Community Websites Empower Your Members

Organizations are harnessing community features, similar to those found in LinkedIn and Facebook, to empower, collaborate, and establish personal connections with their members. By adding community features, organization leaders can offer discussion threads, blogs, groups, resource libraries, and other features that allow members to collaborate and interact. Students, researchers, SMEs, hobbyists, practitioners, professionals, HR managers—any group with shared interests—can allRead… Read more »

How to Host a Successful Facebook Q&A

This post is an excerpt from our recent GovLoop guide, Government’s Guide to Using Facebook. To read the whole guide for free, download it here. Town halls and question-and-answer sessions have long been a staple of democracy in the United States. But how do you engage with your constituents in a digital world where theyRead… Read more »

Smart, Personal Newsletters You’ll Actually Want To Open

Most of us guard our inboxes jealously. After all, if you’re already wading through dozens of email newsletters you never read (and can’t remember subscribing to), the thought of giving away your email address to yet another marketer seems crazy. It doesn’t have to be that way! If you hunt through the internet, you canRead… Read more »

10 Reasons You Should Enjoy Writing Your Cover Letter

For a lot of people, writing the cover letter is the most excruciatingly painful experience of applying for a job. It shouldn’t be. Here’s why: 1) Cover letters are stories. Everyone loves stories. 2) Cover letters are stories on your favorite topic. You can write a story about yourself, and enjoy yourself while doing so,Read… Read more »

A Quick Refresher on Tricky Word Choices

Now that we’ve all mastered when to use “they’re,” “their,” and “there” appropriately, here are the correct uses of some other tricky word choices that threaten to derail a well written sentence. Follow these general rules to avoid an embarrassing mistake in your next email. Than / Then Use “than” when comparing two things. ForRead… Read more »

Did a News Story Get Your Goat? Don’t Kick Back

Ultimately, all we’re talking about are accuracy, fairness and thoroughness. Journalists share those values with us. Framing our discussions around those values can get results from a complaint while building a productive relationship with a reporter.

Marketing Government or Government Marketing?

This topic isn’t really about the New Zealand government like all my other posts but it’s related to my work in the public sector so I thought you might find it interesting as well. So I’m doing something radical that I wanted to share with you: I’m taking my own advice. I know. You’re thinking,Read… Read more »

How Governments Can Improve Everyone’s Customer Experience

I spend a lot of time talking about the poor quality of federal customer experience (CX) and the effects it has on the public. I’ve already talked about how federal agencies averaged the lowest score in Forrester’s CX Index. In fact, most of the worst performers in any industry were federal agencies and even theRead… Read more »

Haters Gonna Hate, So What Can You Do About It?

This post is a follow-up to an unanswered question from GovLoop’s recent training, Critical Conversations. Want more topics and information like this? Make sure to register for our upcoming training summit in July, the Next Generation of Government Training Summit. While my distaste for cilantro is legendary and I’d rather clean a chicken coop than watch aRead… Read more »

The Wolf PACT of Innovation – What Alan and Gov Have In Common

Back in 2009, the movie the Hangover introduced us to the ultimate Wolfpack. In the film, the oddball character Alan, played wonderfully by Zach Galifianakis, toasts his future brother-in-law during his bachelor party. “You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as aRead… Read more »

Communications