It’s hard to dispute that 2011 was the year of social media. The average number of tweets on Twitter rose from 50 million to 140 million. LinkedIn set records as the largest Internet IPO since Google. And over half of Facebook’s 845 million users logged in daily. Some headlines even claimed that “email is dead.”

But the truth is, even in the midst of a social media revolution, email communications is more important than ever. In the private sector, email marketing continues to provide a relatively high ROI, with an expected $44.25 average return on a dollar by the end of 2011 according to the Direct Marketing Association. A majority of companies expect to increase their email marketing budget this year, and for many companies, email delivers more traffic to their website than any other traffic source. And while you don’t work in the private sector, your goal to communicate your organization’s message is similar.

Email remains and will remain popular as a source to receive information that’s easily searchable. Plus, email works across platforms – a user on Gmail can send a message to Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. In contrast, content on social media may remain more isolated with no universal sharing or searching.

For government organizations, the smart response to the changing face of digital communications is to recognize that while social media will not result in the “death of email” anytime soon, it has certainly changed the way people use it. Your organization must adapt to the new ways your audience seeks out, consumes and responds to online content. Key trends in email and social media that will impact your organization’s communications efforts include:

• Social media users are significantly more likely to frequently check their email. What are you doing to encourage your social media followers to subscribe to your emails, and vice versa? How are you targeting your communications for this group of users?
• Younger users are leaving web-based email but simultaneously driving the growth of email usage on smart phones and tablets. How are you updating your communications to reach mobile users?
• Email will continue to be popular with users who appreciate predictability and reliability. Consider what your audience expects from your communication outreach campaigns and preserve the elements that work.

What is your government organization trying to accomplish with their digital communications efforts? Reach a wider audience? Keep citizens informed? Consider the topics that will spark interest with your readers, how readers will be most likely to respond, and what delivery method will provide messages that are both relevant and timely. Will your message be best received through email, social media or both?

For more information on why government organizations should consider an integrated email and social media marketing approach, check out all of GovDelivery’s blog posts on email communication and social media.

What is your agency doing to strengthen email communications in the social media era?

GovDelivery just released a new guide – Public Sector Digital Communication Management Best Practices: The Critical Role of Email – that details tips and strategies culled from more than 500 state, local, federal and international government organizations. Government Technology recently ran an article with some strategies from this guide.

With all the buzz around social media, why is this guide focused on email? The PEW Internet and American Life Project’s recent survey of internet usage showed that 92% of adult online users using email. It’s clear that email is the central hub of online communication. With this knowledge, it’s critical for government communicators to incorporate email as the cornerstone of any communication strategy or outreach effort.

The guide provides public sector employees with more than 20 pages of comprehensive best practices around digital communications and email, and it’s broken up into three main sections:

• Effectiveness: building the largest possible base by leveraging existing contact lists and promoting sign-up options across organization websites and partners
• Efficiency: streamlining and automating complex communications across email, SMS/text messaging and social media
• Engagement: driving users to online and offline activities that create the most value for the public and the organization, ultimately creating mission value and changing behaviors that will create an immediate or, in some cases, lasting impact

The guide showcases examples from all levels of government – from Louisville, KY to King County, WA to the White House and Driving Standards Agency (UK) – to give you a clear idea of how your peers are implementing some of these digital communication best practices.

Here are a few of the tips that I found most interesting:

Effectiveness: Use Social Media to Get More Subscribers and Launch Email Outreach into Social Media

This may seem counter-intuitive but how many citizens know that your city, county, state, department or federal agency has a Facebook page? Or a Twitter feed? Or a blog? By leveraging social media to promote your email subscription services and vice versa, you reach a substantially larger audience.

Remember, it isn’t about communicating through a single channel. You want to push your information out as broadly as possible to reach as many people as you can.

Efficiency: Automatically Send Email Content to SMS and Social Media Channels

With the brilliance of technology these days, you should be able to automate your communication channels so you aren’t manually posting in several different channels.

This means that you should look for a platform or solution that allows you to create an email update and have that update post directly to social media channels or sent via SMS/text message at the same time.

