3 Things A Digital Marketing Agency (Or Any Business) Can Do When Handling Social Issues
When dealing with clients and the general population, it becomes increasingly important to stay aware of your surroundings and current social climate. As a business, particularly as a digital marketing agency, you have responsibilities to do your part and react appropriately to whatever situation you may find yourself in. Here are three tips for how you can become a socially conscious business from a digital marketing agency's perspective.
Don't Be a Bystander. Donate When You Can, Talk to Your Clients, and Show Sensitivity.
This first tip can prove to be much more difficult than it seems. Social issues are always very emotional and have very strong polarizing effects in the community. You may have some very strong opinions on the topic, but should you let those opinions make their way into your company? In our humble opinion, yes. If you are truly passionate about helping a social issue then why wouldn't you want your business to reflect that belief and get on board? If you're truly worried about tarnishing your reputation or offending anyone, there are plenty of ways to help the cause without going public about it.
Donate When Your Can: An easy way to become a more socially-conscious company would be to donate to funds and foundations that are supporting the social issue at hand. You don't need to tell any of your clients that you've done so, but you'll feel better knowing that you're doing your part to chip in. Your company culture should reflect the beliefs of the team, otherwise you'll be putting on a front all day everyday while working. If your company is in agreement that Social Issue A is not tolerated and needs to be fixed, then we believe you should use your privileges as a company to step in and do you part, no matter how small.
Talk With Your Clients About Any Changes To Their Accounts: It's important to take the proactive step of setting up a meeting when managed social media is involved. Clients would much rather have their digital marketing agency propose solutions or act before an issue arises. When approaching the topic, try to use unbiased language. You don't want to start an argument before the discussion even begins! For example, rather than saying "we think your account needs to be changed up to better reflect the social issues we're seeing," you could try something like "with the change in our current social climate, we thought it would be a good time to review your account and make sure that your scheduled content reflects what you would like it to during this time." Offer suggestions, not demands!
Make Sure Your Team and Your Clients Understand "Sensitivity":
If your clients aren't sure why they should be changing their tone or imagery, try to help them understand the social issue better. Explain to them how their current posts or language could be misconstrued as insensitive to the cause, and go on to explain how that would hurt their brand's reputation. Insensitivity can be anything from blatantly going against a social cause to pretending that you don't see it. Socially conscious companies often say that it is best to acknowledge the situation at least once, and then make sure that any subsequent content cannot be misunderstood as opposing the movement. A company does not have to outright support a cause, but as their digital marketing agency, it's important that you prevent them from moving forward with content that will definitely be problematic. It's called managed social media for a reason; you're the experts in the field and you need to help manage the client's reputation and perception online. By encouraging some simple changes to avoid anything that could spark debate, you could be saving their company's reputation! When in doubt, find ways to be neutral.
Do More To Understand the Issue and History/Cultures Involved With It.
The BusySeed team is lucky to be composed of young-minded, open-hearted individuals who have a hunger for learning. When new social issues arise, our team members take it upon themselves to read up on the topic! We understand how critical it is to stay informed. As a digital marketing agency, we need to understand cultural issues at a deep enough level to explain the issue to clients should we have to. We work with a lot of managed social media accounts, so we need to be aware of what's happening in the social media marketing industry we work in. In order for us to help clients make informed decisions about content, tone of voice, imagery, etc., we need to have a very strong grasp on the issues ourselves. We always make it a point to weed out misinformation, and we turn to the least-biased sources we have at our disposal. We think it's hugely important to see things from the first-person perspective, so we also hunt for articles, videos, or documentaries that tackle the issue from the point of view of those directly involved. You'd be amazed at how much we don't learn at school! Knowledge is power, so you should do whatever you can to educate yourself on the social issue itself, the background, its history, and the culture of those involved directly.
Never Just Jump On a Trend. Social Issues Should Never Be Springboards For Your Company's Success or Reputation.
This last point is certainly critical for any company that works with managed social media or social media marketing, but it should also apply to any company in any industry. Social media is always filled with trending hashtags and topics. Most of these trends are fun and silly such as the hashtags Jimmy Fallon uses to get wacky stories from his audience. However, trends can also include very serious social issues. Part of the job of managed social media is to stay on top of trends and use them to your client's advantage when possible. Some trends are self-explanatory, but others, like social issues, are complex and have a lot of layers to them. Until you do the research we discussed in the last point, avoid jumping on the bandwagon. Even if a client requests an immediate post change to discuss the topic, pause for a bit and be sure that the information you are sharing is accurate and not problematic. Information travels like wildfire on social media platforms, but misinformation seems especially prone to viral circulation. You don't want to be the one responsible for posting a false article that will get your clients in trouble!
Let's get something out of the way; trends are fantastic ways to get a brand or business in front of a huge audience. We are very aware of this, and we encourage utilizing trends whenever you can if it will help your clients. That being said, social issues almost always end up trending. Under no circumstance should you encourage or enable your clients to jump on a bandwagon just because they want to be more visible. If they are not asking to talk about the cause with good intentions, don't let them join the trend at all! Socially conscious companies will create very moving and supportive posts. This makes it easy to spot a tag-along on the bandwagon. People do not take kindly to social media marketing that is fake and ingenuine, so we would suggest avoiding it at all costs. If you can appropriately utilize the trending hashtag in ways that don't only benefit the client's business, then feel free to do so. But it is never acceptable to use any kind of movement or cause to increase your own profits or those of a client. Clients may not understand this, and it is important that you, their expert digital marketing agency, explains how false concern and bandwagon behavior can come back to hurt the brand in the future.
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