CDC is using social media

Erin Edgerton from CDC shared the social media tools they used to handle the Salmonella outbreak. They needed to reach a lot of people, so they tried a lot of tools.

Blogs
A webinar for bloggers
Buttons and Badges: like mini posters you can put on your webpage or your social network page
Widgets: an outbreak map, the FDA database ( you can put this content on your website and it is updated automatically)
Twitter: a micro blog ( you get mini test updates (140 characters)
Youtube: They created a what to do/not do video- 60 second video and Anatmony of an Outreak- 5 minutes (bet you can guess which one got more views)
E-cards
Mobile site This has information that people might need to check while they are away from home
My Space page ( they are on Facebook too)
An Island in Second Life
Podcasts

Flickr: need some photos for HINI?

Resources for partners: they create what they call mirror webpages...so state and local health departments can put CDC content up on their own website ( uses RSS to update)

If you want to see all the social media tools CDC is using. Go to their social media page.

Here are examples of how CDC has used social media in campaigns.

Want to know if anyone actually uses the CDC social media tools? They post their metrics dashboard. You can see what data they are collecting.