Leveraging Twitter to Engage the Construction Safety and Health Community

The Construction Program of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began using Twitter in April 2011 as a way to facilitate interaction with the construction safety and health community, including those involved in research, labor, and industry. The intent was to create a Twitter site to expand the reach of communication about construction safety and health topics beyond what is currently achieved by NIOSH. From its inception, the @NIOSHConstruct Twitter account has grown to over 3,000 followers.

This presentation describes a campaign to raise awareness of the risks and prevention strategies when working outdoors through the @NIOSHConstruct Twitter feed. Because construction workers are outdoors for much of their job, this topic was relevant and appropriate during the summer. The campaign ran from June to September 2011 and featured a concentration of tweets on a particular topic area, with each week focusing on a new aspect of outdoor work. The #outdoorwork campaign also tested whether Twitter could drive traffic to the NIOSH outdoor work Web site. Topics covered were heat stress, UV radiation, biological hazards, and vector-borne diseases. This campaign was the first of its kind for NIOSH. The evaluation demonstrated that a Twitter campaign may be more successful at driving traffic to the NIOSH Web site, compared with tweets outside of a campaign. Discussion will include how the campaign was organized, implemented, and evaluated. Special attention will be paid to the successes, challenges, and lessons learned and how others can use Twitter campaigns to increase their reach.