Engagement: Content Best Practices – Provide a Clear Call to Action

In the business-to-consumer or business-to-business world, it’s easy to have a clear call to action: “buy this new product” or “download this coupon.” In the public sector, this hasn’t been as widely followed. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be. This is definitely one of those best practices from the private sector that the public sector can adapt and adopt.

When a reader takes an action from your email newsletter, that is true engagement. And for the public sector, engagement helps drive mission value. For example, in the Midwest, an email update that alerts citizens to snow emergencies and urges them to move their cars off the street so their cars don’t get towed provides a clear call to action that benefits everyone and provides immediate and long-lasting value.

These are just three tips from the guide that I found useful. For more tips, download the full guide at http://direct.govdelivery.com/email-guide.

Does your government organization utilize any communication strategies or tactics that have been highly successful? I’d love to hear them. Share your best practices in the comments.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unveiled an updated version of their smartphone application, IRS2Go, in early February. The app was “designed to provide taxpayers easier access to practical tools and information,” and the update included an application programming interface (API) integration with GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM), which allowed app users to sign up to receive Tax Tips via email from the IRS.

As this was GovDelivery’s first mobile app integration using our API, I wanted to find out if the app would extend the IRS’s reach with regard to its email subscriptions. With some help from our seriously awesome team here at GovDelivery, we looked at the IRS’s DCM data to see if their app and integration to GovDelivery DCM positively impacted their subscriptions to the Tax Tips topic.

In the first month after the release of the updated app, the IRS received a total of more than 14,868 subscriptions to the Tax Tips topic, and 72% of those new subscriptions from the mobile app! As a point of comparison, subscriptions to the same topic last year during the same one-month period only totaled 4,390.

What can you learn from the IRS’s success?

1) Email isn’t dead. It’s just being accessed a different way. With the growth of social media and text messaging, there are inevitable stories of how email as a communication channel is dying. This is simply untrue, and the IRS’s data is a great proof point. In fact, a recent study on digital trends shows that the increase of smartphones users has led to an increase in mobile email (versus accessing email via a computer): “The mobile email audience for both age segments [12 – 17 and 18 – 24] saw double-digit growth in the past year, with mobile email users age 18-24 climbing 32 percent.” This same report found that “41 percent of mobile users accessed email from their device,” compared to a mere 35.3 percent using their phone for social networking.

Tip: Make sure that your emails are accessible and can be easily read via a smartphone or other mobile device (i.e. a tablet).

2) Give the public information they want. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recent report, The State of Mobile America, shows how apps are dominating mobile phone usage in America. But it also dives deeper, showing that 74% of smartphone owners use apps that provide direct connections to “news, weather, sports or stock updates.”

Tip: You’ve got information that is essential and value-driven for citizens, from recycling updates to severe weather alerts. People want information that’s trusted and can enhance their lives. Offer those kinds of updates, and you’ll see your email subscriptions increase greatly.

3) Timing definitely helps. Do you think the IRS simply updated their app in early February because it was ready? My guess is no. It was a highly choreographed release, meant to coincide with tax season in the US. And that helped – a lot. The IRS knew that this was a particularly busy period for the agency. They create and have access to the most up-to-date tax information, and instead of relying solely on third-parties to disseminate that information to the public, the IRS leveraged the timing of their release and APIs to integrate their app with GovDelivery DCM to gain more subscribers.

Tip: You probably know the busy periods for your government organization or agency. Leverage that knowledge to run a campaign to increase subscribers for specific topics. If you award grants, why not use an overlay or a prominent sign-up box on your website to a “grants tips” topic just before your agency announces new grants that are available? If your department is responsible for property tax information, take advantage of the periods in the year where you deliver property tax statements to drive email subscriptions to a “property tax information” topic.

