Digital | Reach The Public

Email Communications for Government in the Era of Social Media

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?

Inspiration for blog post from “Why Social Shouldn’t Scare Email Marketers“.

communications, content, digital, email, Facebook, Gov 2.0, government, social media, Twitter

Digital Communication Best Practices Guide Now Available

May 10th, 2012 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in E-Government | Email Communication | Government 2.0 - (1 Comments)

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.

communications, content, digital, efficiency, email, engagement, government, outreach

Top 7 Ways to Engage Event Participants Online & Offline

April 26th, 2012 | Posted by GovDelivery in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

If you’ve coordinated an event, you know the typical challenges. What are the topics you’ll cover? How do you keep participants informed and involved before and after the event? How do you increase participation? How do you build momentum for an event that’s months away?

With restrained budgets and more pressure to justify attending an event, the criteria for a successful event is higher now than ever before. You not only need to meet registration numbers but you also need to boost engagement and create a community for event organizers and attendees, especially when participants are geographically dispersed. With new technologies, this helps strengthen the collaboration and knowledge-sharing that occurs at the actual event and encourages the same collaboration in an online space.

Here are some tips to help you engage your stakeholders before and after the main event:

1) Know what participants want: Determining event content can be a challenge in terms of hitting the mark with your participants. So why not open up a discussion forum and let people share their thoughts and ideas for content before the event is held? There are a number of online tools that will allow you to collaborate with registrants around sessions and topics.

2) Make it easy for participants to “own” the event: Gather feedback from participants that lets them feel they are helping to contribute meaningful direction or content for the event. Also, give participants the opportunity to invite friends or colleagues that they believe might be interested. Many times, people are eager to be involved, but time limitations prohibit them from fully participating. Offer an easy way for participants to check in on the newest event updates or online conversations when it’s convenient for them. This will help participants feel involved and, in turn, see your event as successful.

3) Send lots of reminders: Amazingly, people sign up to attend events and then either forget or have something else come up last minute that they might be interested in. If you send frequent reminders — letting people know about new speakers, downloadable materials prior to the event, and other information – it helps boost your overall attendance.

4) Make it easy for participants to engage — however they want: Let people contribute on a level that’s meaningful to them, either by giving them the option of uploading photos, videos or even letting them share “My event experience” diary entries on a common site. Also, the easier all of this is, the more likely people will participate.

5) Leverage one event to help you with other events: Maybe you’re planning for one yearly event, but have other activities or events that are related. An event collaboration tool will allow you to export email addresses of attendees so they can be invited to related events and activities.

6) Involve everyone in the community early on: Gathering feedback from interested parties early in the event planning process helps boost attendance and let participants feel that they’re playing an active role.

7) Utilize social media: You need to not only work close through traditional communication channels, but also through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to engage with your participants.

At the end of the day, communication is key. As with any program or initiative you have, the success of your event is based on the communication, and inviting interested stakeholders to join an online community prior to the event is just one way to keep communication lines open and lively. No matter tools what you use to communicate with your event participants, one of your goals for event success should be driving online and offline engagement that drive real value for your stakeholders.

What do you think? Do you have any tips or experience for engaging participants more deeply in events?

Also, if you’re interested in learning more about how GovDelivery can help you be more collaborative, give us a call or email us at info@govdelivery.com.

collaboration, communication, digital, email, engagement, events, social media

Free Twitter Guide!

April 13th, 2012 | Posted by Mike Bernard for GovDelivery in Social Media - (0 Comments)

Recently, Twitter released a very nice 20 page guide for using Twitter for small business. While the title references small business, the tips they give are completely relevant for government.

Twitter breaks their guide up into 3 chapters:

Get started
Engage your audience
Amplify your impact

In the “Get Started” section they provide a great primer on how to use Twitter. This includes a set of definitions so you can learn the Twitter lingo. So, if you don’t know what a “hashtag” or “retweet” is, you can look to this section for help. This section also includes best practices for setting up and optimizing your profile so people can easily find and begin interacting with you.

In the “Engage your audience” section, Twitter provides some great tips for interaction with your audience. They suggest:

Following people and learn from how others use Twitter.
Be yourself – develop your own voice and don’t be afraid to communicate as you would talk face-to-face with someone.
Give them something more – don’t forget pictures and links to great content you discover.
Respond to people who contact you.
Tweet often – maybe even set up a schedule for the types of content you will Tweet on specific days.
Share, share, share – your tweets don’t always have to be about you. Share the great work other people are doing as well.

They wrap the guide up with tips on promoting your Twitter username, getting more followers, partnering with others and measuring your impact.

Don’t let the title fool you. If you are curious about using Twitter for your organization, don’t hesitate to pick up this free guide.

communications, content, digital, engagement, government, outreach, social media, Twitter

Access Anywhere – IRS Goes Mobile with Help from GovDelivery

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!

API, application programming interface, communications, content, digital, email, GovDelivery, government, IRS, mobile, mobile app, smartphone, technology

StumbleUpon: More Compelling Statistics

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about StumbleUpon – what it is (social bookmarking tool), what it does (drives website traffic), and why you should probably know about it (the tool doubled its user base to 20 million in less than two years).

