The Content Corner

The Content Corner: Recapping Content Marketing Trends in 2016—How Have We Stacked Up?

Earlier this year, it was predicted that content marketing would become even more important due to its ability to enhance not just visibility, but also increase engagement with customers—who could, in turn, become great promoters of your content. Needless to say, much of our time these days as communicators is spent on developing, distributing, maximizing, and

Kyle S. Richardson

Sep 26, 2016

September is National Preparedness Month. FEMA’s Ready.gov is encouraging everyone to plan how they would stay safe and communicate during disasters that can affect their communities. Additionally, Ready.gov is encouraging full participation in America’s PrepareAthon! and the national day of action, National PrepareAthon! Day, which culminates National Preparedness Month on September 30.

Kyle S. Richardson

Sep 12, 2016

The Content Corner: On-The-Fly Content Strategies (Round-offs, Back Handsprings, & Double Twisting Layouts Not Required)

As effective marketers and communicators, we are constantly seeking new and improved ways to reach our audience or customer base. These days, our “online lives” intersect with every activity we are involved in, so timeliness is essential. With fresh ideas and engaging, perhaps interactive, content, we can literally make a difference in the lives of our

Kyle S. Richardson

Aug 08, 2016

The Content Corner: Quality Over Quantity—a Case for Long-Form Content

Content can be categorized in many ways. While breaking down your website analytics, pay a bit of extra attention to the difference between your short- and long-form content; you may find some interesting discoveries. Let’s first define the two terms: Short – Content that is generally created quickly, and consumed just as fast; e.g., tweets,

Kyle S. Richardson

Jul 25, 2016

The Content Corner: How to Leverage User-Generated Content to Resonate With Your Audience

User-Generated Content (UGC) is a buzzword as of late, popularized recently due to the ever increasing demand for new content. To define the phrase, let’s look to a shining example of it,Wikipedia, as a source, “any form of content such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums, posts, chats,tweets, podcasts, digital images, video, audio files, advertisements, and other

Kyle S. Richardson

Jul 11, 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

The Content Corner: Using Content as a Tool for Improving Citizen Services

It is very refreshing to see the large contingent of government communicators who are always seeking to do their job better, with a well-founded desire to provide those they serve with an enhanced experience. Based on a few examples, such as the many listserv emails that are sent across agencies, DigitalGov’s constant content stream and

Kyle S. Richardson

May 09, 2016

The Content Corner: GIF? Meme? Embeds? Oh, My!

You probably have heard this before, or may even hear it all the time, “Content is King.” What that means is, that in today’s fast moving digital communications age, with social media as the driver—organizations (agencies) must have a content plan to stay relevant. Sure, not every agency has the resources, or frankly is as

Kyle S. Richardson

Apr 25, 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

The Content Corner: Code is a Tool, Content is the Solution

It seems of late that the focus on coding and technology within the federal space has become out of balance with that of good, solid content. As I believe I have said before with regard to user experience, great technology with poor content is still worthless. Amazing code that delivers poorly written or designed content

Tyrus Manuel

Mar 28, 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

The Content Corner: Feeding the Beast with Agile Content Development

I feel as though I have ignored the beast in the room lately, and since I began my tenure on The Content Corner introducing that concept, I felt I needed to wrestle with it one last time before I depart. Previously, I discussed the concept of pair writing. Today I want to investigate how another software

Tyrus Manuel

Mar 14, 2016

The Content Corner: How Google Judges Your Content

Every week my main goal is to usually provide new ways to help you feed the content beast. However, today I am going to remind you of why feeding the beast is important, especially when it comes to your search engine rankings and helping users find your content. I’ve discussed key search engine optimization (SEO)

Tyrus Manuel

Mar 07, 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

The Content Corner: Government as API

Here at DigitalGov, we generally focus on federal governmental digital efforts within the U.S. It is where we live and operate, so it makes sense, but many governments across the world struggle with the same issues and leverage technology as a common solution. When I came across an article where Australia announced its “government as

Tyrus Manuel

Feb 22, 2016

The Content Corner: Location-Aware Content

While January was about looking ahead, February is focused on content and many of the new possibilities and challenges that will face us as content creators over the next year and beyond. At the intersection of these two themes lies the genesis of my topic today: location-aware content. More than a Map One of the

Tyrus Manuel

Feb 08, 2016

The Content Corner: Four Ways to Help Your Content Stand Out

When discussing trends for 2016, I made some mention of the content overload that started in 2015 but will certainly increase in 2016. Contently recently found that organizations created 73% more content in 2015 than in 2014. I see no reason why that number will decline in 2016, especially as content becomes the beast of

Tyrus Manuel

Feb 01, 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

The Content Corner: Can You Leverage Cornerstone Content?

If you have a website, then you most likely have cornerstone content—though you may not think of it in that way or even considered it. Just as in architecture, a cornerstone is a basic and essential part of any online presence. Cornerstone content is also important to any new visitors to your agency site, even if you

Tyrus Manuel

Dec 21, 2015

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