Tag: social media marketing

How to Create an Impactful and Authentic Pride Month Social Media Campaign for Your Company

June is Pride Month, which offers companies of all kinds a unique opportunity to celebrate, show support and raise awareness for LGBTQIA+ rights on their social media channels.

Businesses of all kinds and sizes can get involved, raise awareness and give back for Pride Month regardless of their budget or reach.

While Pride is most definitely a celebration, an impactful Pride campaign should include education, awareness, and center around people.

Celebrating Pride and showing your support for the LGBTQIA+ community is not a trend— and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

Here’s how to create and implement an impactful and genuine Pride Month social media campaign at your company.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Pride Month social media planning

Before you dive head-first into planning your corporate Pride initiatives, it’s important to get a wide range of employees involved in the planning process.

If your company has an LGBTQIA+ affinity group or diversity committee, collaborate with them or if you don’t have a group, consider convening a committee of employee volunteers of diverse backgrounds to serve as a sounding board and provide their input as your plans begin to take shape.

Please note: these volunteers should be compensated for their time and efforts in some meaningful way (vacation time, bonuses, gift cards, etc.). While it may be too late to do this for this year’s campaign, activate or assemble the group now for your 2023 initiative.

Don’t: Exploit social initiatives and conversations as a means to reach business goals.

Celebrating Pride and showing your support for the LGBTQIA+ community is not a trend— and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

If you’re simply posting rainbow-branded imagery (rainbow washing) during the month or posting about your commitment to the cause without having any real initiatives or actions to back it up, you’re just paying lip service to and perhaps exploiting yet another social initiative. Make sure your company can really walk the walk before you talk the talk. Performative allyship can backfire, alienating your employees, your clients, recruits, and others.

Remember that everyone (employees, clients, and the general public) is watching what you post online, even if they don’t actually like or comment on it.

Do: Ask yourself why you’re supporting this initiative and have a clear purpose.

Before publishing Pride-related content, ask yourself, are we actually adding value to this conversation? What are we hoping to gain from inserting ourselves into this conversation? What are our motivations? Is our company an actual safe space or inclusive environment that includes active and engaged allies?

Remember, Pride Month should not be about your business goals. You also don’t have to have accomplished all of your LGBTQIA+ related inclusion goals to commemorate Pride, but your efforts should be more than surface level.

Do: Support LGBTQIA+ initiatives year-round.

If you don’t already take steps to support the LGBTQIA+ community year-round, take the opportunity to discuss doing so with management and staff before Pride. June is only one month out of the year, a month where it’s arguably the “most acceptable” to show support for the LGBTQIA+ community. To be a true ally, it’s important to show this level of support year-round. Work to ensure that your company’s policies and practices are inclusive and address the needs of your LGBTQIA+ employees.

In addition to internally focused actions, consider how your true commitment can be reflected externally. There are many organizations to which you can donate and volunteer. Solicit voluntary feedback from your LGBTQIA+ employees and clients to ensure that they feel involved and included in the process.

Do: Educate yourself and those around you on the origins and history of Pride Month.

Pride Month has a rich, political history that companies often fail to understand and recognize as they participate in Pride Month. Pride Month is celebrated in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan — a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.

Not only is Pride a time to recognize the progress that’s been made since the Stonewall Riots, but it’s just as important to acknowledge how far we still must go as a society, particularly considering recent efforts to overturn or narrow the progress that has been made. A successful Pride campaign should have education and awareness at its core.

Do: Make education and awareness the core of your campaign.

Ideas for content for your Pride Campaign can include educating your followers on the meaning behind the Pride flag, using posts to tell the history of the Pride flag, and what Pride means to your employees, and run their answers in Q&A posts.

Another idea is to create posts to help followers better understand Pride Month and provide resources to help people better educate themselves on the cause and support those of the LGBTQIA+ community.

In addition, spotlighting members of the LGBTQIA+ community is a helpful way to educate your followers and amplify the contributions of individuals.

No matter what you choose, create a campaign that is rooted in improving awareness and education amongst your community.

Do: Let inclusivity be at the core of your all campaigns.

Inclusivity should be an active mission as part of your Pride campaign, and for your future marketing efforts too. Aim to have better representation on social media for your community — that means including people of all marginalized or otherwise underrepresented voices.

If you really want to reach, represent, and support your diverse community, it’s time to make active shifts towards better inclusive marketing year-round. It’s less about what you need to do for Pride today and instead, how are you supporting LGBTQIA+ folks year-round?

Do: Put your money (and time) where your mouth is.

Instead of treating Pride like a marketing campaign, put your efforts toward an activity that will positively impact the LGBTQIA+ community.

While monetary donations can be helpful, volunteering at community events or spending time with LGBTQIA+ advocacy organizations can be more impactful for your employees.

Consider hosting or taking part in LGBTQIA+ programming and donating to local charities doing work in your community to support LGBTQIA+ initiatives.

Do: Use the right hashtags to be discovered

  • #lgbtqia
  • #lgbtqpride
  • #lgbtqhumanrights
  • #equality
  • #pridemonth
  • #loveislove
  • #pride

Every organization that wants to support Pride on social media can find a way to do so, we challenge you to do it in a way that is authentic, genuine, and impactful to your brand and most importantly, to your employees and your clients. The world is watching you, so challenge yourself by doing the right thing.

This article was authored by Stefanie Marrone of Stefanie Marrone Consulting, and Paula T. Edgar, Esq, the CEO of PGE Consulting Group LLC, a firm that provides training and education solutions at the intersection of professional development and diversity, equity and inclusion. 