4) APIs are the future. Last week, Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel tweeted “‘API’ #thereIsaidit #yesitisthesecretsauce #gov20” in response to a Fierce Government article that “speculated APIs would play a major part in the forthcoming digital strategy.” (Source: NextGov) If you want to jump on the API bandwagon, now is a brilliant time to do so. VanRoekel’s new government digital strategy is due out this month, and it will undoubtedly highlight the processes government agencies and organizations can automate to drive efficiency and effectiveness.

Tip: If you’re a GovDelivery customer and you want to find out how you can use our APIs to automate some manual processes, give us a call or email us at info@govdelivery.com. Many of our customers are already using our APIs to automate bulletin sending, subscriber management and other manual processes.

Has your agency or government organization launched a mobile app? Do you have an integration in place to capture email so you can continue to communicate with the public beyond the app? We’d love to hear if you’re having success in the mobile arena. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section!

Email is one of the most powerful mediums of communication in our technology-driven world. It is cheap; it is effective; and it almost instantaneously broadcasts to millions of clients. Recent studies have shown that, while social media communications is increasing significantly, “email continues to deliver the largest share of both impressions and visitors.” But, if people don’t read your email, they won’t get the message you’re trying to send. This means it’s imperative for government organizations to carefully craft messages in order to communicate effectively with the public.

Crafting an engaging email requires some basic tenets of good writing: having a reason to write, successfully communicating that reason and eliciting a response (i.e. creating engagement) from your audience. Here are some tips on how to do that:

1) Have a reason to write

Why do you read anything? A good email, like a good book, needs to have interesting and relevant content. After all, if readers of your email are engaged and interested, they are more likely to pass on this information, respond to it, or interact with it in other ways.

Is your message compelling or, at least, entertaining?

Remember that subscribers are, first and foremost, human beings. They are receptive and respond to what they find appealing. Your message content determines if your subscribers read and respond or ignore your message. You can make a difference here. Your subscribers have already taken the first step of opting-in to receive messages from you, trusting that you have relevant information to share with them that is important, but you can help them take the next step of interacting with your content by providing information that is relevant or attractive. For example, a look at the 2011 State & Local Communications Report shows the kinds of topics that gained the most subscribers in 2011 and clearly demonstrates what types of information the public is looking for:

2) Communicate clearly

Having a reason to reach out to your subscribers and sending relevant information is great, but you also need to communicate clearly in your message. Part of communicating clearly is being personable and conversational. Your readers need to know that they are receiving communications from people, not automatons. There are a couple of key tips to help you communicate clearly and ensure that your subscribers are paying attention to your messages: :

Be recognizable

People are most likely to open an email from someone they know and trust. In today’s world, fear of viruses, scams and spam have made email users savvier about the information that gets filtered out. People must be able to identify the message as one to keep, which is only possible if the email comes from a source that is easily verified and trusted. Government organizations will have official .gov email addresses, but your agency should also take steps to ensure that emails have an equally email persona (e.g. “City of Minneapolis” is more trustworthy than “Judy Wellsworth”).

Personalize your message

Next, be creative and informative with your subject line. Subject lines can motivate a reader to open the message. Think about what’s important to your target audience or the public today. What do they connect with, what are their concerns, what do they want to learn more about? This can help you determine your content and shape your subject lines. For example, GovDelivery’s 2011 Federal Digital Communications Report shows that the most-shared government communications and subject lines were ones that connected easily with citizens – alerts that impacted daily life, such as the IRS increasing mileage reimbursement rates and information on a more national scale, such as the official moment of silence time in remembrance of September 11^th.

Next, although it may seem like a small thing, personalize the email to the individual recipient. This can make a big difference in getting someone to read your message. Wouldn’t you want to read a message that was addressed to you, with your name at the beginning of the email, rather than a generic message sent to “Resident?” It is simple and easy to do, with the right personalization macros, and the payoff can be huge!

3) Elicit a (positive) response in your target audience

Just like a book, if you get the reader to open your email, then don’t disappoint them. Some tips on how to avoid disappointment are:

Identify the type of response desired

Do you want your users to use the information you provide, forward your message or take action in some way? Once you have decided how you want your users to interact with the information you are providing, ensure that they have a way to do so, e.g. at the end of your email, offer a space where they can provide feedback or a way to easily forward your message to their family and friends.

