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Highlight on Accessibility

January 18th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang For GovDelivery in GovDelivery Features - (0 Comments)

By Billy Reisinger, Senior Software Engineer, GovDelivery

WeCo_logoGovDelivery is passionate about helping government entities reach their citizens through digital communications.  We are in the business of spreading the word – and we want every single message recipient to be able to consume information easily and quickly.  Most of the time, this means reading an email or text message. Sometimes, it’s watching a YouTube video. But what we forget is that many times, those folks to whom information is delivered are living with some sort of disability, and our government clients are mandated to make their communications accessible to every person regardless of ability.

As part of our mission to make our product accessible, we have an ongoing partnership with WeCo, a company that provides accessibility training and certification.  It is striking to know that, according to WeCo, 20% of the active US workforce has some form of a disability.  Given such a large percentage, it is critical to our business and our clients’ success that we build our products to be accessible from the start.

To that end, several of the technical, client support, and marketing staff here at GovDelivery recently participated in an informative training with several members of WeCo. They helped us assess and improve the accessibility of several of our technologies and provided thoughtful discussion on what kind of digital actions we need to be cognizant of from an accessibility standpoint.  Not only is WeCo is an excellent resource for accessibility training, but they also employ experts in the field of accessibility – people with disabilities – to educate and test their clients’ products.

We’re excited about our ongoing partnership and how the work we do together can help government organizations distribute information as widely as possible and help those living with a disability receive information that they want or need. To that end, WeCo has recently launched a crowdfunding initiative on Indiegogo to spread the word on the unique and critical service they provide. If you’re passionate about accessibility, take a look and find out more about the important work they do.

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Are You Sitting On a Pot of Gold?

January 10th, 2013 | Posted by Jennifer Kaplan for GovDelivery in Best Practices | Tips & Tricks - (1 Comments)

By Jennifer Kaplan, Product Marketing Manager, GovDelivery

Like many of you, I started 2013 with lofty goals. Exercise more! Organize my desk! Finally finish my to-do list!  I’ve come to realize, like many others have, that a list of important objectives is never-ending. It’s daunting. However, instead of taking on all of these tasks at once, sometimes we can achieve success (and gratification) faster by tackling one or two crucial goals that directly affect our mission.

If you need to communicate with people through online channels like email, SMS, or social media, having a good group of people to communicate with is a crucial goal.

Building an audience online is one of the most important things you can do. Your message to the public won’t matter if no one sees it! Whether it’s getting more people to get flu shots, register for a deer hunting license, apply for more grants, or join your neighborhood watch program, the size of your email list correlates with your level of success.

At GovDelivery, we’ve heard many success stories recently of how Federal, State, Local and UK Government communicators are not only achieving this goal, but blowing it out of the water. For example, a state agency we worked with recently grew their email subscriber list by adding thousands of citizens in just a few days. This is your proverbial “pot of gold”. 

The best part? Their strategy for success is something you can easily execute THIS MONTH. Here’s how…

The agency I mentioned above uncovered over 20,000 email addresses from a department who did a huge promotional push for an event 2 years ago, but never did any follow up with the email addresses after the event. Because the agency had already established a relationship with this group, they were able to send them an invite and covert those old email addresses into newly engaged subscribers. This was all done with minimal effort: just a few conversations and an email invite.

To find your pot of gold, start talking internally with other departments. Make connections with other offices, programs or individuals in your agency who also communicate or interact with the public online.  You may uncover a wealth of untapped email addresses.

Here are some places where you might find your pot of gold:

  1. Parks and Recreation departments collecting email addresses online for classes, activities and events.
  2. Property Records or Taxpayer Services receiving e-payments.
  3. Department of Natural Resources typically get email addresses for hunting, fishing or other license renewals.
  4. Libraries may have email addresses for library card registration or book availability notifications.
  5. Any programs or agencies receiving grant applications.
  6. Water or other services collecting utility bills.
  7. Departments who oversee driver’s license or tab renewal.
  8. Departments receiving passport applications.
  9. Any other area of your website with online form submission or that collects online payment!

*Bonus tip: If you can tap into other demographic information, such as first name and zip code, you’ll be able to easily execute other strategic email communications tactics. For example, an urgent email with a subscriber’s first name in the subject line might be more likely to grab their attention. Or, you can use a zip code to target certain email addresses with a relevant email about a new park opening near their location. 

