Day: November 2, 2022

CSR refers to the awareness of a brand about social and environmental issues to build a brand identity that connects with the masses. A random user could be impressed by the vision of the brand and can be a potential customer.

At the same time, this brand value can be a point of conversion for a potential lead to a customer. This brand image or brand value is not something that you can implement with payable methods, marketers can’t buy it overnight – it must be earned. The consumer base that consists of environmental activists and socially aware people is constantly willing to be a part of any social reform that leads to the betterment of our surroundings.

 These users are greatly moved by such campaigns and once you as a brand, earn their trust and loyalty, they’ll always set their best foot forward to not just be a consistent customers with you, but also as a promoter of your brand. Now let’s see in what ways can CSR be implemented.

Ethical Approach

An ethical approach to CSR demands equal treatment for employees and customers of all races, gender, age, or ethnicity. A synchronous treatment of people from various backgrounds is the gist of corporate social responsibility.

A fair opportunity for job openings at a marketing firm to aspirants regardless of their personal differences and similar open-mindedness in opting vendors for distribution or sales of the product can be shown to enhance the positivity of the brand message.

Environmental Approach

Moving forward, thinking of the ecological sustainability of your firm is a clear indicator of the brand’s wisdom. Ecology refers to the study of all the biological creatures and the environment they live in as a whole, termed ecosystem.

A company should always take into consideration and plan the management of the carbon footprint they leave, the resources they exploit, and the wastes they produce. This has proved beneficial for brands multiple times and has emerged as one of the key approaches to successful CSR implementation.

Philanthropic Approach

The philanthropic approach of an organization mainly refers to the good deeds they get involved in. Apart from making profits and creating employment, an organization can play a key role in making the society we live in, a better place. These could be donations, fundraiser events, or even free or discounted services to the needful.

Brands should understand that while people connect with the ecological and ethical influence the brand has, they also keep their eyes on the occasional acts of kindness towards humanity. Not just with the customers, an organization is also expected to show the same kindness to their employees at times.

Financial Approach 

While all the other approaches are centered on getting the attention of the user or employee, the financial approach lets the organization focus on planning the sustainability of funds involved in implementing CSR effectively.

Costs involved in the research and development of strategies that directly affect the sales and productivity of the organization while constantly targeting the crosshair of CSR.

Takeaways 

While we are on it, let’s take a quick look at the takeaways or benefits of complying with a planned CSR strategy:

1. Engaging Employees

As we just saw, the benefits of CSR to an employee are far greater than a financial bonus that wraps up with the month-end. It creates a long-term impression in the employee’s minds and lives on with them as the legacy of the organization.

2. Lower Risks

Unawareness of employee rights or user sentiments may give rise to disagreements and have a higher chance to convert into lawsuits. These acts further lead to the decline of the brand’s reputation in the market.

3. Brand Identity

Apart from reinstalling the positive brand message into the existing customer base, CSR naturally increases the reach of the organization and highlights the kind and more human side of it.

4. Investor’s trust

Companies that have an edge in environmental and social issues are observed to have a higher valuation by investors. Moreover, participation in CSRs shows the growth and awareness of the organization.

10 Brands heading the right way:

Now that you know the types and benefits of CSR, let’s see which brands have been using it for years and have earned the current reputation in the market:

1. Google

The first name that comes up when thinking of effective CSR practices is none other than Google. The company has an ever-growing list of loyal customers, not just because of their user-friendliness but also from the incredible communication they’ve established through their CEO. Google has also pledged to dedicate over a billion dollars for renewable energy projects and is already working on many as their data centers reportedly consume roughly half the power as compared to all data centers across the globe.

2. Tesla

With the incredible CEO and unstoppable engineers, this brand is overflowing with talent while not failing to build a brand reputation bigger than any other motor company of the century. With the sole purpose to make all-electric cars and reduce the overall carbon footprint of their brand, they’re not just selling cars, they’re selling the exact same satisfaction to every happy customer. Undoubtedly Elon Musk will be counted among the most successful entrepreneur of the century.