For more legal marketing and law office management news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Copyright © 2022, Stefanie M. Marrone. All Rights Reserved.

How to Build Trust Online by Being Human

The Rainmaker Institute

All you have to do is troll your own Facebook or LinkedIn account to know that there is LOTS of content online.

In fact, a recent post at Buffer.com noted that more content is published every day on Facebook than is found in every book published in human history!

Building Blocks with Trust

So how do you stand out from that enormous crowd and earn the trust you need to succeed with your social media marketing program?  Buffer provides these tips:

Use personal pronouns.  Using personal pronouns in your posts — I, we, you, me, etc. — and being more conversational elicits empathy from an audience, getting  you a better response.

Use simple words.  By using simple words, you can convey your idea in a way that people don’t have to think about before understanding it.  Big words and legalese will tend to alienate people, not draw them in.

Use stories.  Since the beginning of time, humans have communicated by telling stories and the propensity to listen to a story is ingrained in our DNA.  A Buffer study showed that adding a story to your blog post can increase readership by 300%.

Use contemporary culture references.  Weaving a pop culture reference or two into your post, especially if you’re able to add a celebrity name or two like Beyoncéor George Clooney (see how I did that?), helps boost readership and interest.

Use the Shaq Rule.  Shaquille O’Neal is a social media powerhouse, with a Twitter following of 8.5 million and 4.7 million Facebook fans.  His rule for posting is that 80% of his posts must be entertaining, 15% must be informative and only 5% should sell something.  People can sniff out a sales pitch online immediately, and just as quickly they are on to the next thing.

ARTICLE BY

Morgan Kennedy
OF
Covington & Burling LLP

Social Media Marketing – New FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Guidance On Generating “Buzz”

Giordano Logo

For the first time since it issued its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising in 2009, the FTC has provided new guidance on the use of social media to generate consumer interest (or “buzz”) in a brand.

Shoe manufacturer Cole Haan had a great social media marketing idea.  They would run a contest through Pinterest.  The winner would get a $1,000 shopping spree courtesy of Cole Haan.  To enter, Pinterest users had to “pin” images of Cole Haan shoes on Pinterest.  They even came up with a great slogan for the campaign: “Wandering Sole.”  Finally, so that people could find the images easily, contestants were required to include the hash tag “#wanderingsole” in their pin descriptions.

This was a great marketing idea.  Lots of Pinterest users would post pictures of Cole Haan’s product on Pinterest and generate buzz about Cole Haan shoes. Here is what one Pinterest page currently looks like:

Cole Haan Pinterest

There was only one problem; the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC considered the posting of images of Cole Haan shoes by Pinterest users to be endorsements of the product.  To be clear, the issue was not whether the Pinterest users actually intended to endorse the brand.  Rather, the concern was whether viewers of the image might perceive the posting of the images to be endorsements.  As such, the FTC investigated the marketing practice and issued a closing letter to Cole Haan regarding their investigation.

As stated in the closing letter, the FTC thought that the since the Pinterest “pins” constituted an endorsement, there should have been a “clear and conspicuous” disclosure concerning the fact that the “endorsers” (i.e., the Pinterest users entering the contest) were being compensated for their endorsement, namely, the chance to win the $1,000 shopping spree.  The FTC did not believe that the “#Wanderingsole” hash tag was sufficient to provide this required disclosure.  Fortunately, the FTC did not take enforcement action against Cole Haan, recognizing that the FTC had not squarely addressed this issue before.

So finally, we get to the point of this post.  While I understand the FTC’s point (I really do), I think social media marketers will need more specific bright line guidance as to what type of disclosure is required.  The reason is that in the social media context, the amount of text that may be capable of devoting to such disclosure can be very limited.  It is noteworthy that the 2009 guidance issued by the FTC provided numerous examples to help us identify when endorsement disclosure s would be required.  Not one of those examples, however, indicated what would constitute a sufficient disclosure.

In fact, one of the comments submitted (by Heath-McLeod) in connection with the 2009 guidelines requested that the FTC provide “minimum standards for the size and clarity of disclosures.”  The FTC expressly rejected this request saying that:

“advertisers flexibility to meet the specific needs of their particular message is often preferable to attempting to mandate specific language, font, and other requirements applicable across-the-board to all ads.  Advertisers thus have always been free under the Guides to make their disclaimers as large and clear as they deemed appropriate to convey the necessary information to consumers”

That’s good, I suppose.  Advertisers need some freedom to do what they think is appropriate in the context of their marketing.  But how, as a practical matter, are advertisers supposed to get comfortable that the disclosure they give is sufficient?  For example, would it have been sufficient for the Pinterest users to have included the word “sponsored” in their pin description?  How about just the word “ad?”  Would that have been sufficient?  It’s not clear.

Consider, for example, the fact that a similar disclosure having to be made through Twitter or using SMS (i.e., texting) might be very difficult given the 140 character limit.  Now, consider further that the FTC guidelines for endorsements also require an additional disclosure when the person depicted in the endorsement is not a real consumer of the product.  Perhaps Cole Haan’s hash tag should have read:

“#These pins are part of a contest. Contestants may win prize for posting pins of Cole Haan products. Persons in such pins may not be actual consumers of the pinned product”

Darn, that’s 141 characters.  Maybe if I get rid of the “#” ….

Article By:

Kurt E. Anderson
Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla, P.C.