You can also work with your GovDelivery Client Success Consultant to determine if you can upload existing lists directly to GovDelivery or if it is preferable to invite people to sign up.  In most cases, you can create new topics in GovDelivery that map directly to the outreach you are already providing.  GovDelivery can also help by supplying potential invite templates.

I must say, I can’t take all the credit for the term “pot of gold”, as Alan Ferguson at Central Bedfordshire Council first drew the comparison recently at our UK Digital Communications Event.  Alan told the story of how their agency made the switch to digital communications in order to encourage a channel shift towards citizen interactions online. Alan’s team heavily promoted their new email communications through social media, website, staff and elected officials. Through this promotion, they were able to discover that one department (Adult Education) had a database of over 8,000 email subscribers that they had collected separately outside of other departments. Alan’s team was able to import this list and convert many of these people to subscribers of their other digital communications.  The entire presentation is fascinating, but fast-forward to the 6:53 minute mark to hear his experience related to email:

Finally, if you’ve already asked around and haven’t uncovered your pot of gold, don’t worry. There are plenty of other things you can do to grow your lists!  Check out some of the other tactics used by Federal, State and Local government agencies here: http://www.govdelivery.com/insidethered/2012/01/the-lucky-7-ways-to-increase-your-outreach/

 

 

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Last Minute Sandy Preparation Tips for Government

October 29th, 2012 | Posted by Jennifer Kaplan for GovDelivery in Best Practices | Client News - (0 Comments)

We’ve all heard the numbers. 8,000+ flights cancelled. Hundreds of thousands already evacuated. Mass transit shut downs up the Eastern Seaboard.* (stats from CNN)  Up to 60 million people will be affected. Hurricane Sandy, now the largest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, is here.

President Obama, addressing the public in a statement this morning, said, “Please listen to what your state and local government officials are saying.” Government communicators are already in the midst of getting preparation and evacuation information out to those who need it. We’ve also seen additional tips for the public on television, radio, through news websites and social media. Here are the top things your organization can do right now if your stakeholders are affected.

Expand Your Reach. The more stakeholders receive your message, the more likely it is that they will be safe and prepared.

  • Update Your Website. Right now is the moment where citizens are most engaged with government organization. Make sure it’s as easy as possible for citizens visiting your website and social media pages to find the sign-up area for your communications. The key to success is a prominent position.  Keep it in the upper right or upper left of your page, but be careful not to blend it with other aspects of your website. For a temporary fix, highlight your sign-up area in yellow or orange.
    Ready.gov website
  • Leverage the Media to Promote Communications. In his public address this morning, President Barack Obama directed citizens to Ready.gov to get up-to-date preparation and safety information on Hurricane Sandy. If your organization is briefing or being featured through any media outlets, be sure to promote your communications and the ways citizens can subscribe to get updates via email or text message. It’s also helpful to include the URLs to your resources in any media graphics.
  • Recommend Power Outage Alternatives. If citizens lose cable, broadcast signal and Internet, they can still receive tweets about the storm on their mobile phone — even if they don’t have a Twitter account. Have citizens subscribe to SMS Twitter alerts. Here’s a great article from the Washington Post on how to do this.

Get the Word Out Efficiently. Be sure to send messages through all your communication channels.

  • Get Preparation or Evacuation Information Out NOW. There is still time to recommend precautionary actions that can be taken by stakeholders. Urge those in recommended evacuation areas to leave. Send reminders to conserve cell and computer power. Ensure citizens have a list of necessary items — enough food, water, cash, medicine and flashlights — should they experience a power outage.
    National Hurricane Center website
  • Don’t Have the Resources? Not sure what information to send out? Leverage existing, official content.  FEMA and Ready.gov, in addition to the National Hurricane Center with the National Weather Service are asking government organizations to share content they’re already creating to spread the word.  Instead of reinventing the wheel, your organization can share the information, tools and resources from these sites. Like and share FEMA’s Facebook page posts. Follow and re-tweet @ReadyDotGov tweets.
    Ready.gov Twitter feed
  • Continue to Send Updates Throughout the Week. Use email, SMS and social media and other channels to keep stakeholders updated. Be sure to use all means (especially SMS and Twitter) as some stakeholders may not have Internet.

