Employees collaborate on blog

HOUSTON - Active American Mobility and Medical Supply's blog used to be a needle in a virtual haystack, but not anymore.

A year ago, if you typed "complex rehab Houston" into Google, you'd have to click through dozens of pages of results before finding http://complexrehab.blogspot.com. Now, it's on the first page.

"We've become very diligent about when we post blogs--definitely once a month, but we're trying to do it every 10 days, when Google crawls Web sites--because it helps with the rankings," said Patrick Boardman, director of business development. "We've driven more traffic to our site."

The blog started in Active American Mobility's complex rehab department, which wanted an outlet for educating not only referral sources like PTs and OTs but also the general public.

Now everyone chips in, including the company's DME department. A recent blog came from that department: "Bathroom Hazards and Potential Remedies" by Gary Townsend.

"We're a collaborative company," Boardman said. "We challenged all of our employees to come up with things that would educate the public and write blogs about them. They also present the blogs during sales meetings, so, internally, we all learn from it."

The blogs also discuss legal issues and personal matters ("Business or Pleasure," a blog about Jeff McDaniel's experience growing up with an older brother with spina bifida and how that has affected his approach to being an ATP).

"We get comments from people saying the blogs are helpful," Boardman said. "We forward those to everyone in the company. Everyone gets excited about it."