Flu Vaccination Digital Ambassador Initiative Flourishes in Second Year

Flu Vaccination Digital Ambassador 2014-2015

Now in its second year, the Flu Vaccination Digital Ambassador initiative has more than doubled in size, from six Ambassadors in 2013-2014 to 13 for the 2014-2015 season. This year, Digital Ambassadors generated more than 124 million earned digital media impressions through 755 blog, website, and social media posts—an increase of more than 120 million impressions and 670 posts since the initiative’s first year.

Beyond day-to-day promotion of influenza vaccination messaging through their digital and social media channels, many Digital Ambassadors participated in two new initiatives this season: a blog relay and a series ofFacebook forums. For the blog relay, seven Digital Ambassadors published a blog post to kick off National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW) on a designated day before “passing the torch” to the next Digital Ambassador, culminating in a weeklong promotional activity that generated more than 21 million impressions. The Facebook forum activities involved three Ambassadors who hosted multi-day forums on their Facebook pages to create dialogue around flu vaccination among their followers. The three forums generated 270 questions and comments, 1,540 likes, and 528 shares. Each Ambassador also participated in CDC’s #VaxWithMe social media initiative.

This season’s Digital Ambassadors1 and activities included:

Pregnant Women

Shot of Prevention*

Pregnant? The flu vaccine is the best way to protect you and your baby from flu.

The Shot of Prevention blog is a forum for individuals, parents, medical professionals, and public health experts to discuss current immunization events. The project is supported by Every Child by Two , a national nonprofit immunization advocacy organization.

Shot of Prevention helped spark flu vaccination dialogue with a very engaged audience through a forum on its Vaccinate Your Baby Facebook page in November. The organization also shared a post during the NIVW blog relay: “Only Parents Can Prevent Today’s Children from Becoming Tomorrow’s Flu Statistic ,” promoted the #VaxWithMe campaign, and shared CDC’s flu vaccination messages on social media throughout the season.

Health Care Professionals

Long-Term Living and Senior Editor, Lois Bowers

Long-term Living. CDC releases new flu toolkit.

Long-Term Living magazine has a readership of more than 45,000 long-term care professionals, made up of owners, executives, administrators, and directors of nursing at assisted living communities, nursing homes, post-acute facilities, continuing care retirement communities and independent living environments.

Long-Term Living and senior editor, Lois Bowers, were heavily engaged in sharing CDC’s flu vaccination information throughout the season. Long-Term Living published frequent blog posts , co-hosted a partner-led Twitter chat on flu vaccination and caregivers during NIVW, promoted the Long-Term Care Toolkit newly released this season, and posted flu vaccination messages on social media via both Long-Term Living and Lois Bowers’ personal platforms.