Google has also developed a Crisis Map that provides real-time information about where the storm is moving. The interactive map shows Sandy’s trajectory of the entire country, plus the public can subscribe to additional alerts such as evacuation notices, storm warnings, shelter locations and traffic conditions.

Picking Up the Pieces. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, continue to use digital channels to send updates to your stakeholders. Government organizations will need to work together to communicate relief and clean-up efforts, as well as provide additional resources available to the public. Keep an eye on FEMA, Ready.gov, and the National Weather Service for more information.

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APIs ARE the secret sauce

September 17th, 2012 | Posted by govdelivery in Best Practices | Client News | GovDelivery Features | Integration | Unique Uses of GovDelivery - (0 Comments)

By Mike Bernard, Digital Marketing Manager, GovDelivery

Yesterday, I attended an outstanding webinar, by my co-worker Richard Fong, about using APIs to improve how the government communicates with the public.He discussed what an API is and why they’re so important to government organizations.

Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) are a hot topic in the government these days. Earlier this year, the White House released a new strategy for the Federal government called Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People. This new digital government strategy lists API use as a key element in fulfilling the vision for more open, responsive government communication. And U.S. CIO, Steven VanRoekel tweeted out earlier this year about APIs, with the hashtag “#yesitsthesecretsauce.”

Fong noted that API use has become more critical because the way we access information has dramatically changed. “In the past, businesses and organizations went to the Web because that’s where the customers were…we all sat in front of our desktop monitor and browsed the Web to get content. Then something happened. Technology evolved. The browser stopped being the exclusive gateway to information and content. A few trends that pushed this included social media, mobile, and location-based services.  The public started to consume content using smart-phones, tablets and other intelligent devices,” states Fong.

Fong went on to highlight some of the excellent work being done with APIs throughout the government. For example, here are a few of the API integrations he mentioned in the webinar:

These are just a few of the success stories that Richard covered in his presentation. If you’re interested in exploring creative ways to improve communication with the public, check out the recording of this webinar.

And, if you are in the Washington D.C. area, you should consider attending our Annual Federal Digital Communications Event on October 16th. There will be in-depth discussions about the White House Digital Strategy and how you can use APIs to advance your communication goals. Space is limited, so register today.

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Federal Agency Distributes Content More Broadly, Educates & Informs for Safety

August 31st, 2012 | Posted by Mary Yang For GovDelivery in Best Practices | Client News | GovDelivery Features | Integration - (0 Comments)

If you work in or around Federal government in technology, it’s impossible to have missed the White House’s new strategy for the federal government, Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People. In the White House blog, U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel discussed the strategy as a critical roadmap for government to take advantage of technological advances and ultimately deliver better services to the American people through digital means.

While the strategy is important, much of it needs further interpretation and deeper analysis. But there were real-world examples throughout the roadmap that offered clear insight into how Federal agencies could deliver against the strategy. One such example was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is “liberating web content” by using a “create once, publish everywhere mindset.” Essentially, the CDC syndicates their content and data via application programming interfaces (APIs) so that information was seamlessly flowing into multiple channels. The CDC example was one of the most clear and immediately applicable pieces of the strategy to me. It’s easy to see how other Federal agencies could provide official content while enhancing their digital interactions with the public in a similar way by automating content distribution to various channels.

A more recent example of this “create once, publish everywhere” approach is at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) which recently launched two widgets to allow anyone to easily publish and distribute FSIS content on other digital properties (websites, blogs, etc.):

  • News & Events Widget consolidates several feeds from FSIS’s email subscription service and provides access to news releases (including recalls) and newsletters.
  • FSIS Policy Widget consolidates the following feeds from FSIS’s email subscription service: FSIS Notices and Directives, Federal Register issuances, scenario-based training, compliance guides.

FSIS_widget

The FSIS mission relies heavily on public outreach as it is “responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” This is critical for the public and stakeholders, including farmers, grocery store suppliers, and more. FSIS’s widgets allow specific information to be broadcast broadly beyond typical communication channels, such as press releases or website updates. Stakeholders or even just the general public can take the code for the widget and use it on their digital properties, helping to promote official content much more quickly and widely.

