How to drive your brand's CSR philosophy using Social Media (6 top tips)

Social media burst onto the scene like an avalanche taking over our lives back in the noughties and like a snowball its momentum has been building ever since.

6 min read

What started out as a cool way to stay in touch and re-engage with friends has become our daily addiction with some news outlets reporting the average adult will spend just short of 3 hours a day engaged browsing through their social media pages.

But is it all doom and gloom? Are we a lost cause or can it be used for good? Of course it can. If people are on social platforms and you’re competing for their attention to help promote your CSR activities then every cloud has its silver lining. Everyone’s there so let’s go and get them, their addiction can be filled with your business’ wonderful socially responsible ethos.

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Now we’ve all heard of the declining reach of the social platforms so it’s not as simple as it used to be but with a bit of attention and dedication in the right areas you can once again enjoy the ability to drive your CSR activities and your company’s brand to a wider audience.

We’ve put together our top 6 tips on how to extend your social reach in the face of algorithm changes and a noisy market place.

1. Start at home

2. Partners and charities

3. Reach out

4. Join or create relevant groups

5. Reach out to local and relevant news points

6. Crank it up

1. Start at home

It is fundamentally important that before we look to drive our CSR activities through social media we make sure that our own platforms are in order.

If you are new to running social campaigns do not be scared off, as with most things it’ll take a bit of time to get the hang of, but you will become a social media marketer in no time, driving your message to the masses.

There are a few things to consider when starting out: are you operating on the correct platforms for your business? are your social platforms maximised to make your brand look as good as possible to the right audiences? If you aren’t sure digital media specialists Hubspot have put together a handy workbook to help get you started.

Once you’ve got your pages ready to post make sure when you make your post you give the narratives plenty of relevance and context. Remember not everyone will catch every post you place on their timelines, so when they do make sure they are intrigued to stay longer and search other connected content.

Look to create a conversation. The more you can interact the more relevant your content will be to audiences and more likely to increase the organic reach. Pose questions, post relevant imagery and give your audience a reason to hang out with you.

Staff, Your staff are a great place to start, especially if they are helping to deliver the CSR activities themselves as they will be ‘dialled in’ to the emotion of the work load and campaign. Staff are a great way to help engagement travel that little bit further opening the campaign to a larger organic audience.

2. Partners or charities

Many CSR activities and campaigns are directly associated with charities or not for profit organisations. These are a great resource for sharing content in both directions.

Many charities will have influential patrons and/or ambassadors that often have significant social media followings. Can you leverage your support to encourage these patrons to share your campaign relevant content?

Is there a network of other businesses also involved in the campaign or charity who you can partner with to help promote everyone’s content and help to build a community from the linked activities? This approach benefits every stakeholder in the relationship and most importantly the message of the activity.

Like your own staff can you also encourage this CSR network to include their staff to share and engage in everyone’s content.

3. Reach out

Can you expand your network to include similar campaigns separate to yours and your stakeholders?

There has never been more charities and not for profit organisations running campaigns in the UK and around the world. Can you reach out to some of these organisations and campaigns, start a dialogue with them about the potential to repost some of your content or at least make some of their stakeholders aware of your social platforms?

A starting point would be to use the search fields in google and all social media platforms and search for your subject or relatable subjects.

Remember to use Hashtags also as it’s a great way to quickly uncover influencers in your subject.

4. Join or create relevant groups

Joining and/or creating a relevant group for your CSR subject can get more passionate advocates ready to help drive your message.

The benefits are long but here are 3 of our favourites:

1. Unlike business pages groups act like communities and as such are more likely to help market your cause. People within their organic reach are also more likely to share content as they trust the sources where the content is coming from.
2. If relevant to other users, public groups are suggested to new audiences extending the organic reach and interest.
3. The larger the group the further the reach, especially if key influencers have strong social media followings.

5. Reach out to local and relevant news points

All local and regional news officers have had to adapt from the old school newsprint to the digital age so write a press release and send it to them.

As advertising spend from businesses has shifted away from traditional newsprint to digital many of the news organisations have made huge cuts to their overheads and staff.

Often news offices will be now understaffed and in need of content relevant to their market places.

IMPORTANT, When building a relationship with these organisations make sure you supply them with copy ready content, meaning content that has been edited and qualified ready to go to print (or online).

You want them to think of you as a safe quality source. An organisation that can take some of the editing headaches away from them. Look after them and they’ll return the favour.

6. Crank it up

Finally, make your content sweat.

Consider the following:

• Can you give the tone of what you write personality? People respond better to people as opposed to corporate jargon. So making sure the copy is written in context to the post so it can pay dividends.
• Is there any way you can use more imagery in your post? Could you use video and film parts of the campaign? Could you consider any aspect of the activities going live on a social platform?
• Are you curating enough relevant content to really add to the conversation and be seen as an authority to your stake holders.

Summary

The Social media landscape is ever evolving but there has never been an easier or cheaper tool to use to take your message to a huge audience.

It is important you keep up to speed with all your platform algorithm changes and prepare to adjust your tactics and strategy accordingly.

Utilising the above 6 tips on your CSR promotion will help you drive the message of your CSR activity whilst at the same time positioning your organisation as a strong corporate citizen.

Click here to learn more about why CSR would be good for your business.