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How do people use Facebook and Twitter differently? Do they know which accounts and links in social media posts they can trust? What started as a USAGov study of people’s thoughts about short links in Facebook and Twitter posts taught us more than we were expecting.

Social media is a key part of the USAGov outreach strategy. It helps us share quick and clear information directly with the public. We regularly review our social media channels to see where we’re getting the best return on our investment.

The USAGov Contact Center helps people find information on federal agencies, programs, benefits, services, and more by phone and chat in both English and Spanish. Each month, we do a deep dive to analyze what kind of information users are looking for, so we can learn about them and their needs. 

A good following on social media is fundamental to USAGov’s goal of getting clear and helpful government information to Spanish speakers around the country. To make sure we’re reaching the right people at the right time with valuable content, our team began to rethink our USAGov en Español Twitter strategy.

User data guides what we do at USAGov. Without it, we wouldn’t know what government questions people are searching for. And we wouldn’t know how to design our content to make it easier for people to find and understand the answers.

Take a look at the Top USA.gov Queries from Google in 2019 and compare.

Take a look at the Top Searches on USA.gov in 2019 and compare.

How many people are visiting USA.gov and USA.gov/espanol right now? What kind of devices are they using and what content are they looking for the most? These are all easy-to-answer questions with the USAGov analytics dashboard. It’s open to everyone and provides a snapshot of popular content on our websites and technical and geographical stats about our users. 

When it comes to writing content for the web, we can’t ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It doesn’t matter how great your content is if the user can’t find it quickly. That’s why a good relationship between SEO and content is key to improve content visibility.

Earlier this year, we shared a blog post about our methods for surveying our bilingual email subscribers. We wanted to learn more about our users, their needs and preferences, to serve them better.