The FSIS widgets pull directly from digital communications that FSIS is already producing, so keeping the information in the widgets updated does not entail any additional actions or resources. The widgets automatically populate with the most up-to-date news or stories, such as food safety tips and updates during severe weather and recent food recalls. Furthermore, FSIS’s widgets provide an embedded ability for the public to sign up for ongoing updates from FSIS via email — a service that already has over 100,000 active users and that links back to their website, helping to increase web traffic. Leveraging information-sharing widgets to syndicate content saves FSIS time, money and resources, and it also provides the public and partners with an easy way to redistribute relevant and valuable information that directly impact people’s lives and safety.

The Digital Government strategy provides a clear path to delivering better citizen services by leveraging technology and urging government organizations to “go digital.” While there are many milestones to meet, the truth is more than half of all Federal agencies – such as the National Guard Bureau, Disability.gov, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency – are already managing digital communications using a cloud-based platform with open APIs to easily reuse and redistribute content so there is a firm foundation in place to deliver progress against milestones rapidly. FSIS’s widgets are just one clear example of the impact of how creating once and publishing everywhere can provide greater value for both the public and government.

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Congratulations, Maricopa County Air Quality Department!

July 24th, 2012 | Posted by Mary Yang For GovDelivery in Client News | Integration | Unique Uses of GovDelivery - (0 Comments)

GovDelivery client, Maricopa County Air Quality Department, was recently recognized by the National Association of Counties (NACo) with a 2012 Achievement Award for the County’s Rapid Response Notification System, which alerts residents and stakeholders of a pollution problem and provides on-site response from department inspectors and stakeholders to identify and discourage pollution activity to reduce the risk of pollution impacts.

Maricopa County enjoys many days with clean air, but there are several days out of the year when air pollution levels approach, or even go above, the federal health standard. The Air Quality Department’s mission is to provide clean air so residents and stakeholders can live, work and play safely. To help do this, the Air Quality Department maintains a robust ambient air monitoring system with 23 fixed monitoring stations reporting hourly readings. These readings provide air monitoring data that feeds into the notification system and uses automation to create the messages that alert citizens and stakeholders.

We wanted to take a moment to congratulate Maricopa County for being one of only three counties across the country to be recognized by NACo with 33 Achievement Awards. We’re excited about the work that we’ve done with the Air Quality Department, and we definitely think their success is a testament to the ways that governments can help keep residents and stakeholders safe and healthy with digital communications.

 

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3 New Tools for Reporting, Subscriber Management and File Hosting

July 17th, 2012 | Posted by nfedie in GovDelivery Features | Unique Uses of GovDelivery - (0 Comments)

By Jennifer Kaplan, Product Marketing Manager

At GovDelivery, we strive to ensure that our Digital Communications Management platform allows you to reach and engage your stakeholders in the most efficient way possible.  That is why we are bringing you new features and enhancements each and every month. July has been an especially busy month for us, and we are so excited to offer you access to new tools for reporting, managing your subscribers, and document hosting. We’ve provided a summary of each below, and encourage you to contact us if your organization is interested in leveraging these solutions.

1. Customized View of Up to 30 Performance Metrics

With the GovDelivery Bulletin Analytics Report, you are able to see the impact of your mutli-channel communication efforts in a timely manner. If you have analytics enabled, you have the ability to learn much more than just who you communicated with, by accessing a deeper understanding of who opened, clicked on, and shared your information.  With our new column chooser, you can get a customized view of actual audience engagement with your messages.

Analytics Image

2. Easily Monitor and Manage Who Subscribes and Unsubscribes From Your Communications

Many government organizations are legally obligated or mandated to send certain types of information to various groups. If they send this information electronically, there previously wasn’t a way to ensure that all necessary groups receive each message. There was also little control over who subscribes to each group. With our new Subscription Management tools, we put the control back in your hands!

Let’s say you only want media contacts or internal stakeholders to subscribe to one of your topics in GovDelivery. With Subscription Approval, you can review all subscription requests before they are added to your list.  Subscribers pending in the Requests tab of the Topic Subscriber page won’t be added to your topic until they receive your approval. You can also receive a notification directly to your inbox letting you know when people have requested to subscribe to your topic.

