The overarching goal of all of Planned Parenthood's social media properties is to provide sex education that's medically accurate, health literate, theory-based, and engaging to our audiences. This directly translates to our work on Instagram, where the goal is to create visually engaging content that appeals to Instagram users while accomplishing our public health goals.
We work to create a fun space for our Instagram audience to engage with sexual and reproductive health information, and expand our reach by building rapport with a younger and more diverse audience. This property promotes sexual and reproductive health by helping our audience think through healthy decision making and healthy sexual behaviors.
We create a wide range of original posts and share user-generated content that fits into at least one of these three categories: sex education, entertainment, and brand awareness. Ideally, our posts will educate, entertain, and raise our brand.
Sex education works best when it's welcoming, understandable, and fun. In contrast to the shaming and uncomfortable sex education many people receive, our key strategy is to make our social media platforms a safe place to learn and share experiences. For example, instead of posting graphic, scary photos of gonorrhea, we'll make something cheeky and fun like our "GONE-ORRHEA" post to teach about the infection and treatment while being "punny" at the same time.
Additionally, we work hard to foster a body-positive community on Instagram by highlighting supporters; re-gramming creative sexual health photos, highlighting important sexual health related observances, and answering user questions.
It's critical that the information we share be medically accurate. All posts are reviewed by members of the Planned Parenthood Education Division to check for both medical accuracy and health literacy. This way we can be confident that the information we share is up-to-date and easy to understand.
Social media properties are constantly evolving, and measuring success isn't always a straightforward process. We challenge ourselves to capture complex health ideas with a simple snapshot, graphic, tweet, or blurb. Although every post isn't a hit, we've witnessed tremendous growth in followership and increased engagement across our properties.
Since Launching in 2013, Our Instagram follower count has grown to more than 60,000, and our rate of engagement increases each week. Our most liked post has over 8,500 likes and our most commented on post has nearly 1,000 comments. In the last year, our tumblr audience has grown from 87,538 to 127,413, and our most popular tumblr post has received more than 150,000 notes. In the same time frame, our Facebook audience has more than doubled, from 127,686 to 388,293. The @PPFA twitter followership has also more than doubled over the last year, from 30,709 to 69,457.
