Racial and social injustice has exploded into the media and conversations at both local and global levels, and organizations have been rushing to post content that expresses their stance on social justice.
If businesses and organizations do not address the topic of social justice, they risk looking out of touch at best, and alienating entire segments of customers at worst.
Developing content that addresses the systemic racism in our culture is terrifying to many organizations who are afraid that they will say the wrong thing. And, such content is important and necessary if we are to move with any significance in the direction of social justice for all.
Show You Care
There are many ways to address this topic. You can start with a blog post to join the conversation and show that you are paying attention. A blog post about systemic racism as it relates to your industry is one way to show that social and racial justice is an issue that you as an organization care about. Here are some other suggestions for topics that can be addressed objectively:
- What systemic racism looks like in your industry or region
- How businesses in your industry are reacting to and/or making changes to end systemic racism
- How prioritizing diversity is beneficial to companies
- How mentoring can help marginalized populations + how your organization does mentoring
Walk the Talk
Ideally, organizations will also make a statement about their position on social justice and how they are addressing it internally. For this statement to be effective, organizations must first decide what kinds of changes they want to make, and commit to a plan to carry out those changes. This type of statement, with action behind the words, is much more powerful than a generic statement about how racism is bad. However, any type of statement is better than saying nothing. You can always say that you are carefully considering how best to address racism within your organization – just make sure you follow up later with the results of that planning.
Build Those Relationships
Marketing and selling today is all about relationships. If you can show that you as an organization are making a sincere effort to do the right thing when it comes to social and racial justice, building a real relationship with loyal customers will be that much easier. So take some time to figure out how you are going to walk the talk in your organization, and then call me to help you with that statement or blog post.
Free Blog Post
For my part, I am offering one free blog post (on any topic) to Black business owners and professionals. I welcome ideas on how to better support the Black community in the Comments.
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