Social Media

How to Make Your Facebook Content ‘Pop’ with Images

Facebook is a highly visual medium. Studies show that Facebook posts featuring photos are the most noticed, liked, and shared. Posts featuring an image stand out in the news feeds of people who like your page. While a great image can cut through the clutter, you don’t need to fill your feed. Think “representative” and high-quality

AIDS.gov

Jun 20, 2016

The Great Pinterest Experiment: One Year In

Last summer, Kids.Gov revamped its presence on Pinterest in an attempt to find new ways to connect with its followers. The Marketing Team set out to learn more about our audiences and the kind of content they like. Despite being a difficult platform to navigate, we set lofty goals for ourselves and developed a timely

Edgardo Morales

Phat Nguyen

Jun 13, 2016

NIH Image Gallery Data Call Success

In early April, the National Institutes of Health put out a call for images highlighting NIH-funded scientific research. The image call was posted on the NIH image gallery website and advertised through the NIH Public Information Officers (PIO) Network. The NIH Image Gallery, which averages 6,000 views per day, features free-to-use images for the general

Christen Geiler

Jun 13, 2016

Five Ways That Video Will Continue to Evolve on Facebook

The medium is the message. Marshall McLuhan In a little over a year, Facebook video went from simply being one of the content types that could be shared to the user timeline to a 8B video views per day powerhouse that’s also a huge priority for Mark Zuckerberg. We’ve heard about the big numbers from digital native

Randy Abramson

Jun 08, 2016

Good communicators are always…well…evaluating the way they communicate. As we think of the “customer experience,” it is key to constantly consider your methods for engaging with your audience. Just as the platforms themselves continue to change to keep their audience, continuing to refine our ways of sending messages will assure that you don’t get left

Kyle S. Richardson

May 23, 2016

FDA’s “The Real Cost”: A Tumblr Success Story

FDA’s “The Real Cost” campaign aims to be edgy, just like its teen audience. Last month, the campaign won the 2016 Shorty Award for the Best Overall Tumblr Presence. “The Real Cost” educates youth ages 12 to 17 about the harmful effects of tobacco use.

Stacey Palosky

May 13, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Smartphone Ownership Reaching Saturation, Fueling Media Consumption

ComScore released a report with a lot of great data about how mobile digital media usage continues to explode in 2016. It has 70 pages of charts and information to digest. Here are seven key mobile trends and takeaways: Smartphones are exponentially driving digital media usage. Digital media has tripled since 2013 and digital media

Will Sullivan

Apr 26, 2016

The Content Corner: Branches—Stick to the Vine

A branch that does not stick to its source of nutrition will wither away and die. Just ask anyone who has received a bouquet of beautiful flowers about how long they really last. In the same way, as communicators we must stay connected to our audience, or we risk the chance of fading away into

Kyle S. Richardson

Apr 18, 2016

The Content Corner: Will You Read This Entire Post?

Deep down we’ve always known that people only read a small portion of any content shared online. In many ways that can’t be fixed but there are ways to help people read more or at least scan better. There was a book I loved as a child that featured the Sesame Street character Grover, titled

Tyrus Manuel

Apr 11, 2016

How to Merge Two Facebook Pages

In the next couple of years as new social media platforms emerge and organizations open more accounts, when do you make the decision to shut an account down? When resources are limited, we must analyze the effectiveness of our social media programs and put our time and effort into the accounts that best serve our

Sara Smith

Janet Linton

Apr 07, 2016

Why We Launched A Snapchat Account and How We’ll Measure Success

Yesterday, we shared our Snapchat account with the public. After weeks of testing the tool to iron out kinks and determine how we’d make content accessible, we were excited to go public when the official government-friendly terms of service were signed. So now you may be asking, why

Jessica Milcetich

Apr 01, 2016

USAGov’s Step-by-Step Guide to Making Snapchat Stories As Accessible As Possible

One of the biggest things we take into account whenever we consider launching on a new social platform is how we can make the information we share through that tool as accessible as possible. In its current form, Snapchat isn’t a highly accessible platform. This isn’t a problem that’s unique to Snapchat. Many emerging technologies

Jessica Milcetich

Mar 29, 2016

I’ve recently been required to focus more attention on social media from a federal agency standpoint and this has directly led to a greater consideration of content. One of my first steps was to begin sharing various forms of content and gauge the success of each type. In today’s post, I’ll share what I have

Tyrus Manuel

Mar 21, 2016

FirstNet Launches Tumblr, Seeking Stories of Public Safety Broadband Use

FirstNet is a relatively new “startup” federal government agency with the mission of building, operating and maintaining a broadband network for the millions of first responders in the 56 states, territories and Washington D.C. Given the nature of our mission, we are always looking for new avenues to connect with our nation’s courageous law enforcement,

Kyle S. Richardson

Mar 17, 2016

Is Your Federal Mobile App or Website in the U.S. Digital Registry?

We have received an amazing response to the U.S. Digital Registry, our new API-generating repository for official third-party sites, social media platforms and mobile apps in the United States federal government.

Jacob Parcell

Feb 29, 2016

The Content Corner: Facebook Expands Access to Instant Articles

As I begin to wind down my time at The Content Corner, I have realized that one of my biggest content concerns uncovered during my tenure is digital sharecropping. The recent announcement from Facebook that they will soon open their Instant Articles publishing capability to everyone was reason enough for me to revisit the topic

Tyrus Manuel

Feb 29, 2016

Preliminary Results from USAGov’s Voter Registration Partnership with Facebook

The first phase of our partnership with Facebook included Facebook “megaphones” being rolled out in a handful of states with rapidly approaching voter registration deadlines. Facebook’s megaphone is a featured box that is displayed at the top of all user’s News Feeds. (You may recall seeing these after certain disasters giving users the option to

Jessica Milcetich

Feb 09, 2016

New U.S. Digital Registry Authenticates Official Public Service Accounts

Whether for voter registration, health services or questions about taxes, trusting what and who you engage with online is critical. We’d like to introduce to you a new API-generating repository for official third-party sites, social media platforms and mobile apps in the United States federal government that can help you

Justin Herman

Feb 03, 2016

A 2016 Look Ahead: What’s on the Horizon for Digital Government?

With January, and the tearing off of the old calendar, comes the annual taking stock of where we’ve been in the last year and where we can go in the year ahead. So for this month’s editorial theme, we’re taking a closer look at what we think 2016 will bring for digital government—from mobile and

Andrea Sigritz

Jan 12, 2016

The Content Corner: Content Trends for 2016

The beginning of a new year is generally a time where people on a personal and professional level look ahead and prognosticate. When it comes to almost any digital media, the one thing we can be certain of is that the pace will quicken, the offerings will expand, and something totally unexpected will jump out

Tyrus Manuel

Jan 11, 2016

News and Events on Social Media