Get Tested Coachella Valley Launches Strategic Social Ambassador Program to Encourage HIV Testing; Regional campaign embraces digital advocacy to help end the epidemic

Get Tested Coachella Valley, a regional public health campaign aimed at ending the spread of HIV through routine testing, is spearheading a new approach to effectively connect and engage with the community by launching a Social Ambassador platform that empowers highly engaged advocates to have authentic HIV-related conversations in a digital peer-to-peer environment.

“We’re dealing with an extremely challenging topic that has historically been difficult for people to talk about with their closest friends and family, let alone in a public social media forum,” says Karyn Cooks, Director of Social Strategy at Get Tested Coachella Valley. “Additionally, ever-changing algorithms and a pay-to-play social environment makes all of this a bit of a non-starter for a non-profit, HIV-focused campaign. Our solution is to empower our internal stakeholders and external influencers to carry our message beyond the restrictive walls created by some social channels and the inherent challenges that come with sensitive topics.”

​“Highly engaged communities can expect about 80-90 percent of its users to consist of lurkers, whereas just 10- 20 percent are truly engaged,” Cooks says. “We’d like to flip those statistics, which means we’re placing a strategic bet that by providing our Social Ambassadors with quality factual content, they’ll be sharing at those higher percentages and with a higher perceived value from their peer groups. So far it’s paying off with impressions and reactions exponentially beyond anything we can do on our own.”