New USAGov Program Aims to Help Agencies Market Within the Federal Government

Apr 2, 2018

This article was originally posted on the USAGov blog. Claire Loxsom is a Program Analyst on USAGov’s Content and Outreach team.

All government agencies have a common goal: to serve the public. As the front door to government information and services, we help agencies achieve this goal. We strive to make it easier for the public to find what they need by aggregating and disseminating information about government programs and services.

USAGov has an Outreach and Marketing team that helps agencies amplify their key messages through a variety of channels. We’re most successful when we partner with agencies to develop and promote initiatives that are tailored to different audiences. In our partnerships, agency staff serve as the subject matter experts who understand the content and trends in fields like health care, benefits, and consumer protection. In turn, we provide a powerful brand, marketing expertise, and an omni-channel platform.

Here are some examples of how we’ve worked with agencies in the past to amplify information about their programs and services:

  • Smithsonian Science How Talks - We receive information about Smithsonian Institute webinars and videos related to elementary, middle, and high school curriculums up to two weeks in advance. We then promote the events to our education subscribers in a weekly newsletter. This has provided significant attendance numbers to Smithsonian’s live events and contributed to a steady increase in email click and open rates. This has also sustained our parent and teacher community after we retired Kids.gov.

  • SSA Five Things to Know Before You Retire Facebook Live - We worked with the Social Security Administration to produce and manage a Facebook Live event in January 2018 to discuss retirement benefits. Together, we developed talking points and promoted the event to influencers on social media and the general public. We received nearly 300 questions and reached over 270,000 people.

  • SBA Hispanic Entrepreneurs Google Hangout - We helped the Small Business Administration host and moderate a Google Hangout to educate young entrepreneurs in Spanish. The 30-minute event attracted 200 viewers and received more than 200 questions, generating media coverage and 1,900 page views for SBA’s online course.

  • FTC National Consumer Protection Week and More: In March 2017, USAGov partnered with the Federal Trade Commission on a six-month bilingual public education campaign. We created a joint editorial content calendar, which mapped out a timeline for digital media strategies. As part of the strategy, we co-hosted multiple video broadcasts, including a Facebook Live event for National Consumer Protection Week that reached 24,000 people.

A screenshot of the homepage for the USAGov digital toolkit. It has the words, "Ready to Work with You" with two buttons below it; one that says, Get Started, and another that says, View Branding Toolkit.

A screenshot of the homepage for the USAGov digital toolkit.

If you’re interested in learning more about our team or want to know how to become a partner, explore our Partnership Toolkit.

You can also sign up to attend our live event, “Marketing-as-a-Service: An Introduction to USAGov’s Partnership Toolkit” hosted by DigitalGov University on Tuesday, April 3 at 2 PM, ET. We will be demoing the toolkit and explaining in more detail how we approach marketing and outreach in the government.

Originally posted by Claire Loxsom on Apr 2, 2018
Apr 2, 2018