In our study, the social media outlets were chosen based on their wide reach and capacity to target a large volume of people every day.
While general platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Kijiji and Craigslist were chosen for their broad scope, advertising on these portals was streamlined to sections where a high traffic of women or families would be expected. This included the “volunteers” or “baby items” sections on online classifieds, and study postings through pages focusing on women’s health and pregnancy on Facebook and Twitter. Institutional and sponsor’s websites, as well as pregnancy forums and message boards, were similarly chosen because of the high traffic of women in the periconceptional period expected on these platforms.