Email is the hub of social media

When someone follows me on Twitter, I get an email letting me know. I usually take a quick look at their profile and maybe an update or two to find out if I know the person and may want to follow them.

If someone wants to friend me on Facebook or leaves a comment on my "wall," I get an email from Facebook. I make a note to myself to respond later.

If someone signs up for a group on GovLoop, I get a note. Or, if someone makes a connection on LinkedIn, I get yet another email. If you comment on this blog entry... you guessed it, I'll get an email letting me know.

I think you get the idea.

There's no question that email is the hub of social media. Email is the No. 1 use of the Internet according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, used daily by more than 60 percent of Americans.

Many Americans use social media applications, but they can't spend all day logged into those communities. So services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter understand that they need to use email to keep their audiences engaged in conversations. In many ways, my email inbox is the ultimate "mashup" of my entire online life across many social media applications.

I've recently interviewed Web Managers at several major federal agencies and cities to learn more about where they see the connection between email and social media in the public sector. There are some exciting ideas and some easy ways to make the email updates governments are sending to the public a key enabler and "hub" of the social media initiatives that different agencies are pursuing.

We'll be posting our specific ideas on this soon, but where do you see the opportunities?

Thinking through your Content Management System Needs

You've been talking about it for a while, but now your organization has finally decided to get a new content management system (CMS).  This is the "BIG" project of the year.  All of your hopes and dreams for where your website is heading are wrapped up in your CMS project. 

In fact, if you're a typical organization, everyone has started to project their own goals onto the project.  "We'll have that fixed when we get our new CMS," they say, and, "That will all be addressed with our new CMS." 

Goals for almost every CMS project:

• Keep content more up to date
• Allow individual "content managers" easier access to update their areas of the website
• Create a more consistent look and feel for the organization
• Make search indexing and search within the site easier
• Improve navigation
  

More advanced goals for your CMS project:

• Improve content structure: Produce content in multiple standard formats so it can be reused by other websites and systems
• Support improved navigation: Publish content with appropriate tags and categorizations so that new content appears in all appropriate locations rather than just in one place.  For example, if you publish three safety publications on water, fire, and snow, the publication on "fire" should appear in the fire safety area of the website as well as the "safety publications" area without much extra effort
• Works well with other technologies (Web 2.0 widgets, other systems you buy, etc.):  Your CMS needs to "play well with others."  If you are looking at CMS vendors and the vendor says, "we do that" in response to all of your questions, that is red flag.  CMS are not best in class at everything.  You may want to use YouTube for video, Google for search, GovDelivery for email communication, and Wordpress for blogging.  Find out how the CMS will work with these systems rather than hoping the CMS will do everything you want.
  

5 outcomes you should expect from your content management project:

1. New content can be posted within 15 minutes by any approved individual in the organization. 
   
   I know that some content has to be approved, but if your project is more focused on "workflow" and approvals rather than efficiency, you may want to rethink things.  The fact is that in order to be current, Web content cannot be bottle-necked by cumbersome approval processes.  Set policies and guidelines for content and let people publish without too many extra steps.  As long as you're not publishing the new interest rates, you can make edits later without major consequence.
   
   
2. Any web page can be published as an XML / RSS Feed at the same time as it is published in HTML.
   
   This ensures that other Web managers, bloggers, and even other systems (including GovDelivery) can read and interpret your page in an automated way.  In the Web 2.0 world, this type of openness and sharing is important and will ensure that your content "has legs" and gets reposted and repurposed across the Internet.
   
   
3. All web pages are easily indexed by major search engines.  I'm not an expert on this, but it's an easy topic to research online.  Google has all kinds of tools for this at www.google.com/webmasters
   
   
4. Content can be published to multiple locations at the same time without too much extra effort.
   
   
5. Your system supports a user-centric design. 
   
   Oops, you thought your CMS project was going to give you a "usable website."  If that's the case, you should stop right now and focus a bunch of time on the design and usability of your website.  A CMS is for managing the content on your website.  If you have a poor design and a good CMS, you will just have very up to date, but unusable content.  

Finally, you need to have a way of capturing information from people who are interested in your content so you can reach out to them when updates occur.  My company, GovDelivery, works with government websites on this and has found the following best practices to support the rollout of new content management systems.

• Have a proactive communication system in place before you launch your CMS. Why? You want to know what people are interested in on your current site so you can focus more effort on that content and make sure people know how to find it when the new website is up and running.  Even the best redesigned websites often annoy their most regular users.  You can help prevent this frustration by allowing regular users to signup for updates before you rollover to the new CMS when links/designs/navigation will typically change dramatically.
  
