Content Strategy

Three Teams Using the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards Talk about Their Experiences

In the five months since we launched the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards — the U.S. government’s very own set of common UI components and visual styles for websites — over a dozen websites have used components of the Draft Standards on their sites. Recently, we talked to three federal web designers about their experiences

Melody Kramer

Apr 06, 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

How to Integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into Existing Projects

One of the most common questions we receive is: Should I integrate the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards into my existing project? The answer is: it depends. A lot of design research supports the notion that many people who use government websites or services may benefit from consistency across interactions, user experiences, and behavior across

Carolyn Dew

Melody Kramer

Maya Benari

Mar 25, 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

Making the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards Better Through Your Feedback

Since our launch of the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards last September, hundreds of people have provided feedback on the project through GitHub issues and via email. We’ve received dozens of feature requests as well as over 400 contributions from the open source community.

Carolyn Dew

Melody Kramer

Mar 16, 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

Quizzes: The Secret Weapon of the World’s Best Content Creators

Online quizzes have rapidly risen to the front of the social media revolution. “In 2014, 8 out of 10 of the most shared articles on the Web were quizzes,” states Owen Fuller of content company Movement Ventures. Content creators leverage quizzes to successfully drive customer engagement and increase customer website conversions (to take action such

John Paul

Mar 08, 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

New FTC Website for Identity Theft Victims Offers Personal Recovery Plans

Identity theft is a big problem and it takes time and effort to deal with the issues that it causes. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has a new tool that makes it easier for identity theft victims to recover from identity theft by providing a personal recovery plan. No matter what the person’s specific identity

Rosario Mendez

Mar 03, 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

What do Mac & Cheese and Power of Attorneys Have in Common?

They ranked among our top three most popular emails in 2015. At USAGov, we know that email is often our #1 driver of traffic to our content, and nine out of 10 times it’s our go-to outreach tool for disseminating timely information. But doing email sends consistently and effectively isn’t always clear cut, especially when

Victoria Bitzer-Wales

Feb 26, 2016

Bringing Agile Inside

We hear a lot about agile software development being used in work with customers and end users. User stories are developed, coders and programmers turn them into prototypes, then testing is done to make sure the features work and do what is expected. But, agile is more than a way to develop software; it’s a

Karen Trebon

Feb 25, 2016

Touring Top Colleges with the Peace Corps

I wanted to share our first dabble with data storytelling, a visualization supporting the Peace Corps Top Colleges initiative led by our awesome press team. Our goal was to enhance and expand the experience of the Top Colleges campaign and use of the data beyond the usual suspects like infographics, and other assets to show

Chris Rottler

Feb 24, 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

Designing User-Friendly, Educational and Engaging Mobile Gaming Apps

How do you reach audiences with important health information and leave users asking for more? Is it enough to create responsive websites written in plain language or to design apps with health tips optimized for handheld devices? While those ideas are a step in the right direction, we do not live in a world where,

Alex Casanova

Feb 19, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: Robot Messaging Goes Mainstream

John Connor can’t save you. Robots are here to take over the world. Two interesting new consumer mobile and digital content experiences were launched in the past week, signaling some of the first mainstream brands embracing this new paradigm of interactive, bot-driven content experiences: Quartz’s News App and The New York Times Election Slack Bot. Both

Will Sullivan

Feb 16, 2016

Putting Your Main Message First

Want to learn how to clearly communicate your message? Watch the new “Put Your Main Message First” video from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Created by USCIS’ Office of Communications, the video teaches you about the importance of organizing your information so that your audience understands your key messages. “It’s common in government writing

Alice Chen

Feb 12, 2016

Microsites Keep Your Audience Updated on Outbreaks

You can now help your audience stay up-to-date on the Zika virus outbreak—and others—through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s microsite, which is an easily embeddable collection of virus information for your agency’s website.

Andrea Sigritz

Feb 11, 2016

What is Content?

In this age of content marketing that has led publications to call certain ads “paid content,” those of us in government need to broaden our ideas about what “content” is. Many of us get it, but some agencies may also be missing opportunities because they don’t even grasp that content is a broad and fluid

Tyrus Manuel

Andrea Sigritz

Feb 10, 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

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