Staff at Planned Parenthood integrates social media strategy

Comprehensive approach ensures optimum coverage across its varied demographics

Three years ago, Planned Parenthood’s Web site saw fewer than 200,000 hits per month. Now that the 90-year-old organization implemented its social media strategy, however, the Web site’s traffic soared to 1.6 million hits each month.

Sure, Planned Parenthood has a Facebook page, a YouTube account, a MySpace page and two Twitter accounts. But what makes Planned Parenthood’s strategy different is that it doesn’t differentiate one medium from another. For Planned Parenthood, all online media are social media.

“Every day, when we go into meetings, we talk about how we’re doing on the Web, how we’re doing with e-mail campaigns, and how we’re doing with mobile and social media efforts,” says Tom Subak, the organization’s vice president of online services. “We’ll talk about all of them, not just one.”

Subak says younger people don’t differentiate among texting, watching YouTube videos and Twitter—so Planned Parenthood doesn’t, either.