  
• Make sure that your new CMS will work with whatever proactive communication solution you are using or plan to use to allow you to automatically send updates when you publish Web content.  You don't want to publish Web content and then have to login separately to send email.  In GovDelivery's case, if you publish information in RSS or can connect to a Web Services API, you'll be able to automate your outbound email communication.
  

This is a complex topic that I will return to if there is any interest.  When I mentioned I was writing this blog entry, I got some great links to other resources on vendor websites and regarding open sources CMS.  If the topic is of interest, I will write another article on vendor selection.

Why Email Starts Fights

I have the following rules for my use of email with colleagues, friends, and family:

• Avoid emails when I'm angry
• Avoid constructive feedback by email
• Avoid emails in the evening (Google has a new tool called Mail Goggles that forces people to do math problems before sending email in the evening so you don't email anyone while intoxicated)

This incredibly insightful video that should be required watching for the whole world really gets to the bottom of why email is not useful for many types of communication.

The main reason... drum roll please... email is good for facts and data, but does not carry the visual and emotional cues that are critical to human interaction and understanding.

What does this mean for government?

• For official communication (i.e., facts and data), email is unrivaled and is perfectly suited for the role.  You can see my previous entry on this.
  
• For citizen service, email is only useful up to the point where tone becomes important
• For internal collaboration and cooperation between offices and agencies, there is no substitute for in person and (as a decent substitute) phone meetings and conversations

What I Want vs. What I Need

When we organize websites and determine what kind of content we're going to offer for subscription when communicating by email, there is a common question that needs to be answered.  Do we give people what they want or let them tell us who they are so we can give them what we think they need?

I've been talking with a number of agencies and cities recently about this challenge.

In the email world (where GovDelivery's work is focused), I see two major categories of content.   The problem is that I have a hard time categorizing them.  I'm hoping this blog entry forces me to come up with some labels.

Here it goes:

1) "Give me what I want" content is content that the user finds on your website and determines is of value.  The user says to you that she wants to know when a certain type or category of information is updated.  Examples of this might include: "Diabetes Publications"  "Updates to Park Hours"  "City Council Minutes" "Federal Reserve Board Rulings" or "Tax-related Press Releases"

2) "Give me what you think I need" content is content where the user self identifies as being interested in a certain issue or as having certain characteristics.  The user says to the content creator, "Please send me whatever you think will be useful to me."

The best example of this type of information is an e-newsletter.  (A recent favorite for me that is this one targeted at e-government professionals:  http://www.usa.gov/dotgovbuzz.html).  The IRS e-newsletter for Tax Professionals is another good example.

Another example would be where a local government, like San Bernardino County, CA gathers zip code or neighborhood from subscribers and then sends messages to those subscribers on any topic affecting that zip code.   We see this type of approach used for emergencies where it's hard for users to know ahead of time what the issue will be.  The user wants to say to the content creator, "Look, I live in this particular area.  If you ever think I need to know about something, please use your judgment about what to send me."

Both of these types of content play an important role.  We recommend to clients that they offer as many "Give me what I want" options as possible and limit "Give me what you think I need" content to where there is a clear stakeholder group that you think will trust you to create targeted content of interest.  The "Give me what you think I need" content takes more effort and requires that your audience trust your judgment (a diabetic might want to read the "top ten health tips" from the NIH, but not from a pharmaceutical company).  This type of content allows you to help the user filter through the vast amount of content on your website to see what you as the content creator or manager thinks matters most.

If you use the proper cross-promotional techniques, offering both types of content has another benefit: You will actually get more people signed up to all of your updates.  Why?  Because just like shoppers on e-commerce sites are open to buying related products when cross-promotion occurs at the right time, citizens looking for content are open to signing up for different types of content during the initial subscription process. 

A user who signs up for the "Monthly City Newsletter" might also sign up for updates on Park Hours and City Budget Announcements.  A user who signs up for Mens Health Publications from the CDC might also sign-up for the Obesity Prevention Newsletter.

Email Attachment Policies

Attachments are one of the most useful features of email. The general public uses email attachments to share photos with friends and family, businesses use them to exchange legal documents, and, in an emergency situation, a government could use attachments to convey important safety information. In a natural disaster, for example, if the government's Web site was unavailable, an email containing a file with important safety tips could be very valuable.
 
Like most people, I tend to take attachments for granted; however, two recent questions caused me to examine attachments a bit more closely. A client wanted to know if email bounce rates were higher for emails with attachments, compared to emails without them. Another client wanted to know if there was general data about businesses blocking attachments from their email servers. While I couldn't find an answer to the second question, finding an answer to the first one was eye opening, and sheds some light on the second.
 