Subscription Requests Image

Do you have legally required or mandated communications, such as those sent to banks, credit unions, grantees or other financial institutions? With Subscription Restore, you can easily monitor and reinstate anyone who is deleted from a particular topic within your GovDelivery account. This ensures that all required parties receive important information, helps organizations track down contacts in instances of turn over, and allows you to closely monitor subscriber drop-off.  Once you reinstate these subscribers on the Topic Subscriber Deleted tab, you can elect to send them a customizable reinstatement notification.

Subscription Deletions Image

If you have communications that should only be sent to subscribers with a particular email domain, such as .gov, .edu, or .mil, then Subscription Restrictions will allow you to limit which types of email addresses can sign up for your communications. Each restriction can contain multiple email addresses, and you can set up as many restrictions as you need in the Subscription Restrictions tab of your Account Settings page.

Sub Restrictions Image

Contact help@govdelivery.com to enable Subscription Management at no additional cost for your organization!

3. Store, Publish, Deploy and Display PDF Documents

With GovDelivery’s new File Repository, you can easily publish government PDF documents to GovDelivery’s secure data center, helping to ensure records availability and promote government transparency.  Attach hosted files to your outbound bulletins, link directly to documents, or embed them on your website for your constituents using GovDelivery Web Services. Contact help@govdelivery.com to enable this feature.

What do you think about these new tools? Are you interested in learning more? Leave a reply below, or contact your GovDelivery dedicated Client Success Consultant. If you are unsure of who your Client Success Consultant is, please contact Client Care and they can help find that information for you (help@govdelivery.com or 800-314-0147).

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What’s the perfect time to engage citizens?

July 12th, 2012 | Posted by govdelivery in Best Practices | Client News | Tips & Tricks | Unique Uses of GovDelivery - (0 Comments)

By Amish Patel, Client Development Consultant, GovDelivery UK

Many of our clients rely on us to help them implement digital communication best practices, and one of the many questions we get is, “When is the best time to launch and promote citizen engagement services?”

In our minds, there is never a bad time, but in working with more than 500 government organisations worldwide, our experiences have shown that people flood to government websites when there is an emergency or other event that impacts service delivery.  Severe weather is a prime example of a time when citizens visit local government websites and subscribe in the thousands to official sources of information.  In the UK, with recent  floods along the south coast,  West Sussex County Council saw nearly 1,000 residents sign up for service information in a 48-hour period.

When there is an emergency you need a reliable, effective way of directly reaching as many residents as possible. The more people you reach the greater the impact your information can have. In addition to the obvious public benefits, effective communications help ease the workload of strained customer service teams.  Proactive, informative alerts are proven to help manage call demand and reduce avoidable contact.

Recent analysis of GovDelivery subscription rates to UK local government clients clearly shows that there is considerably more activity between the months of November and February, and it’s no surprise this period coincides with winter service disruptions.  Interestingly, the majority of new subscribers during this period subscribe to multiple topics of interest, including school closures, missed bins, council tax updates and local events.  Even obscure service areas, such as  Pest Control, get multiple subscribers. A typical resident subscribes to 7 – 10 service notifications before leaving the website, giving your local government organisation multiple future points of engagement.

Derbyshire County Council  captures website visitors’ attention with eye catching sign-up links in key areas.  The result of this is that residents who search for the latest information on winter service disruption can easily sign up to receive future updates and be proactively informed across multiple service areas, maximising direct connections with residents.

It goes without saying that informed citizens make better decisions and are generally much happier.  In these austere times, efficient communications save Government large sums in avoidable contact. Therefore, it’s hard to say there is ever a bad time to increase public engagement and improve communication.

 

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National Weather Service Using APIs for Tsunami Alerts

July 11th, 2012 | Posted by govdelivery in Best Practices | Client News | GovDelivery Features | Integration | Tips & Tricks | Unique Uses of GovDelivery - (1 Comments)

By Richard Fong, Technical Implementation Consultant

Tsunami events in 1946 and 1964 devastated Hawaii, Alaska, and the coastlines of Washington, Oregon, and California. The 1946 event started with an earthquake magnitude of 8.1 near Unimak, Alaska. Tsunamis inundated the coast over 100 feet above sea level and destroyed many structures near the Unimak area. The waves arrived in Hawaii about 4 to 5 hours later, and 159 people lost their lives due to the ensuing tsunami, which occurred before any warning systems were established.