StumbleUpon recently worked with a data visualization/visual content creation agency, Column Five Media, to produce this awesome infographic that offers even more compelling statistics to solidify StumbleUpon’s influence.

Titled “The Life Cycle of a Web Page on StumbleUpon,” the infographic offers some very interesting data – provided by StumbleUpon – regarding the “stickiness” of the websites visited through their services. Some of it was previously discussed in my earlier blog post, such as the claim that StumbleUpon is the top social media referrer, beating out Facebook by approximately 13% and Twitter by approximately 47%.

What was really interesting to me was the half-life (which is defined by Merriam Webster as “a period of usefulness or popularity preceding decline or obsolescence”) of links shared through StumbleUpon versus Facebook or Twitter. The infographic shows the half-life of a page shared through StumbleUpon as 400 hours – about 16.5 days! That’s a wildly superior half-life compared to the statistics from Twitter and Facebook: links shared through Twitter have a half-life of merely 2.8 hours and Facebook is only slightly better with 3.2 hours. What’s this mean? Overall, I think this data suggests that StumbleUpon is better at keeping links and web pages relevant for longer.

Devious Media also blogged about the infographic and pointed out that StumbleUpon’s “algorithm is exceptionally good at finding things [that users will] like.” Furthermore, they note that, unlike Twitter and Facebook, where messages & links get lost in the constant news feed updates, StumbleUpon will point users to links that may be interesting – no matter how old that link may be.

In today’s world, we’re all fighting for relevancy and attention for our messages. With nearly 300,000 status updates being posted on Facebook every minute (I’m sure that number is growing every day), and 250 million tweets per day on Twitter, having your message, link and web page live for longer than a few hours can be a pretty big deal. Maybe it’s worth it to even get yourself a StumbleUpon account just to check out what all the buzz is about.

communications, content, digital, engagement, government, outreach, social media

How to Create an Online Discussion that Will Ignite Conversation

November 10th, 2011 | Posted by Lauren Modeen for GovDelivery in Social Media - (0 Comments)

One of simplest strategies online community managers use to keep the community fire burning bright is to ignite conversations throughout the community. However, there are methods to ignite this discussion that will increase the chances that it will survive versus peter out in a few minutes.

Take a look at the very successful discussion below created by Paul from GovLoop and see if you can immediately spot the 4 successful things this discussion does. If you can’t spot them immediately, read on…

1. Formulate a discussion title that is interesting/catchy/negative, preferably in a question format (helps people know what to do – questions are easier to answer than a general comment).

2. Answer your own discussion question in a concrete, easily digestible way with enough context that a potential member could generate an answer for himself. Notice how Paul starts off with “Mine was a forward from my mother who had received an email…” To turn this around and show you what NOT to do…don’t leave the body of your discussion empty…you need to start the conversation off yourself…once you take the first dive into the pool others will be able to follow much more easily. Monkey see, monkey do…

3. If possible, add some substantiated data that contributes to why your question is important, and/or throw in a little piece of education in the discussion (double win for the reader). See how at the end of Paul’s post he cites a fact about sending emails from a documented source – the David Shipley book SEND: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do it Better.

4. Repeat the discussion question in the body of your post and put it in bold. Like leaving your phone # at the beginning and end of a voice mail, this makes it easier for the potential contributor to remember exactly what you are asking.

communications, community, content, digital, engagement, outreach, social media

Do you know what StumbleUpon is?

October 17th, 2011 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Social Media | Web 2.0 | Web/Tech - (1 Comments)

If not, you might want to.

So, what is StumbleUpon? Essentially, I think of it as a social sharing service that directs registered users to new websites based on their personal preferences, input from their friends and “like-minded individuals.” StumbleUpon explains its process and why they’re better than search engines:

Now, why should you care about StumbleUpon?

Mashable reported late last week that that StumbleUpon doubled its user base in less than two years, surpassing 20 million users and directing users to more than 1 billion web pages every month. In fact, a report from StatCounter (also sourced from Mashable) in August 2011 showed that StumbleUpon generated more than 50% of all referral traffic compared with other top social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).

Quantcast, a service that provides “free, directly measured traffic and audience composition reports,” shows that StumbleUpon users are typically male and older, with 62% of registered users between the ages of 18 and 49. What’s really interesting from the Quantcast data is the “Audience Also Likes” category, which shows topics that those who visit StumbleUpon are also interested in:

With this kind of impact, it’s easy to see where StumbleUpon and the public sector intersect. NASA sends more than 400 million emails a year through GovDelivery, and their focus in science and technology means that the kind of individual they want to be engaging with is probably on StumbleUpon.

Everyone talks about the next big thing in social media – with these latest reports, it may turn out at that StumbleUpon is just that. They’re hiring like crazy, and they’ve recently launched mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices that will no doubt increase their user base and web page referrals. But even if it isn’t the next big thing, for a service that directs users to more than 1 billion web pages a month, isn’t it worth it to find out what StumbleUpon is and how you might be able to leverage it?

