We got some great news this morning. We won three 2012 American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Adwheel Awards (note: their page hasn’t been update with this info yet)! We won for best blog, best Twitter channel and best Social Networking (e.g. Facebook/Myspace).

We took top honours among “public transportation systems with more than 20 million passenger trips annually,” which means we won top prizes among the largest public transit systems in North America. The AdWheel Awards celebrate the best in marketing and communications from APTA members. It’s a huge honour to win!

The blog has taken top honours at APTA before in 2010. TransLink has also won a handful of APTA awards in the past, but we’ve never won so many for our social media work. We won three of four social media awards up for grabs!

Having the blog recognized for a second time is wonderful. As you know, the blog would be nothing without all of you readers who contribute everyday. We can’t say enough about the Buzzer blog community!

It gives us great pride that our Twitter channel has been awarded. We are regularly asked by other organizations about how the channel is run so they can emulate some of what we do. This award is another indication that we’re onto something useful and appreciated with our customer service on Twitter. We want to give a big thanks to all of the staff on the Twitter team for doing such a great job everyday! And, like the blog, our Twitter channel would be nothing without our customers communicating with us and being so supportive of what we do on Twitter!

This is the second award for our Transit Pet Peeve Battle Facebook campaign! Earlier this summer, the campaign was awarded a 2012 IABC International Association of Business Communicators Gold Quill Award of Excellence in the Social Media category. IABC is, “a professional network of about 15,000 business communication professionals in over 80 countries.”

If you’re not familiar with this Facebook campaign, here’s a link to it and a blog post. The Transit Pet Peeve Battle was also won the Best of the Best destination within the Social Media category. This means that we beat Kraft and Memorex for the best campaign!

There’s some great work among the other winners of IABC awards this year. Check ’em out!