LinkedIn Company Pages once held a lot of promise, but their value has becoming increasingly limited over time. Most organizations can now probably either live without them or restrict their usage to a simple organizational profile. This post assesses the past and current state of the feature and offers guidance on the most practical ways toRead… Read more »
A few months ago I did a brave thing (for me) and finally registered to vote as a Libertarian. It was a tough thing to do. For one thing Libertarians have a sort of crappy brand. For another they’re a little weird. Thirdly they’re not mainstream, and so they influence rather than win elections. ButRead… Read more »
Packaging. Why do government communicators, marketers and brand strategists do it? To find out, take a look at a gift wrap site. Honest. The parallels between wrapping a gift and packaging a person are striking. A friend at work gave me a wry smile and said maybe he’d let me package him sometime. I reckoned that heRead… Read more »
Back in 2011, before the former White House aid ever assumed public office in Chicago, Twitter user @MayorEmanuel accrued nearly 50,000 followers and published more than 1,500 aggressively funny tweets showcasing the prospective mayor. In 2012, Secretary of State Clinton was similarly satirized, this time on the Tumblr site Texts from Hillary. Nearly 45,000 TumblrRead… Read more »
Runway models sell products. But don’t confuse them with the brand. Because the heart of who you are – your image, to other people – is more boring, a series of decisions: Who is picked to run a company, an agency, a school. How ordinary people treat one another within the organization. What kindRead… Read more »
In our recent online training, Spreading the Word: Data-Driven Marketing for Government, we spoke with Sean Shoffstall, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at Teradata Interactive, about the way government’s marketing strategies are changing. He admitted upfront that the topic itself is surprising for many public servants. Most agencies and many nonprofit organizations don’t haveRead… Read more »
When you provide 5,600 blood transfusions, 424,000 measles vaccinations, 18,000 safety trainings, and countless other services to citizens each day, how are you supposed to present a single organization and mission? That was the question the American Red Cross’s (ARC) first Chief Marketing Officer, Peggy Dyer, was challenged with five years ago. Her response wasRead… Read more »
Amidst the swarm of emails that flood inboxes daily, it can be challenging to make sure your voice is heard in the mix. Just because you have subscribers who are already interested in what you have to say, doesn’t mean that they will open every announcement you send them. But by following a few simpleRead… Read more »
By Koi Hernandez, Design Fellow at GovDelivery With Google now automatically showing images in emails, email marketing has taken a turn for a more visual and captivating approach. In a previous GovDelivery post on various image file types, we learned about the “faster loading cousin” of the .PNG, the .GIF. GIFs can and have alwaysRead… Read more »
Why is your organization on social media? Is it just because everyone else is doing it? Or are you trying to reach more people, to engage with your customers, to educate, entertain, and be part of a conversation? People are pretty good these days about scanning through their feeds, and weeding out anything that doesn’tRead… Read more »