Evaluating the Impact of Digital Media: S.O.C.I.A.L. Framework Applied

Integrating digital media for health communication campaigns has been a slow process, as restrictions on two-way communication and fear of the “openness” of the medium have led public sector communicators to shy away from using it. Increasingly, however, organizations and agencies looking to reach their target audiences in relevant ways are integrating social media into their programs as a necessity, not just a “nice to have”. However, across the board, agencies, communicators and brands alike are all struggling with how to plan and evaluate this medium – and for public health communications, the issue becomes even more challenging as budgets become leaner and the use of social media has to be weighed against other opportunities. As a medium that is inherently organic, measuring social media success can be challenging; however, this presentation will look at how digital media are being used to reach target audiences for public health campaigns and how to measure its impact. Using the digital media campaign that was implemented for CDC's 2010-2011 Influenza Vaccination campaign as a case study, this presentation will look at the results of the campaign using AED's S.O.C.I.A.L.tm (Strategic Online Communication, Insights and Learnings) framework. Specifically, results showed that amongst people who had never been vaccinated or could not remember the last time they were vaccinated, there was a 24% increase in intention to get vaccinated because of this ad campaign. Thus, social media can be an effective medium for public health campaigns that are trying to effect behavior change.