Give them a reason to read your next communication

It is important for government organizations to be timely with their emails, sending out pertinent information about upcoming opportunities with enough time for users to plan for them or about current topics of interest while they are still current. For instance, USA.gov recently blogged an answer to a question from a citizen, titled “Why the Price of Gas is Rising.” With recent news stories of gas in Florida reaching $6 a gallon, this email was timely, gave the public information that was relevant and engaging. This means, the next time USA.gov sends out an email, citizens have a good reason to open the next email. Give the public something extra and current.

As a government organization, you often are at the forefront of news and information. Harness your direct connections to information to provide timely updates to the public, and your government organization will accelerate its growth in reaching the public through email as well as interact and engage with them in a much more personalized manner. You’re already working hard at growing your subscriber base – now maximize your impact by implementing some of these simple tips.

On Sunday, February 19, the Government Procurement Service officially launched CloudStore for UK central government and local authorities.

The UK government first proposed the G-Cloud initiative over two years ago with the goal of bringing a wider range of cloud suppliers to the public sector while increasing the flexibility of procurement contracts. The programme wanted to create an online store that public sector organisations could use to find services and supplies without the restriction of lengthy contracts and complex procurement. The system is being modelled after application online stores, similar to the Apple Mac App Store and Android Market, and is currently offering more than 1,700 services from 258 suppliers.

The G-Cloud initiative focuses on the need for public sector organisations to adopt more cloud-based IT services and supplies, which costs less and can be deployed quickly, versus traditional IT hardware and software. To this end, CloudStore is organized by four service genres:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Platform as a service (PaaS)
• Software as a service (SaaS)
• Specialist cloud services

Since last week, UK media have been buzzing with news on the G-Cloud initiative, especially as reports from the Cabinet Office relayed information on the launch of CloudStore. So, what’s the big deal?

The truth is that, while the private sector has long seen the benefits of cloud computing, government is still slow on the uptake. A government employee based in Canada shared his frustrations with the lack of technological advancement in government with a recent blog post on GovLoop. He writes: “In 2012, there are many public servants whose computers simply run Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. In many cases we are still running the 2003 version of each piece of software.  A majority of the work of the public service is still done by traditional desktop or local server based software and e-mail clients. For much of the public service, the reality faced is one where work is conducted on 5-6 year old desktop tower computers in localized applications using outdated desktop software that stifle collaboration, create version control problems and ultimately cost the government more money to run and administer.” While our personal lives are dominated by mobile technology (iPads and tablets) and cloud-based software like Gmail, those who work in government find that their professional technology environment is simply outdated.

UK Government agencies and organisations are under more pressure than ever to deliver services under increasingly reduced budgets. Moving IT infrastructure and software to cloud-based suppliers can have a significant impact. In fact, in the Guardian’s latest article on the G-Cloud the newspaper quotes Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, as saying: “By creating a competitive marketplace, the G-Cloud framework will constantly encourage service providers to improve the quality and value of the solutions they offer, reducing the cost to taxpayers and suppliers. And it gives SME suppliers of niche products the same opportunities as bigger organisations supplying services.”

The G-Cloud initiative outlined the UK Government’s belief that cloud computing is a necessary next step in government IT evolution. But the launch of CloudStore provides the framework and foundation for central government and local authorities to begin to reap the benefits of cloud-based software and services. It is a giant step in the right direction.

As a cloud-based, government-focused communications software supplier, GovDelivery has always felt strongly that cloud computing can increase government efficiency while reducing cost. Thus, it was an honor to be included as a supplier in the G-Cloud catalogue with the launch of CloudStore. With over 500 government clients using GovDelivery software to manage their communications, we witness how impactful cloud-based software is on a daily basis with government organisations. Here are two UK government organisations that are already benefiting from cloud-based software:

Driving Standards Agency (DSA) has seen enormous success in using Digital Communication Management, a cloud-based solution that is scalable, easily implemented and updates regularly to take advantage of emerging technologies. DSA uses this solution to connect to nearly 47,000 citizens currently. For instance, DSA uses this tool to integrate their communications with the most popular social media networks. As other social media channels develop or gain prominence, this cloud-based software can update to include those channels without disrupting DSA’s regular usage. Read their story online.

