Stayin Live and in Living Color

5 Years, 900 Blog Posts, 1 Million Page Views

  By Michelle Samplin-Salgado, New Media Strategist, AIDS.gov
 

Editors Note: The Living Affected Corporation congratulates the producers of the AIDS.gov blog which has been a content source for our organizational blog. It is our goal to mirror their success by offering the latest updates, links, videos and original content to our readers and beyond. We believe that harnessing the power of the Internet will be instrumental in end game of HIV and AIDS.

Today marks an important milestone for the AIDS.gov blog.

Five years ago today, we launched this blog with the intent of reaching audiences with information on how to use new media. In 2009, we extended our content to include Federal policies and resources. Today our blog continues to address these topics and more.

While we have seen many new online communication platforms emerge over the past five years, we feel that blogs are still relevant, as they continue to help us reach our audiences. Our blog allows us to go in depth into topics and then share and repurpose that content on other platforms, such as Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube . Over the last five years, the AIDS.gov blog has:

• Published more than 942 posts
• Surpassed 1 million page views
• Sparked new discussions, with 1,696 comments from readers

And while we’re pleased with these numbers, we ultimately don’t measure success by the numbers. We measure our success by what we have learned from the conversations new media helps facilitate. We feel successful because we can answer “yes” to these questions: Are we a tool to assist entities assess how to use new media to extend or improve the reach of their HIV prevention and care programs? Are we a source and/or link to federal resources, programs and policies?

Success is also about engaging our readers. We looked back through some of our blog posts with the most comments and here’s what some of you had to say:

“Blogs, social networks, text messaging, forums and groups are a fantastic means of education people about HIV AIDS and other health related issues. People can not only support each other but offer advice as to what worked for them and thus educate the public at large.”
-From A Wake-up Call for All of Us: How Can New Media Help? (2008)
“I’m from Puerto Rico, and we are part of 12 cities. This [initiative] represents a great opportunity to all the stakeholders to do something regarding this [disease], not just in our city, but throughout all the Nation. “Unity make us stronger in any setting”
- From The 12 Cities Project (2011)

“As someone who is living with [AIDS], this push to write about it in blogs inspired me to create my own blog. Although my blog will be more than just about [HIV/AIDS] it will be a part of it. I am looking forward to reading and finding everyones blogs posts. Is there a best practice on finding the blog posts?”
- From The Power of Blogs: Bloggers Unite on World AIDS Day (2008)

On this 5-year anniversary we want to THANK YOU for your readership and engagement. We also want to know, what is it that makes you continue visiting this blog? In addition, how can we improve our blog? We look forward to hearing from you!