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BACKGROUND: 95% of all U.S. teens are online, and 81% of those use some form of social media. As a result, many groups that educate, work with or serve youth are also online. Figuring out social media’s role in data to action outreach can be unclear. Many programs within state health departments are limited in the degree to which they can utilize social media platforms, due to organizational restrictions. Many also have little formal experience in making the most of these platforms, posing a challenge to effectively reaching teens.
METHODS: The Occupational Health Surveillance Program (OHSP), within the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), wanted to create a social media plan for its Teens at Work Project, which uses surveillance findings to target educators and other youth-serving stakeholders to reach youth about workplace health and safety. OHSP used CDC’s SocialMediaWorks tool to develop its plan, and then worked with the MDPH Communications Office to revise and implement it, based on the media platforms available through the health department. Based on previous Teens at Work outreach campaigns, OHSP analyzed media metrics to evaluate potential success of the proposed social media strategy.
RESULTS: CDC SocialMediaWorks highlighted Facebook and a Blog as the top recommended channels through which Teens at Work should disseminate data and messages to its target audience, based on project goals, anticipated content, and staff/budget available. Websites, Twitter and Google+ were secondary recommendations. Adjusted to keep in line with department constraints, the final social media strategy stems from the health department’s Blog, Twitter account and program and partner webpages. Google Analytic reports and health department-based website metrics shows that online access to Teens at Work educational materials has increased drastically in past years, with traffic skyrocketing during peak outreach initiatives, particularly when web-based and social media are used.
CONCLUSIONS: Web metrics indicate that the Teens at Work social media strategy will be more successful at reaching our audience than print- and e-mail-based outreach alone. Surprisingly, though, even with the increased web traffic, the project continues to receive high numbers of faxed material requests, showing that print mailing is still a critical component of outreach. The spikes in web hits and social shares helped to reinforce CDC SocialMediaWorks as a useful tool for building a social media strategy. Utilizing partner agency social media channels may be a work-around for some of the limitations posed by MDPH.