An effective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy for Social Media is something you need to follow if you care about improving your brand’s overall image.

In case you don’t know, Corporate Social Responsibility consists of all those practices around a company’s sustainable development. It’s about giving back to society and addressing its needs, by offering social, economic and environmental solutions.

Just by taking a look at influencers and brand communities you get how powerful social media are. And by also looking at what big brands do for the society you see that CSR is something that makes brands shine. Well, what you need is a few functional ways of combining the two, making them work together.

Through a well-proportioned mix, you have countless different opportunities for many different things. You can engage with audiences by addressing serious topics, you can promote humanitarianism, you can support social cause advertising campaigns, you can let people share personal experiences and so on.

No matter what you find useful, timely and relevant that helps you showcase your brand’s good or positive side towards society and people, making a list of a few things at the back of your head will help regardless.

Keep in mind that Social Media is your practical tool for communicating your CSR activities to the outside world. You just need to find the right equilibrium point.

So, we gathered for you 5 helpful, functional strategic steps to develop your CSR strategy through social media.

1. Think of CSR practices by first looking at your brand’s strengths

You shouldn’t just blindly research Social Media trends and try to address people’s interests around them. Your practices should be built around your business’ core strengths.

People might feel like you’re trying too hard to convince them about how socially responsible your brand is if you don’t back up why you’re addressing something. And you probably won’t be able to support something if you’re not influential enough at it and it’s out of your league.

If your practices feel irrelevant, people will give you negative reactions.

Start by looking deeply into your business and brainstorm on what you can do effectively on social media to reach people and engage with them.

2. Don’t forget your target audience

You shouldn’t lose people who make up your primary target audience and are interested in your brand whenever you’re trying to make something bigger with far more reach and impressions.

Think big and keep your faithful followers around at the same time. Try not to look like you’re addressing people only for serving your benefit or your business’ benefit. You shouldn’t let your loyal audience feel abandoned.

By not taking this as seriously as needed, you might end up losing your people and face big problems in the future. And by the time something viral stops being viral, you might be left out with far fewer people following you.

Keep growing while keeping your faithful audience happy.

3. Let two-way communication take place

Remember that the primary reason why Social Media exist is to let people communicate simultaneously. You need to show that your brand cares about simple personal problems. Don’t add your brand to the list of all those brands that spend a lot of time and money in creating loads of content, without allowing people to be personally active.

You should be open to conversation about many different matters, two-way communication is basically what connects your brand to consumers. People feel more important when they’re given enough attention.

Engage with audiences by asking questions and looking for answers. Address people on a personal level, and you’ll be more capable of portraying a specific image that social responsibility requires.

Don’t be lazy, listen to whatever’s given to you and give people back the attention they deserve.

By putting yourself in the audience’s shoes, you too would see that you wouldn’t like just being shown by a company how good it is. You’d be more convinced about a business’s ethical side if it gave you attention.

Try to communicate with your audience, and let them sort of give you feedback on your CSR practices. Try not to make your target audience feel like your brand is greater than them.

4. Give yourself credit, but do it carefully

It’s not a crime to showcase your own brand’s good deeds whenever you have the chance. You can not only use press releases about your ethical side but also create Social Media pages on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. When it’s about doing something good you can utilize social media and shout out your actions through a powerful network of faithful followers.

Point out your brand’s commitment to different matters and keep online third-party stakeholders involved in spreading messages through your stories.

Remember that what’s most difficult in integrating social media with CSR is being consistent with what you’re trying to give. A major difference between CSR and Social Media is that the former is about selflessness and offering services open-handedly, while the latter is about self-promotion and personal projection.

So, be careful and find the right balance between promotion and offering to society and people. Make sure you don’t give credit to yourself too often and too loudly. Try to be as subtle and as indiscreet as possible.

5. Engage with people and be authentic

Think of what CSR is truly about for a second. Wouldn’t you think that for creating a positive CSR image towards society and engaging with your audience you’d want your brand to be relatable and authentic?

You have to give people something real and tangible.

By simply doing some research on what big brands do to form their brand communities on Social Media, you’ll find that usually authenticity is their key ingredient. Those brands form a family atmosphere, not a simple online community. So, stand up for people if you’re looking for their support.

Social media let you create an influential network of people who have faith in what your business does. To keep those people happy and connected, your brand should be as entertaining and creative as possible. Don’t forget that your faithful followers are your advocates and they sort of represent your brand in society. They should be given something good from you to be influenced.

Something really important in this whole process is showing how human your brand is. Put real people answer questions and address social matters. By choosing the right individuals for the right purposes you’ll strengthen the chance of your brand spreading messages successfully.

Try to be as approachable as possible, and let your brand and yourself stay true. Make people trust you.

In short, social media is more than just a new form of PR to message an audience – it’s about creating and activating a core base of fans, customers, and employees to bring real change to the world! You can create engagement while passing a message with a funny and at the same time easy to digest way. 

Let these 5 steps be your main guide in mixing your Corporate Social Responsibility with Social Media.

If you want other successful ways of handling social media or enhancing your Corporate Social Responsibility practices feel free to contact One Team.