Your brand is a perfect vehicle for bringing about positive change in your local community, and if there’s an issue that’s important to you, you’ve no doubt already tried numerous ways to spread the word about it. From print media and brand ambassadors to raising money for charities, there are numerous ways to do good in the world, but your social channels are another avenue for spreading the word and connecting to a wider audience. If you’re keen to use this platform to showcase your brand values to your followers, read on.
Why use social media to promote your values?
Social media is essential to any marketing strategy, but what’s more important is developing a personality in your branding that enables your business to leverage its values and ethics. Presenting your brand as genuine and authentic is of the utmost importance, but you also want the content to appear natural in your audience’s feed.
Building a story and a narrative around the causes and values that are most important to your business is the best way to do this, and social media channels serve as a great platform for resonating with your target customers. If a follower resonates with your values and has an affinity with your brand, they’re more likely to engage with you. It’s all about building a connection and social media is a perfect vehicle for developing a relationship with your followers.
Social media has changed the level of transparency between businesses and consumers. Customers expect businesses to use their platform to voice their opinions and take note of priority issues as they arise in the world, from climate change to changes in legislation and uprising from oppressed groups.
Before social media, we relied on traditional media and the government to source our information, but times have changed for the better and we can look to more than just a handful of people for different perspectives. It’s a way to instantly bring important issues to the forefront of peoples’ minds and create awareness, and for businesses. The potential influence of social channels as a force for good is huge and that’s a great opportunity to develop communities around social causes and injustices.
Share facts and figures
An effective way to build credibility and create content that reflects your values is to educate your followers with facts and statistics about the topics in question. Social causes always have plenty of research to back up different points of view, so use these to your advantage when developing social content that can be shared and engaged with. There are various ways to do this on socials, from infographics and carousels to videos and reels. Use your platform to enlighten people about what’s important to you and build your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
Reinforce your message with visuals
Whichever social channels you’re focusing on, visuals play a key role. This is particularly true of the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. Encouraging diversity and inclusion in your imagery is essential to show that your brand is diverse and supports inclusivity, not just in the business itself but in the wider world. The images you use should include people from all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities and so on.
Impactful visuals don’t distract from your message, they enhance it. While many brands ignore imagery to focus exclusively on their brand voice, pairing powerful photography with sharp copy is one way to get ahead and really make your message stand out. Just make sure you’re consistent with your visual style and that it aligns with what you’re trying to say.
Engage with commenters
Good or bad, your commenters are engaging with your brand, so it’s important to respond to them. While it’s tempting to ignore those less positive comments, doing so can actually reflect badly and signifies to people that you’re not genuinely interested in improving situations. Responding to comments, whatever their nature, shows that as a business, you’re willing to take criticism on board just as much as praise and that you want to do better in the future, which customers really respect.
What’s more, responding to commenters and engaging with people helps to show that you’re an accessible brand, something which younger consumers particularly view favourably. However, how you respond shows off your brand’s character and it’s all too easy to overturn months of audience nurturing with one poorly worded response, so take caution when engaging with followers.
Support others who align with your ethics
It’s not just about getting your brand out there. It’s also important to support others that are in alignment with your values, to raise them up and help them get their message out there too. For example, if you’re a vegan business, supporting other businesses that share similar values is the key to reinforcing your message. If your brand suddenly partnered with a dairy farm, it would spoil your reputation and suggest to your followers that you’re disingenuous.
All too often, brands partner with other businesses for the impact of doing so, rather than because it’s a genuine appreciation for the product or services. Many brands have been accused of greenwashing, for example, simply because consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious, without genuinely caring for the environment or changing their products and processes to support eco causes.
Customers see through this lack of authenticity, and it can be really harmful to your brand, so use your platform to send out the right message about causes that are important to the business and not just for the clout it offers you as a business.
Social media is an effective way to reach a larger audience, but it’s also a way of really connecting with your followers too. When it comes to promoting causes and issues that you feel strongly about, using your social channels to voice your opinions, educate others on these issues and develop consistent messaging through your content can all work in harmony to show your followers exactly what your brand values most.
Author: Dakota Murphey.