3. Johnson & Johnson

The brand that normalized baby care products and brought the most affordable versions of the same into the market, has successfully built a castle of trust in the market for the last three decades. Their aim to provide safe drinking water to poor communities across the world as well as the initiative to reduce their carbon footprint has resulted in never-ending trust and loyalty among businesses and customers too while also enriching the existing consumer base of the brand.

4. Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola stands out as a brand that never was expected to announce something as reforming as reducing its carbon footprint by 25% in the coming eight years. They have the surprising aim to recycle every Coca-Cola bottle on earth and thus make their packaging 100% recyclable. They’ve also promised to return all the water back to the environment that is used in making their world-famous drinks.

5. Netflix

The world-famous OTT platform Netflix provides a lesser-known scheme to their employees. They aid the upcoming child of their employees by offering them a 52-week paid leave. Usually, big organizations offer a regular 18-week parental leave but Netflix took a step forward to keep its employees happy and loyal. Netflix has also never thought twice to spread awareness about social issues through its content.

6. Toms

Toms footwear had pledged to donate a pair of footwear for every single unit sold. And they sure stood for the claim donating more than 100 million pairs of footwear to date and spreading double the smiles. They went further to donate eyeglasses for the visually impaired and provide safe drinking water to the masses. Later the company discontinued the mentioned kind of practices due to NGO backlashes. They now continue to donate a third of their total profits to social campaigns.

7. Disney

No one saw this giant stepping forward to step back from its carbon footprint. They are putting an equal foot forward towards improving the lives of their employees and customers. Even during the pandemic, Disney donated over $27 million towards food donations and PPE distribution. They’ve also committed to reducing their water wastage by a significant number.

8. LEGO

Lego heading towards sustainability has pledged to donate over $400 million following a period of the next 3 years. Their goal is currently their biggest challenge, which is to remove the single-use plastic from their products completely and make their packaging sustainable too. This is a huge and admirable step from a brand based completely on single-use plastic, it seems that it will be worth the wait to see the brand emerge as an even greater legacy in the coming years.

9. GE

General motors with their EV production line, made a comeback in the market they largely dominated for decades. SUV lovers are not new to the name of Hummer and the fan base that beast had. With GE launching Hummer EV, the dream of owning a military-grade road dominator became the reality for many fans. Along with the lighter carbon footprint of electric vehicles, GE also conducted a campaign rewarding $500,000 to people who innovated ideas capable of saving our environment.

10. Starbucks 

Last but not the least, call it your favorite café or the coolest remote workplace – Starbucks along with their excellent warmth and services, decided to pay respect to veterans who served the nation by providing them and their spouses with over 25,000 job openings. And in no time, they were already there, now employing over 5,000 veterans every year. This in itself is one peak respect to the devotion of soldiers and makes the bond between Starbucks, Armed Forces, and the civilians even stronger.

These were some of the many known examples of brands adopting CSR effectively and with the aid of humanity and the ecosystem. Brands of all sizes and sectors have a lot to learn from these pioneers of success and kindness.

We surely missed some other examples, feel free to add them in the comments down below. If you liked the article, consider subscribing to our newsletter for future notifications. Find us on social media and we can have your queries solved there.

What is a social media strategy? 

Simply put, a social media strategy is a plan that outlines your social media goals, the tactics you will use to achieve them, and the performance metrics that will be tracked. Your strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. You want  a simple and precise plan in meaningful, measurable ways. This will help you identify  channels and tactics that succeed and those that fail. Watch this webinar to learn how to love your social media strategy! Ultimately, your social media strategy should increase your target audience’s brand awareness and engagement across social media. 

What are the benefits of  a social media strategy? 

