CDC Leverages Social Media to Inform Americans About H1N1

Key Activities:

In their H1N1 Flu campaign, CDC’s wide-ranging use of social media is impressive. In addition to the main CDC flu web site and their social media tools site, their foray into high-tech prevention and awareness includes (as of September 2009):

You Tube: The CDC channel has 46 videos, and an H1N1 video was viewed almost one million times in a two-week time-frame.
Twitter: With four different Twitter accounts, two of the CDC accounts are solely concerned with H1N1 flu information. The main account is growing swiftly and has over 218,000 followers (http://twitter.com/CDCemergency).
Facebook: The CDC currently has 6,300 fans and is working toward establishing a larger presence.
MySpace: This fledgling CDC effort has 900 “friends” so far
Mobile: CDC supplies web surfers and mobile users with social media tools, mobile information, online videos, and content optimized for mobile delivery (http://m.cdc.gov.\)
Widgets: CDC may be ahead of the web-surfing curve with its use of widgets to facilitate synchronization of e-health marketing content across various platforms for web sites. Health communicators and other users can simply paste the widget code into a web site or blog, to provide their audiences with real-time news, information and timely tips about H1N1 flu

See below for a video focusing on CDC's efforts to educate the public about H1N1 via social media and other topics.

Results:

In April, 2009 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began a collaborative effort to provide consumers and health industry partners with accurate, timely information about the H1N1 influenza outbreak. The efforts have been rewarded:

There were nearly 33 million views of the CDC H1N1 Flu page, with over 6 million additional views of “Key Facts about Swine Flu” and “Swine Flu and You” linked pages.
On the Web Campaign H1N1 Flu site, there were 82 million page views, plus 56,000 click-throughs for H1N1 Buttons and Badges.
More than 4 million H1N1 e-mail updates were sent out.
7 million RSS CDC H1N1 Flu Updates were registered.
Some days on Twitter, there were more than 10,000 Swine Flu tweets per hour.

Industry:

Healthcare

Primary Communications Discipline:

Public Health Communications

Organizations Involved:

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Campaign Dates:

October 2008 - Present

For More Information:

KruResearch.com article, “The CDC’s H1N1 Flu Campaign: Educating the Masses with Social Media” http://www.kruresearch.com/content/kru_report_1_2.htm#1218cb17af22289e_L...
Desautelhege blog article, “Swine Flu Social Media Lessons of the Week” May 1, 2009 http://desautelhege.blogspot.com/2009/05/swine-flu-social-media-lessons-...
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention H1N1 social media campaigns http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/campaigns/h1n1/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Social Media Tactical Guidance and Best Practices Guides, Released February 1, 2010, http://www.cdc.gov/SocialMedia/Tools/guidelines/?s_cid=tw_eh_78
CDC statistics & charts http://www.cdc.gov/metrics
Main CDC H1N1 flu web site http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu
CDC social media tools site http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/h1n1/
CDC main web site http://www.cdc.gov

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