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HHS Center for New Media

Podcast Transcript: The AIDS.Gov Blog

How does AIDS.gov manage its blog?

You’re listening to The HHS Center for New Media podcast, where new and innovative media projects are introduced, shared, and discussed.

You want to start blogging, but you don’t know where to begin.  How will you plan it out?  How will you choose and approve content?  How will you measures success? 

These are all questions the AIDS.gov team continue to answer in managing their blog.

“Please, please, please, do not start a blog or use any of these tools until you define who your office or program works to reach.”

Miguel Gomez is the Director of AIDS.gov. 

“Once you breakdown who you’re working with, ask them what information they want from your office, and in what formats.”

The blog team started by identifying their stakeholders.

“Those are people in the public health community.  Those are people living with HIV/AIDS.  And it’s also those who are in the non-public health realm but are looking at how we’re using new media to do our work.”

With their stakeholders in mind, they outlined the purpose of the blog. 

“One is it supports the three missions of AIDS.gov, which is to provide information on Federal resources, programs, and policies.  Two is to provide information on how to use new media to extend the reach of our programs.  And three is to provide basic information.”

When topics for the blog are chosen, an expert on that issue writes the post and it goes through an editing process. 

“And we have two specific individuals for our key quality assurance measures.  One is someone who represents the Office of the Secretary, in ASPA, to make sure that we are representing not just HIV but the U.S. Government, appropriately.”

Because of these assurance measures, the AIDS.gov blog has never had to take down a single post, in more than three years.

“We really appreciate that process, we’ve got it streamlined, and we use new media tools to make sure we manage it and we move rapidly.”

Being efficient has brought the blog more and more success.

In their first two years, they were posting once or twice a week.  Now, they’re sometimes posting several times in one day…all with a team of just seven people. 

Michelle Samplin-Salgado is one of those seven team members.  She measures the engagement they have with their readers in two ways. 

First…the tangibles. 

“We look at who's visiting our sites, how many people are visiting our site, what comments they’re leaving, what trends we have…so we look at those metrics as one measure of success.”

Then…there are the intangibles.

“What’s the sentiment?  Are we part of the conversation?  Are we engaging our federal partners?  Are we a source of information for the community?  We look to that…how many people are referring to our site?  What is the conversation happening kind of on and off of our blog?”

The team even evaluates their own efficiency.

“We review, every week, the amount of time we spend reviewing our social network sites and the time it takes us to assess and pull products and information from those sites.”

In the near future, the AIDS.gov blog plans to make changes to the platform and design to meet the requests of their readers and the increase in content. 

“Just listen, listen, listen, and then learn from what you’ve heard, adapt anything that you’re currently doing, and then two other things I think are really important are to be consistent and to be authentic…so to have an authentic voice and to be there, be part of the conversation, be listening, be contributing, and be sharing.”

You’ve been listening to The HHS Center for New Media podcast, where new and innovative media projects are introduced, shared, and discussed.  If you have a project, media tool, or idea that you want to share with other HHS employees, please contact newmedia@hhs.gov

Thanks for listening. I’m Nicholas Garlow.