By Mary Yang, Marketing Communications Manager, GovDelivery

digital, engagement, outreach, social media, technology, web 2.0

Dealing with negative feedback in social media

By Lauren Modeen, Digital Strategist, GovDelivery Professional Services

Regardless of whether you are representing yourself, an agency, a company, a non-profit, or a campaign online, you will most likely encounter negative digital feedback. While you cannot control what the world puts in front of you, you can control how you respond. In fact, how you do so might say more about your character than when you are just humming along. Below are some examples and tips for Facebook and Twitter, but they also apply to other social media networks:

Twitter

1. When you read content directed at you that immediately raises your inner flag (i.e. it is negative), simply re-read it. Avoid jumping to unnecessary conclusions too early.

2. After you read it the second time, if it is in fact, negative, or unproductively critical, take a deep breath, step away from it for a few minutes, and then respond. No impulsive, angry thrashing out! Keep your cool.

3. If the person appears to be legitimate (see point C below), calmly analyze the tweet and respond in a constructive, non-threatening manner. If the person continues to engage (as long as it is not profane or otherwise abusive), continue to briefly interact with them until they give up.

Posts to block:

A. Those containing profane language

B. Those attacking anyone personally

C. Those that appear to be a spam account (can usually tell by the content of their tweets, 0 or < 10 followers, no profile image)

D. Anything else that appears to be completely inappropriate

Facebook

Follow the same three steps as above. Also, consider adding a Facebook policy to your page. Here is an example:

Sample Member Conduct Policy

[Name of organization] on Facebook is moderated. That means all comments will be reviewed before posting. In addition, [Name of organization] expects that participants will treat each other with respect. [Name of organization] on Facebook will not post comments that contain vulgar or abusive language; personal attacks of any kind; or offensive terms that target specific ethnic or racial groups. [Name of organization] on Facebook will not post comments that are spam, are clearly “off topic” or that promote services or products. Comments that make unsupported accusations will also be subject to review.

Any references to commercial entities, products, services, or other nongovernmental organizations or individuals that remain on the site are provided solely for the information of individuals using [Name of organization] on Facebook.

Here is a summary of the guidelines we abide by:

The use of vulgar, offensive, threatening or harassing language is prohibited. Public comments should be limited to comments related to the topic. [Name of organization] on Facebook is not the proper place to express opinions or beliefs not directly related to that topic.

[Name of organization] on Facebook is not open to comments promoting or opposing any person campaigning for election to a political office or promoting or opposing any ballot proposition. [Name of organization] on Facebook is not open to the promotion or advertisement of a business or commercial transaction.

Have you dealt with negative feedback on Facebook or Twitter? How about in comments on your organization’s blog? How do you deal with this?

communication, digital, Facebook, feedback, GovDelivery, government, social media, Twitter

Three ways cities and states can increase revenue

By Steve Ressler, Founder & President, GovLoop

2010 has been a tough year for state and local governments. From furloughs to layoffs to cutting services, the budget situation is dire.

It's pretty simple when you have a budget shortfall. You have two options – cut costs, increase revenue.

Most of the focus has been on cutting costs but I think there should be a discussion on increasing revenue.

Here's 3 ideas on how state and local governments can increase revenue:

1) Open up to advertising – There is a fine line of how much advertising government agencies should allow. But for years, there has been advertising allowed whether it is advertisements in public transportation to advertising in airport bins during screening.

There's a lot of opportunities for increased revenue hear whether it is advertisements in property tax statements (like my Delta check-in boarding pass ads), advertising on TVs at the DMV (in Florida we got free televisions that have DMV info and have a few ads). Yes, there is a line – I'm not sure I want the American Express City of Cincinnati City Hall – but there's also an opportunity here. And also, this does help innovative small businesses grow.

2) Increase Sales - The government sells a lot of stuff – whether that is hunting licenses, unclaimed property, park passes, public transportation tickets. But the government does not do a good job marketing their services as well as optimizing the sales process.

For example, my local newspapers works really hard to get me to renew my subscription – they send me tons of reminders (paper and email) and also give me option to automatically renew with credit card on file. My state fishing license just expires and I get no reminders, no push to get me to renew. The state could have easily got me to spend more money if they gave me option to renew automatically or reminded me through various channels.

3) Optimize Collections – Ever complained about how hard it was to pay a parking ticket? I just got one the other day and they either wanted me to visit the office during weird hours or mail in a statement. Guess what? That payment still hasn't sent it. Then, the other day in another city, I saw that you could actually text in payment for a parking ticket. How awesome is that? By lowering the barrier to payment, I'm sure they are increasing revenue.

Amazon learned this a long time ago with one-click payment. It has to be super easy for people to buy or they will forget or move on. Government agencies could increase revenue by spending time optimizing the collection process thinking like a business on how to make it easy to make people pay their fees. There are a lot of unpaid parking tickets, library fees, business/property taxes, and other fees that can ramp up quickly if governments optimized the collection process.

What are other ways governments can increase revenue?

budget, communication, cuts, digital, email, government, increase, revenue, RSS

Digital Communication Best Practices Guide Now Available

Access Anywhere – IRS Goes Mobile with Help from GovDelivery

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