Social Media Strategy and Crisis Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Overview
This paper analyzes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's current social media policies and proposes a comprehensive social media plan. It examines CDC's existing guidelines for personal and official social media use, identifies diverse audience segments, and outlines strategic goals for health communication including awareness-raising, knowledge dissemination, and behavioral change through social media engagement.
What this coursework covers
- Current CDC social media policy overview including personal and official use guidelines
- Identification and analysis of CDC's diverse social media audiences across health sectors
- CDC's strategic goals including awareness, knowledge increase, attitude change, and website traffic
- Resources, tactics, and measurement approaches for social media implementation
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Social Media Plan
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Social Media Plan
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the most active state agencies on social media. CDC also publishes various documents touching on the subject of social media, even though the agency fails to address the aspect of using social media for communication during a crisis. The following social media plan, therefore, aims at addressing the current social media policy at CDC, its audience, the goals of the policies, resources, tactics, as well as measurement and analysis.
The current social media policy of the CDC provides guidelines on the use of social media for both personal and official purposes. Its personal use of social media guidelines states that rules and regulations governing outside activities of employees may apply in their involvement on social media. CDC requires its employees to consult their supervisor if their social media participation relates to their work (Spicer, 2013). Also, the policies encourage caution among employees as they post or comment on various social media platforms since third party vendors can retain the information that the employees post indefinitely. Besides, policies governing the official use of social media provide guidelines on official postings on channels on social media that CDC does not sponsor (Lin, Spence, Sellnow & Lachlan, 2016). It makes it a requirement that the employees identify themselves fully in such cases. The agency, therefore, has several policies that regulate its social media operations.
CDC has various audiences on social media who are interested in health information.