Norfolk County Council is using the same solution to help manage their digital communications efforts and is now reaching nearly 35,000 residents and stakeholders directly. Norfolk County Council also predicted a savings of £20,000 per annum by publishing electronic committee reports to County Councilors instead of providing printed reports. Norfolk County Council is not only reducing communications costs but also delivering these committee reports more quickly through email, increasing the local authority’s efficiency. Read the story online.

What are your thoughts on the G-Cloud framework and the launch of CloudStore? Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

Steve Ressler, founder of Govloop, the social network for government employees and professionals, sat down with us to talk about some social media successes in government and how you might be able to replicate that success.

Hear what he has to say about government agencies and departments using social media today:

Have you seen any social media success stories within government? Share your story and thoughts below!

HootSuite, which gained prominence as a Twitter dashboard/management tool, launched a new App Directory last month. HootSuite had already added social media channel integration as they grew; their dashboard currently allows you to manage your Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace, Foursquare and mixi pages/accounts (along with Twitter). And now they’ve expanded their reach again with this App Directory.

According to HootSuite, the App Directory is “is a collection of extensions and applications that HootSuite users can add to their dashboard to create a customized experience. These apps are built and maintained by 3rd party developers and companies expanding the social content ecosystem of the HootSuite dashboard.”

The App Directory launched in early November to only Pro and Enterprise Users with YouTube, Flickr, tumblr, and Get Satisfaction apps. The App Directory just recently launched to regular HootSuite users.

Here’s what you can do with these new apps:

• YouTube & Flickr: allows you to search for, view or upload your videos or images/photos, share them to other social networks, and view/add comments within the HootSuite dashboard
• Tumblr: allows you to post to your Tumblr, view your Tumblelogs & the logs you follow, and share your Tumblr posts to other social networks within the HootSuite dashboard
• Get Satisfaction: allows you to view topics in your communities, filter topics, share topics to social networks, and view/add replies to topics within the HootSuite dashboard

Clearly, HootSuite understands the need to integrate with other social media channels, and they’re giving outside developers the chance to expand their reach by creating these apps instead of relying solely on their own development team. This not only benefits HootSuite with expanded reach and integration but it boosts usage of the other social channels.

On HootSuite’s App Directory page, they also list upcoming apps: Disqus, SlideShare, posterous, Salesforce Chatter, and more.

HootSuite is often seen as a management tool with their dashboard, but I think it’s most effective as a social media listening tool.

You can set up a “stream” with predefined feeds (for Twitter, you can select from your Home Feed, Mentions, Retweets, etc.; for Facebook, you can select from your News Feed, Status Updates, Wall Posts, etc.).

Or you can set up a stream for searches, including searches with positive and negative connotations.

You can also define specific keywords for a specific stream. This is most useful when you have hashtags that you want to follow closely. For instance, I have have a keyword stream for “#opengov #egov #gov20” to help me follow the conversations around these important issues. And finally, you can create public and private lists of Twitter followers that you want to watch listen to more closely. This helps you cut through the clutter of hundreds and thousands of posts per minute on Twitter, so you can listen and respond to the conversations/tweets/issues that are most relevant to you.

In my opinion, these listening capabilities are the key to HootSuite’s success. It was the right move to expand this capability to more social media channels, especially as YouTube continues to be one of the world’s largest search engines.

Have you used or are you using HootSuite? What do you think of the expanded integration?

There are also alternatives to HootSuite, such as TweetDeck. If you’re looking for a social listening tool, you may want to check out either of these options.

Scott Burns, CEO and co-Founder of GovDelivery, provides insights for how government agencies can leverage the power of social media.

Watch the video to hear Scott discuss social media as part of an integrated communications strategy that incorporates email and text messaging/SMS to fight through the “noise.”