Nearly 50M emails are sent using GovDelivery each month. That data provides access to a lot of valuable data about how ISPs treat attachments. We examined the data and concluded that while senders who include attachments have slightly higher bounce rates, the differences are so small as to be almost negligible, far less than 1%. Getting to this answer uncovered some interesting details, which I'd like to share here.
 
The major email providers, including AOL, Gmail and Yahoo! have fairly liberal policies regarding attachments, even accepting rather large files, or more accurately large message sizes. (A message could include multiple files. The sum of the attachments and the email content makes up the message size.)
 

• AOL 16MB
• Gmail 20MB
• Yahoo! 10MB (a premium edition supports larger file sizes)

The primary concern with email attachments for most ISPs and mail recipients is the risk of viruses. AOL's statement about attachments is clear on this point: "Attached files can contain virus programs or Trojan Horse programs that could damage the files on your computer or steal your password. Never download a file unless you know the person who sent you the file, and were expecting to receive that particular file from him/her. "
 
To protect their customers, AOL, Gmail and other providers block emails that contain attachments of some file types. Gmail's policy is "Gmail won't accept these types of files even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format. If this type of message is sent to your Gmail address, it is bounced back to the sender automatically."
 
Some other things to consider if you plan to send attachments, especially large attachments, regardless of the end-user's email provider is do they use dial-up and other slow Internet connections? These connections can prevent attachments from downloading completely. Other reasons a user might not receive your attachment include:
 

• Full browser cache will prevent attachments from being downloaded
• Full email box prevents delivery of the attachment. Email providers are expanding size limits all the time, but corporate and small ISPs may still have smaller limits.

 
Of the 50M emails sent through GovDelivery each month without attachments, 99.57% successfully reach their final destination. The remaining 1/2-percent are sent to invalid email addresses, defunct ISPs, or are filtered by overzealous filtering applications. Emails with attachments, reach their destination at only a slightly lower rate overall, 99.20%. GovDelivery allows users to send emails up to 3MB in size, including message content. Also, GovDelivery will accept any number of attachments, as long as the sum is less than 3MB. Judging by the delivery rates, this is sufficient to pass most ISP filters.
 
If you are concerned about your message getting through to the end user, a common alternative to an attachment is to post the content you'd normally include in the email to a Web page. Provide a link to the URL in the email. Other strategies include compressing large or multiple attachments using a program like WinZip. Lastly, always remember that common file types are best. Adobe Reader is free, so sending a PDF is a decent way to ensure that your message can be read, other file types may require expensive programs to run.
 
Attachments are still a useful and common part of email communication. Taking a few precautions will help ensure that the messages reach their final destination.
  

Make the Default Count! Choice is not always bliss

I hate having to make choices all the time.  As empowering as it should be to have options... they are usually just annoying. 

I think that is why someone invented suits-- business casual is more comfortable, but it takes me an extra 5 minutes to get dressed because I have to make a bunch of choices.  (Quick side note on the benefit of suits: I didn't even know that I was color blind until I started going business casual.)

I spent 3 minutes yesterday trying to pick which kind of apple I was going to buy.  Why does Whole Foods give me 10 different choices of apples?  If they have to do this, could they at least have the "recommended apple" sitting out in a prominent location?

Microsoft has figured out how to make the default count.  That's why they have "fast setup" which requires few choices and "advanced setup" which, in all honesty, I have never used so I don't really know what it does though I imagine it would give me a bunch of annoying options that I don't need.

When I provide input into software and Web design at GovDelivery, I always push for the same approach.  I want clients to know that if they take the path of least resistance, it will probably be the right path.

A recent article in the New Republic titled, "Easy Does It: How to Make Lazy People do the Right Thing" (unfortunately requires a subscription) addresses this opportunity in the public policy context. 

For example, did you know that by allowing employers to make 401K plans opt-out instead of opt-in, the government has been able to greatly improve participation in 401K plans?  Turns out, the average non-saver isn't choosing not to participate in their 401K plan, they are choosing not to fill out any forms.  Make them fill out a form to opt-out of saving, and the same choice (don't fill out any forms) leads to a better outcome (401K participation).

The only thing I reject about this article is the reference to the public as "Lazy."  I don't think I'm lazy, and I don't think you're lazy either, but in this day and age, almost everyone is busy and making choices takes time. 

When you're communicating with the public, it can be scary to recommend something, but you can do the public a favor in your web design and software design by thinking of your "default option" as the "recommended option."

Hopefully, this slight shift in thinking will lead you to put more thought into the default and will raise your design standards so you're not just making it easy to make choices, you're also making it easy for users to succeed without making any choices at all.