#Prepforher: Inspiring African American Women to Tweet about PrEP

Background:  Social media transforms how we consume and discuss information. It muddles the lines between “fake news,” news and opinion, and inspires social movements. In the public health community, many of us use social media as a tool to raise awareness about specific topics. And sometimes, if we are lucky, the result is candid feedback and action from our intended audience. This presentation will explore how using social media as a starting point for a public health communications campaign can encourage a healthy dialogue with a target audience, as well as, help an organization improve their approach to communication on social media.  

Program background:  On June 27th 2016, Octane Public Relations and Advertising launched the social media driven campaign, #PrEPForHer, on behalf of the District of Columbia Department of Health, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Administration. The campaign aimed to raise awareness within African American women in Washington, DC about PrEP. The campaign featured the tagline “Dominate Your Sex Life” and 4 models, styled to emulate iconic celebrities. The campaign strategy emphasized social media, especially Instagram and Twitter, by tapping into key online communities and themes, like #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackTwitter. 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Octane’s goal for social media was to create a buzz about the images and to get African American women in DC interested in learning more about PrEP. We evaluated the success of these goals by analyzing the reactions to the campaign on the social media platforms used, and then categorizing the reactions as either positive feedback, criticism or inquires for information. Octane launched the organic (unpaid) campaign in June with the launch of an Instagram page, @ExplorePreP, and later deployed 2 ad runs on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (one in July 2016 and one in February 2017). The first ad run resulted in 1,167 landing page visits and 5,001 engagements. The second ad run resulted in 1,388 landing page visits and 14,195 engagements.  

Conclusions:  A catalog of the type of engagements and comments could be summed up in 4 conclusions: 1) Most women connected with the imagery and the campaign messaging, as displayed by likes/loves, RTs and supportive comments. 2) Some women didn’t understand/or took offense to why it was important for African American women to know about PrEP 3) Women were concerned about the negative health implications that could be associated with the drug. 4) Stigma surrounding HIV is still present among African American women in DC. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Octane’s experience with launching the #PrEPForHer campaign proves that social media can be effective in raising awareness and encouraging conversation about sensitive topics. If your organization chooses to use social media to discuss a topic that may be perceived as controversial, take into account the following suggestions:

1. Keep things positive and familiar. Women connected to our imagery because it was positive and reflected what was already on social media.
2. Choose your platforms based off of your target audience.
3. Test your message for positive buy-in. We conducted an organic launch before our paid campaign.
4. Ensure a staff member can review comments/questions and respond in a timely fashion.