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 we expand our reach by building rapport with a younger and more diverse audience. The Planned Parenthood Instagram feed promotes sexual and reproductive health by helping our audience think through healthy decision making and healthy sexual behaviors.
Instagram gives us the opportunity to create compelling visual content that can be used across our social media platforms, and showcase what Planned Parenthood is all about.
When it comes to our content, we make sure any given post 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. We collaborate with other Planned Parenthood teams such as brand, global, and education. Finally, we keep posts limited to a few times a week and only use hashtags and emojis as appropriate.Separately, our instagram strategy considers how we approach audience relationships. We aim to engage our followers, and we do this by building anticipation, asking questions to encourage discussion, and giving a "behind-the-scenes" look at our projects and initiatives. Equally important is cultivating a sense of community by building relationships with our supporters; to do this we regram and credit related content, and answer questions about sexual health.
Our Instagram's performance in 2016 surpassed expectations, as the account became a key spot for users to rally around our brand; connect quickly with sexual health information; and develop a sense of community in an environment that is increasingly hostile to sexual health and rights. In 2015 we saw an 18% increase in followers (from 3,233 in January to 17,797 in December), but in 2016 we saw a 26.8% increase in Instagram followership — more than 26k new followers. On average our photo posts received 3,800 likes and 136 comments, compared to 1,361 likes and 110 comments in 2015. Our most successful Instagram post was "These doors stay open,"which we posted the day after the election. It did 5 times better than an average post from our account, and is an excellent example of our Instagram's role as not just a source of health information, but as a digital space for our patients and supporters to come together.
