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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.

USAGov receives and responds to questions directly from the public in many ways: through social media, on page surveys on USA.gov and USAGov en Español, and through chats and calls. One powerful tool in the USAGov toolbelt is our interactive voice response (IVR) system in both English and Spanish through the USAGov Contact Center.

During the coronavirus pandemic, government websites are working to make their COVID-19-related content easier for people to find in search engine results. They’re doing it by using SpecialAnnouncement schema.org tags.

Visit this blog post from Digital.gov to get a clear explanation of how these tags work, and find out what USA.gov is learning by using them.

A significant part of USAGov’s work is to answer the public’s questions about government through our USAGov Contact Center. In 2019, we received more than 430,000 calls. Our agents answered many requests for other agencies’ phone numbers and questions about the status of applications, payments, or personal information. We believed that we could answer these requests more efficiently by expanding our use of interactive voice response (IVR). An IVR is an automated system that routes callers on a phone tree, based on their voice responses or pressing a specific button on their phone keypad.

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.