It’s been 5 months since ASAP began connecting with its audience through social media. I am taking stock of our short run to make a presentation to a roomful of youth advocates, and I decided it would be fun to pick out five picture-posts on Facebook that stood out and said something unique.

1. The World Abortion Laws map had 20 comments and 37 shares.

One comment that stood out was Lilly Miao from Argentina:  

“I think this map misses to represent the discrepancy existing between the legal right to have an abortion and the concrete access to the abortion services. For example in Italy, it is legal to have an abortion since the 1978, but in many regions of the country it is almost impossible to have an abortion due to the massive presence of conscientious objectors in the public and private hospitals. It would be nice to create another layer/color to represent this issue on the map.”

2. This picture had a stoic appeal, and did not invite lengthy comments. That’s too bad but I cannot think of what the audience might have said other than “Yes!” or “Agreed!” In fact, the 8 “likes” we received was probably saying exactly that.
It was shared 23 times.

3. Then there was this cartoon from the Chatanooga time. I had a long-drawn conversation with a woman who believed that women who had abortions were using the “social justice” argument to shield their selfish motives.

Here is what she said:”Points of view sure have evolved since Roe v. Wade. Sadly, back then, every single female I knew who had an abortion did so because she didn’t want to be “saddled with a kid” (their words, not mine) — it had absolutely nothing to do with stress on social support systems, crime, addiction, homeless people, etc.”

The image had 44 likes, 31 comments, and 277 shares.

4. There’s always a great response to posts that say “man”. Personally, I am not a fan of posts that have to assure men that feminism won’t turn women against them. But these are pretty popular on Facebook.

Here’s one such post with 13 likes, 1 share and 1 comment. The comment by David Tucker said: “You don’t have to be a woman either” True, Mr. Tucker! Very true!

On the same note, pictures with condoms do extremely well.

There were two that had a strikingly good run. The one above, came out on the web, in time for the 2012 London olympics, and I posted the one below, on World Contraception Day (September 26).  65% of our audience is female, and so the popularity of these posts, makes one wonder if women savor posts that remind men of their responsibilities.

5. A good infographic always gets attention. Here’s one from Ipas that came out a few days before the September 28 Campaign.

It made the point very well, and I think it might have caught more eyes if we hadn’t been disseminating a lot of event-related posts at the same time!

Anyway the one comment it received told us it was appreciated.  “Excellent Visual” said Stephanie Rudat, our social media coach. The picture was shared by 3 people.