Social Media

NIH Image Gallery Now on Flickr

Looking for health or science related images? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently launched the NIH Image Gallery on Flickr. The Image Gallery offers a wide variety of scientific, biomedical and disease related imagery as well as photos of NIH

Christen Geiler

Nov 04, 2015

Empowering the Voice of Citizens at Core of GSA Open Government

We are proud to announce our commitment to the third U.S. National Action Plan for Open Government, released this week at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in Mexico City, Mexico,

Justin Herman

Oct 29, 2015

#NIHDigital Summit: Optimizing Digital to Reach Patients, Scientists, Clinicians and the Public

On October 19th, NIH brought together nearly 1,500 digital and health experts in person and via webcast. The event featured two keynote speakers and panels that showcased the unique perspectives of patients and caregivers, health

Alison Lemon

Oct 26, 2015

The Content Corner: Twitter, Apple News and the Importance of Our Websites

First, McDonald’s started serving breakfast all day. Now, Twitter announced it is dropping its 140 character limit for tweets. Black is white, up is down. Or is it really that big a deal? Is Twitter just keeping itself relevant in the battle for your content? LinkedIn and Facebook were first with their strong push for organizations to

Tyrus Manuel

Oct 26, 2015

At the Peace Corps, we continually try to find new ways to test, measure and optimize our marketing and communications initiatives. Recently, we embarked on a project to design a framework to test and optimize content on the social media platforms we use to engage our stakeholders. This process required us to reboot our expectations in terms of

Chris Rottler

Oct 02, 2015

The Content Corner: Defining Your Core

Through the course of this blog, I have frequently mentioned the need to feed the content beast and have discussed tactics such as the content pillar and various other aspects of developing a solid content strategy. Recent research from the Content Marketing Institute found the average business-to-business (B2B) company uses 13 content marketing tactics or

Tyrus Manuel

Sep 28, 2015

Negotiating a Mobile Terms of Service Agreement

In our personal lives, most of us barely pay attention to Terms of Service (TOS) agreements. But in our professional lives, as federal employees, mindlessly clicking through a TOS is not an option. The DigitalGov article Getting to Yes: Working with Vendors to Secure Terms of Service and Federal Friendly Pricing explored the legal dilemmas

Ashley Wichman

Sep 25, 2015

The Content Corner: Harness the Power of User-Generated Content

As of 2015, Millennials spent 30% of their time consuming user-generated content (UGC), and 54% of that group find UGC more trustworthy than content generated by a specific brand. This covers everything from user-generated reviews on Yelp! to short-form videos. Another benefit of UGC is that it helps crowdsource the burden of feeding the content

Tyrus Manuel

Sep 21, 2015

On DigitalGov, we frequently talk about some of the most popular app experiences, and research almost always shows that mobile messaging and social apps are the most frequently used. Pew Research released a new report specifically about

Will Sullivan

Sep 01, 2015

The Central Intelligence Agency launched their Twitter account with the second most retweeted inaugural post in the platform’s history.

Justin Herman

Aug 25, 2015

Facts on the Federal-Compatible Terms of Service Agreement for Yelp

We’ve been excited to see the outpouring of interest this week in response to Yelp’s decision to amend their terms of service for official government use, a clear message that citizens want more ways to ensure their voices are heard by the public programs that serve them. Yelp is just one of dozens of platforms

Justin Herman

Aug 20, 2015

FSA: Using a Data-Driven Marketing Campaign to Inform Your Audience

For millions of Americans, federal student loans have made it possible to get a college education. For many, moving forward after college can become an overwhelming challenge. In 2014, the Department of Education had 41 million borrowers and a loan

Kendrick Daniel

Aug 19, 2015

Trends on Tuesday: The Rise in “Mobile Addicts”

Yahoo’s mobile analytics division, Flurry, released an interesting report, in July, comparing mobile usage among three distinct types of users around the world based on how frequently they launch mobile applications each day: Regular Users, Super Users and Mobile Addicts. According to Flurry, of

Will Sullivan

Aug 18, 2015

Five-Star Customer Experience in Public Service with Yelp

Adding customer satisfaction ratings and reviews to public services just got easier now that Yelp offers a terms of service for official government use. Yelp, a Web and mobile-based user review platform, hosts insights from “real people

Justin Herman

Aug 07, 2015

Picking Up the “Slack” for Team Communication

You have a question about a project. You ping a coworker, who texts another colleague, who emails a listserv and receives 3 responses. And the problem is: where will your supervisor find the answer next month, when someone else asks the same question? Corralling

Ashley Wichman

Jul 30, 2015

Is It Time to Try Medium? New Federal-Friendly Terms of Service

What is Medium? Good question. Is it a publishing platform, a social network, a distribution channel, a 21st century version of the op-ed page, or something else? With a continuously evolving feature-set, Medium defies simple classification. Perhaps it is best to think about Medium in terms of what you can accomplish with it. With a

Dana Allen-Greil

Jul 17, 2015

What’s in a Name? “Communities” in the Public and Private Sectors

Many of you are part of a government community. We lead a few of them here, and new ones are forming all the time. In fact, as I was writing this article, I stumbled upon a community for government Drupal users. A co-worker recently asked me for research on communities because she is trying to

Karen Trebon

Jul 15, 2015

2015 Customer Service Trends: a Mid-Year Update

Earlier this year, we published 15 Government Customer Service Trends for 2015. We’re halfway through the year now—how are these trends holding up? 1. Centralized Customer Offices A few agencies have created centralized customer offices, while others question the need for a single organization that focuses on the customer. As the public’s overall satisfaction with

Martha Dorris

Jul 08, 2015

Celebrating Parks, Creating Connections: NPS Prepares for 2016 Centennial

Planning your next national park adventure (from the comfort of your couch) is easier than ever with a new website, Find Your Park.com. Launched on April 2nd, the mobile-friendly FindYourPark.com was designed and launched by the National Park Foundation (NPF), the

Ashley Wichman

Jun 30, 2015

As with any communications effort, the social media bottom line comes down to impact. Can you prove that the time, money and effort put into social media helped achieve your agency’s goals? In a world obsessed with big data, it’s tempting to track every detail simply because you can. With more data comes more confusion

Katie Gresham

Jun 29, 2015

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