Communications

Analytics-Driven Media Planning: The Way It’s Done

By Elizabeth Kiken, Teena Hampton, and Annette Picon When media planning is done well, media selection is based on big data through syndicated research surveys. All people want media to reach the right audience. And some companies know who their audience is, while others may be surprised to find out who their audience actually isRead… Read more »

What The Public Wants From a Government Twitter Account

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the average citizen feels like they don’t know what the hell is going on in Washington. I feel fairly confident in drawing this conclusion because every time, or nearly every time I talk to someone outside the Beltway they say something like thisRead… Read more »

When Your Colleague is the Customer

As government leaders, we place a high priority on serving the public well, and rightfully so. But often our customers not only external to our organizations; our customers are often our colleagues in the next office, or in a nearby agency.  These internal customers deserve our best customer service, too. What does really great internalRead… Read more »

Why Starbucks’ Race Together Campaign Should be Careful

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has asked employees at his 7,300 stores in the U.S. to voluntarily write #RaceTogether on their coffee cups of their customers as a window to talking about inclusion with his baristas. While he should be commended for his corporate responsibility to initiate conversations with customers on race relations, his approach addressesRead… Read more »

The Present & Future of Distance Learning in Government

This week I met with Dale Carpenter, the National Park Service’s (NPS) Distance Learning (DL) Program Manager, to collect some thoughts about the current and future state of DL in government.   Dale’s unique perspective includes experience from years of service in both the public and private sector. What does a day look like inRead… Read more »

Don’t Leave Email Deliverability to Chance – Manage It

All the email marketing advice you’ve read thus far in this series on improving your email strategy by Q2 means nothing if your messages never reach your audience. Deliverability refers to a message’s ability to arrive in intended recipients’ inboxes. It is an often-overlooked metric that has a large effect on your marketing efforts.

On The Use of Memes In Government Communication

We begin with the assumption that government communication should be as good or better than private-sector communication, for three reasons: The public relies on the government as a trustworthy source of information  Many are misinformed or under-informed about what the government does and the services it offers  Trust in the government by the public isRead… Read more »