We applaud Roll Call’s article, “More Members Are Using Social Media to Interact With Their Constituents” (Jan. 3, 2013).

We believe that this subject deserves much more attention than it has gotten in the recent past and so we thank Roll Call for writing this article.

Though the article touched on some important points, we feel that iConstituent’s contribution to the use of social media in Congress wasn’t adequately recognized. Introduced to Congress in 2003, iConstituent has been at the forefront of government-to-constituent communications, providing members of Congress with robust communication tools to better serve their constituents.

Last year, iConstituent provided nearly 200 congressional offices with expanded social media capabilities, including a Social Media Dashboard that provides visual, real-time insight into the performance of all their social media accounts and enables them to truly understand the effectiveness of their digital communications strategy.

Over the last 12 months, we have seen substantial growth in the use of our social media tools and view these tools as mission critical to all congressional offices.

The era of expensive, franked, direct-mail campaigns to reach constituents is shrinking as fast for congressional offices as it is in the private sector.

Members of Congress should be taking advantage of the benefits in reporting, insight and actionable intelligence social media platforms give — especially with the potential for more budget cuts looming on the horizon. Social media is a cost-efficient, effective and proven method for communicating with constituents and is a cornerstone in iConstituent’s ongoing mission to create a vital connection between every person and their government.

Zain Khan, CEO of iConstituent