Through an article on the Huffington Post by Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig's List (whom I interviewed late last year), I found out that the CDC has opened up the analytics for the CDC Website to the public.
This is interesting from a number of perspectives:
- Political: Open government is not just talk
- Content: There is really useful data about what people are looking for that can be harnessed by the health care industry
- Measurement: It opens up some great ideas for people looking for ways to measure their online communication
- Best Practice: It gives a comprehensive look at their online and social media campaign as well as actionable data on how well each tactic is working.
There are many ideas to mine out of what the CDC is doing. Take a look at the most popular pages on the CDC Website. Not surprisingly a lot them center around healthy weight, traveler's health and sexually transmitted diseases:
With data like these the CDC can make course corrections and provide more relevant content. Additionally, we all can learn from the data and get an idea of how other organizations are approaching online communication.
What do you think about the CDC doing this? Is it a good idea? What can we all learn from it?
