Group of young people lying on the ground smiling

How we are using social media

Avert’s understanding of social media extends far beyond brand communications. We use social media as core information and education channels, further developing the reach and engagement of our work, particularly with young people across countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Social media allows us to amplify our communications - sharing accurate, trusted and positive information on HIV and sexual health, encouraging conversations, and providing a space to share experiences.

Our understanding of social media and the engagement we get through it provides ongoing insights into what content is relevant and of interest to our audiences. Analysis of this engagement improves our context and audience understanding and feeds in to our content development across projects.

We also use social media to support our approach to user-centred design and co-creation, working with members of our target audiences via WhatsApp and Facebook groups as part of the development and design process. Our social reach has also enabled us to recruit research study participants across Southern Africa.

This is a true fact. I love this platform and I would love to recommend it to every youth out there.

Avert Facebook fan

Why we use social media

As the amount of people and time spent on social media continues to grow, so does the importance of being present and relevant on these platforms. We meet our audiences where they already are, fitting in with their existing behaviour and lifestyles.

Social media gives us the opportunity to reach and engage people who may not be actively looking for information on HIV and sexual health but are in great need of the information and may not realise they are at risk.

It enables us to understand our audiences better and so provide each different audience group with more of the information they want in the way they need it.

Examples of how we’re using social media

Be in the KNOW logo

Be in the KNOW

Creating communities for young people to learn and engage with their peers on sexual health

Young Voices characters

Young Voices

Catalysing conversations with young people on sex and relationships

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Be in the know Zambia

Recruiting over 2,000 participants for a digital health intervention

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Boost

Giving community health workers a space to support and learn from one another

How it makes a difference

We continually analyse the reach and engagement with our audiences on social media. In 2020-21 we reached over 12 million people, with over 9 million people reached in sub-Saharan Africa. There continued to be high engagement from that region, with over 1.17 million content engagements generated by people reacting, commenting, sharing and clicking links in our posts.

We actively moderate all our social media channels to ensure our pages and campaigns remain safe spaces for the vital peer discussions and interactions that help support informed choices on sexual health.

As part of our Young Voices Africa project, we undertook ‘coding’ of thousands of comments from social media campaigns, which helped us to understand how young people were engaging, and further improve our communications work, as well as sharing our learning with others. From this we found 59% of people participating in online discussions showed deeper engagement with the issues covered in the animations, by, for example, expressing that they have gained knowledge; changing their perspective; or relating the issue back to their own experience.

Reach and engagment

People icon
million people reached in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020-21
9
Engagement icon
million post engagements in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020-21
1.7
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views of Young Voices videos (viewing 50% or more)
739,000

Photo credit: Masimba Sasa. Photos are used for illustrative purposes. They do not imply health status or behaviour.