 Maybe you’ve run a successful social media campaign or you’re good at engaging with the content you post. This one time success is within reach. However, the hardest part of social media marketing is consistency. Do you understand why the campaign or post was successful? Can you copy it easily? Creating a social media strategy can be scary to think about, but it offers many tangible benefits for your business, such as 

•  A Guide to All Social Media Activities 
•  Improving Brand Awareness 
•  Providing Communications Customer Service and Support 
•  Improving Audience Targeting 
•  Driving and Increasing Website Traffic 
•  Content Optimization 
•  Generating Higher Quality Leads 
•  Creating Social Media Influencers 
•  Promoting your unique content that can go viral (remember the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?) 
•  Offer social commerce and shoppable posts 
•  Information, which you can analyze and measure

 As you can see, social media has huge benefits, so creating a strategy will help you achieve your business goals and increase customer engagement. 

 Although content Marketing and Social Media Marketing are closely related, there is a difference between them. 

 Marketing strategy is the right place to start if you want to direct and improve your social media activities. It includes some basic elements like audience research, creating personas, choosing  social media platforms and  more. Content strategy focuses on  content formats and results. So you should look at content creation, communication and tone, content timing, etc. 

What is a social media engagement strategy?

Your social media engagement strategy is important because it creates relationships with your audience across different networks. It helps you  manage your community through social media  and build your brand. 

 The two main goals of an engagement strategy are: 

1. Community management: This can be done by offering advice via a blog, responding to post comments, answering channel surveys and taking surveys or polls to learn more about your customer base. . 
2. Grow your following: Interaction is key here, so provide valuable content  such as engaging video content, attract potential customers with free content or contests, or simply present your brand as active and helpful by engaging people in your networks in a responsive manner. 

 User Generated Content (UGC) can play a key role here because it is proof that the people who support your brand are talking about  it and are not coming from your company or marketing team. Here are four great examples of UGC to inspire you.

 What are the steps to building a successful social media strategy? 

 Now that you understand the basics of a social media strategy, let’s move on to the  steps you need to take to create a strategy. We’ll also highlight where you can integrate your content strategy and engagement strategy into your overall social media activities to ensure you’re covering all the bases. 

 Here are 5 steps to creating a successful social media strategy, including:

1. Know your target audience 

 The first step in developing any  strategy is to know your target audience. There are thousands of different categories of people on social media, and you want to target your ads and  social media posts to those few who will actually convert into potential customers. And for that, Ms. Alka Thakur uses her expertise to help clients identify their right target audience on social media and then figure out ways  we can serve that  audience. 

 The second part of this step is also to do a lot of research on anything and everything related to your product and service category,  from  competitors to other  market entrants with similar service products, and only then can you develop appropriate strategies to proceed. your business marketing plan 

 2. Create interesting content 

 The second and most important step would be to create  content that your target audience would not only be interested in seeing, but would  be interested in. The  content you create defines your current customer base and helps attract new  customers. Our Nagpur social media marketing company at OSK works round the clock to help  clients create the best  content for  social media. 

 3. Engage with your followers 

 Your followers can be existing customers or potential customers who are interested in your brand. Either way, it’s the best way to get a return on investment from whatever you’ve spent  marketing your brand on social media. communicate with  followers, not only to retain them, but also to engage them and know their feedback to improve our products and services. In this century, where the customer is  king, it is important to know exactly what the customer wants and needs. Running regular sweepstakes, contests and other engaging activities will help your customers connect with you on a brand level as they would benefit from the brand  more than just the product or  service. 

4. Use a separate content strategy for different social media platforms 

 Now we all know that there are some different groups of people who have adopted different social media platforms and  to target them you  need different social media strategies for each platform. If you post content on Facebook aimed at the younger generation, which is often used by Gen x and boomers today, the result will obviously not be as effective. Ms. Alkal has always had a habit of using different social media strategies for each client for their different social media accounts and this has been very beneficial to the clients  we serve. 

5. Stick to your brand theme 

 Every brand has a theme created from the beginning that later becomes their identity. But for it to become their identity, they need to be consistent with their theme and allow customers to associate your brand with that  theme. Only if a customer can retain and remember the small but important details of your brand are they  likely to stay or return. By creating a specific color palette  on Instagram or using a similar pattern in their posts, the client connects with them and thus increases  brand awareness for their customers, ultimately increasing their ROI.