Due to the 1946 and 1964 events, two warning centers were created: the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) and West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (WCA). Each Center has an Area of Responsibility (AoR). West Coast/Alaska’s AoR “consists of Canadian coastal regions, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the ocean coasts of all U.S. States except Hawaii.” WCA’s mission is to “help protect life and property from tsunami hazard by providing tsunami information and warning messages to its area-of-responsibility.” They are also tasked with developing new processes to improve responses time and message content to residents.

Since these two tragic events, warning systems have been developed to keep people safe. One of the methods now in place is digital communications, which the National Weather Service (NWS) employs to get out the word about weather and climate forecasts to help protect the public.

NWS quickly and easily drafts messages with forecast information, including severe weather updates, and uses GovDelivery Digital Communication Management to deliver those alerts via email and SMS/text message to nearly 140,000 citizens and stakeholders. But with events like tsunamis, seconds matter, which is why the NWS utilized cutting-edge application programming interface (API) technology to send out tsunami bulletins even more quickly than before.

When issuing a tsunami hazard bulletin, speed and accuracy are extremely important. In order to provide near real-time messaging, the GovDelivery Send Bulletin API is used to rapidly disseminate tsunami bulletins to the public. The application integration is able to send both an email message to subscribers as well as an SMS/text message to mobile phone/wireless subscribers. GovDelivery APIs are designed to automate previously manual processes, so this was a perfect option for NWS to send critical tsunami updates.

With online documentation and support from GovDelivery staff, NWS was able to quickly write the integration. Because the APIs employed open standards such as REST and XML, it made deploying the solution easy.

During the April 11, 2012 earthquake, a number of tsunami messages were sent to the public and officials. While no tsunami warning was issued for the U.S. or Canada, the message was sent once the earthquake was identified.

How does this automation ultimately benefit organizations such as the NWS? Simple: NWS and other government organizations can get out of the business of sending out communications (and all the operational logistics this entails)  and focus instead on their core business mission. For both the WCA and PTWC, the mission is to watch for and alert stakeholders to potential tsunami threats as quickly as possible to protect the lives and property of the public. Taking on the process of automating these alerts with near real-time messaging helps NWS get even closer to fulfilling their mission objectives, and that’s a process no one can properly put a number on.

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3 Not-So-Obvious Email Tips for Government to Effectively Reach Citizens

May 25th, 2012 | Posted by govdelivery in Best Practices | Tips & Tricks - (0 Comments)

By Lauren Modeen, Engagement Strategist, GovDelivery

I’d venture to say that for most of us working in or with government, the more people we can reach effectively, the better off we are. Here are three not-so-obvious ways to do this. For additional best practices like this, be sure to download our newly released guide: Public Sector Digital Management Communication: The Critical Role of Email. And for real-time tips we invite you to join our upcoming Public Sector Communication Best Practices webinar on June 7. Reserve your complimentary seat now!

1. Capture Subscribers at Exciting or Critical Times

One of the best times to capture subscribers is during an exciting or critical time for your organization. For example, in early 2012, Seattle experienced four straight days of snow and ice. Citizens in King County poured onto the county’s metro transit home page to get the critical information they needed about the storm. The takeaway? At a time where there is a huge increase of citizens on your site, make sure you seize the opportunity to sign up as many as you can. Once you are connected to them, you can proactively communicate in the future.

How about a baby Wild Black Bear just born in a den in Maine? While this exciting event was happening, the Wildlife Research Foundation live-streamed the event. As excited users came to their page to view the live-streaming, the Foundation encouraged visitors to subscribe to their bulletins.

2. Drive Sign-ups through Your Social Channels by Just Asking

Sometimes we get so caught up in thinking of the perfect tweet, Facebook post, or subject line, we forget that sometimes the easiest way to ask citizens to subscribe to emails is simply to just remind them and ask. Check out this very simple but effective tweet sent out by Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton.

Oh, and when trying to spread your message even further, it’s not a bad idea to add to your (tweet) — “Please Retweet.” While there is some debate around this in terms of data versus “gut,” this Hubspot data does point to the fact that “Please retweet” is the 11th most retweetable word.

3. Hook Your Subscribers Where They Are

When considering where to place subscription sign-up links on your website, always remember to review your website analytics first. For the pages that have the most popular and vital content – place your sign-up link on that page, in the top left. Take a look at the great example of a sign-up box on the LouisvilleKy.gov site below.

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