page views a month.  We are very pleased with these results.

We Are A Global Community
The most fascinating aspect of being involved with this blog has been the diverse community that participates.  You can see this for yourself – just check the different flags in the Feedjit box, or for a real treat, click on the box and look at a whole page of feed statistics.  Depending on the time of day, you will see an array of flags from every region in the world.  In the morning here on the east coast of the US, I notice the visitors from Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  During my evening hours, the Asia/Australia contingent is there.  And during the workday, many of my colleagues in the Americas check in.

It’s impossible to list all of the countries from which we’ve had visits – the posting would be too long.  But as I write this post, there have been visits from at least 15 different countries in the last several hours.  We’ve had visitors from developed countries in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc.  But equally, we have had excellent participation from developing markets such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Gabon, Nigeria, India, Brazil and more – even Mongolia!

It’s this diversity that makes the blog experience  so rewarding for us.  To know that we are reaching an audience from so many places, large and small, is more than we ever expected.

We Have Almost 125 Subscribers!
In the short time we’ve been writing, almost 125 people have subscribed to the blog, automatically receiving our posts via email or their RSS reader of choice.  This is especially gratifying to us, since it sends us a message, as authors, that you value our content, and want to be kept informed about it.

Our Connections
Many of you follow our content via postings through various LinkedIn Groups.  We have arranged with several of the group owners to automatically post our blogs as news articles in the groups.  Similarly, several other HR and non-HR related sites have picked up our feed for the benefit of their readers; we’ve listed these partners in the Other Resources section on the blog.  If you are a group owner or blogger and would like to feature our feed, just let us know.

Going Forward – Get Involved!
The experiment that has evolved into the International HR Forum is a success, and we are committed to continue blogging to provide you, our readers, with the most interesting and relevant content.  You can help us.

Blogging is just another type of communication, and it’s most rewarding when it’s two-way.  We invite you – encourage you – to make use of the comments feature on the blog.  Let us know what you think, if you agree or disagree, if you think our content is terrific, and how we can improve it.  Offer suggestions for topics, guest bloggers, great resources to share, etc.  The more active the community of readers becomes, the more useful the blog will become as well.

Help us spread the word – share the blog with your friends and colleagues. You can just tell them, or use the Share link to send them a link to one of our postings.

Thanks
Finally, on behalf of all of the authors, we would like to express a special thank you to each of our readers, for supporting this initiative.  Without you, we would not exist.  And because of you, we are thriving.