Communications

Google Warns: “Get Mobile-Friendly”

User experience is greatly affected by the devices people use: phones, game consoles, TVs, ‘phablets’, tablets, desktops, and now, wearables. Recognizing the importance of mobile devices, Google seeks to make the Web friendlier for mobile users, and it recently announced that: “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a rankingRead… Read more »

Why We Love To Hate “Public Affairs”

Over the past eleven years, I’ve worked in a communications capacity for five federal agencies. Chaired a best practice group for federal communicators across the government. And interacted with colleagues on task forces, working groups and listservs. They’re just as smart and capable as their private-sector counterparts. I’ve talked with many of them personally, too.Read… Read more »

6 Steps to Convince your Boss to Adopt a New Email Strategy

Sometimes change can be difficult for agencies and organizations to embrace (especially when the change is centered around technology and/or public image), so you may need to do a little prep work to ensure you’re ready for the conversation about updating your email strategy. Here are six steps to broaching this subject with the powers-that-be.

Meeting Your Web Audience in Their Language

In today’s communications world, you simply can’t ignore the global reach of the Internet, regardless of your industry. The vast majority of organizations — including those without physical offices — benefit from, and are becoming increasingly dependent upon, a strong international presence to communicate and connect with their communities. Every communications professional must face theRead… Read more »

Just How Popular Are .Gov Websites? Very, Very Popular

The world can now peek under the dashboard of U.S. government websites—an analytics dashboard, that is. A new site, analytics.usa.gov, shows a live, aggregate view of the Google Analytics data for many federal government websites. The site also links to the open source datasets that run behind the analytics dashboard, should you be in a tinkering mood. The most impressiveRead… Read more »

Some Tools of the Trade: Part 1

My team helps support creative practice in the Scottish Government: encouraging and equipping staff to come forward with, and implement, ideas that will improve our corporate systems and our policy making. Sometimes what we do can seem a bit like magic. We come in, sprinkle a bit of fairy dust over a problem and ‘hey presto’,Read… Read more »