What do you think? How did your government agency or organization start using social media? Have you had success? Share your story with us in the comments below!

Part three in our David Kirkpatrick video series! Did you catch our first and second videos?

David Kirkpatrick sits down with GovDelivery to discuss the Facebook Phenomenon and why Facebook  now dominates social networking.

He also shares his thoughts on how government can leverage the power of Facebook to help improve citizen satisfaction.

Watch the video below:

Do you think his view on government organizations and agencies leveraging Facebook is possible? Are you trying to do this already in your government organization? How successful have you been?

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

A couple weeks ago, I attended the first Minnesota CityCamp, hosted by e-democracy.org and the Public and Non-Profit Leadership Center at the Humphrey School (University of Minnesota).

With more than 150 attendees, this unconference’s theme – “Community 2.0” – was clearly one that spoke to people. Though the unconference was held in Minneapolis, some participants traveled four hours or so to attend. The attendees were also from various industries: government, non-profit, education, software development, consulting, etc.:

I had never been to a CityCamp before, so if you haven’t been to one either, the structure is interesting. Instead of a typical conference structure – with a keynote speaker and presentation sessions – CityCamp breaks that mold by crowdsourcing session ideas via the web which are then turned into break-out discussion sessions.

There were about 20 different breakout sessions throughout the day (4 to 5 concurrent sessions in 40-minute sections.) Session topics ranged from Code for America to hackers & libraries (I’m not really sure what that one was truly about) to revamping or visualizing the web with new technologies, but the main theme that stood out to me was social media.

Social media was simply inescapable at CityCamp MN. The first session I went to (which I think was the best session by far) discussed using social media for social change. It’s the age-old marketing question: “how can I get someone to do something (i.e. take action, sign a petition, recycle, vote, etc.)?” My answer: make your content memorable and people will connect with you. Make your call to action simple, and people will take action. Another session I dropped in on focused on leveraging social media to help organize and promote community arts more successfully. In fact, one of my colleagues who participated in a policy-making and data session commented that social media dominated that conversation, too.

In one session, an attendee asked a question that stood out to me: “How do I learn how to use social media tools if I don’t have a teenager at home?” In another social media session, we spent 40 minutes discussing tools to help measure social media ROI but at the heart of the discussion was the question, “What social media success even mean or look like?”

These interactions reminded me of a story I saw last week: Business Insider reported that AOL still had 3.5 million dial-up subscribers in the US. Yes, you read that right: dial-up.

To me, each of these examples reminds me that there are literally millions of people who aren’t yet part of the ever-changing “digital” age and who don’t know how to leverage social media. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to; CityCamp MN showed me that there was a clear thirst for this information. But sometimes we talk about social media success before we talk about the basics of how and where to start (especially if there isn’t a teenager willing to help.)

The best way I’ve learned to navigate social media channels – and the way teenagers today learn – is simply by doing. This may not be plausible in your government job – you probably shouldn’t create a Facebook page for your agency without knowing how Facebook works – but you can start at home. Create your own Facebook page or Twitter account or YouTube channel if you haven’t already. Start connecting with your friends and family and simply poke around. (My one caveat is you shouldn’t put anything out on the web that you don’t want shared with everyone. There is no recalling a message you send on Facebook. I learned that the hard way!) One of the attendees at CityCamp MN talked about “failing fast” with social media, and I couldn’t agree more. Once you start using social media, you’ll understand what works and what doesn’t fairly quickly – and then you can leverage that knowledge to determine what would work for your agency and what might not.

If diving into the deep end seems a bit scary, there are lots of resources out there: Mashable, GovLoop, Social Media Today. These sites are full of ideas, have tons of articles on the top 10 things you should know, and people willing to help you.

Want a little more? Watch this video from CityCamp MN of GovDelivery’s CEO, Scott Burns, talking about social media as part of an integrated, cost-effective digital communications strategy:

Have you attended a CityCamp before? How was your experience? Share your thoughts in the comments!

For a full list of the agenda, sessions, and other key documents/links, visit CityCampMN’s website.