These are the four most important channels to promote your CSR activity

There are many reasons organisations are involved in CSR programmes - perhaps sustainability, saving money, innovation, brand differentiation or customer and employee engagement. If you have the foundations of your CSR campaign ready to go, there are 4 key channels you can use to fully emphasise your work.

Media Relations

Getting your CSR efforts featured in the media is a great way to tell people about your work. According to research from Edelman, not only is earned media coverage the most influential channel for building trust in a brand (other than having a personal experience with it) it’s also incredible at widening your reach and communicating with far more people.

And nowadays, as the media becomes increasingly digital, it’s easy to calculate how many people have viewed your media coverage online. Platforms such as CoverageBook will tell you the readership of each publication you’re seen in, the number of views your article received and the amount of times an article has been shared. Because of this, not only is media coverage great for building trust and increasing audience reach, it’s also a channel that can easily demonstrate the ROI of your CSR promotion.

To get started here, understanding your CSR goals will help you to identify the publications you want to be seen in and the audiences you want to reach. Then, get a feel for the kind of stories these media platforms and journalists are interested in. (Often, when it comes to catching the attention of journalists in B2B publications, angles must be educational, informative and, without doubt, focused on the issue - this often means less emphasis on promotional activities and more on the meaning and importance of your CSR efforts.)

Social Media

Social media platforms are a great place to reiterate your core CSR messages to wide audiences and build closer connections with people and organisations, as it allows real time responses to your work and messages.

Because of this, social media should be used as a key CSR channel to:

• Post a range of content types (copy, images, video, infographics, blog posts etc.) which encourages user engagement with your activities. As well as this, unlike with traditional media channels, you don’t have to appeal to a journalist’s interests and, therefore, you can cater posts entirely to your needs (Although in tandem, these two channels work very well together.

• Carry out social listening - Performing social listening can reveal useful consumer data, industry trends and brand perceptions, so you understand the best direction to take your CSR activities.

Internal Stakeholders

To really show the value that your organisation places on CSR, you want your employees to actively participate and talk about your activities. Of course, you can’t force them to promote the actions for you, but ensuring you have a strong internal comms strategy in place will help to encourage them and bring them along on the journey.

Firstly, make sure your leadership team is on board to lead by example. Beyond this, try to engage with your workforce as much as possible on the direction of your CSR - keep in contact with them through emails, surveys or newsletters, for example, and try to gain their genuine feedback and suggestions. By helping employees to feel that their voices are valued in your CSR decisions, they’ll likely feel more engaged with the process.

In a digital world, employees who talk positively about their company’s CSR will be heard by new audiences, improving company image and employer branding along the way. Their interactions with your social channels could also do your social media strategy a big favour, driving the reach and engagement of your posts.

Influencer relations

Getting an industry influencer to talk about your work is a great way to gain exposure to their engaged audiences. Because of their sway, their good association can do wonders for your image, increasing awareness.

To start, you must first identify which influencers are best for your campaign. You’ll want to find people who are interested in similar topics, have similar brand values and the right target audience. Good CSR promotion should feel authentic so the people/brands you find need to match your ethos and interests. Then once you’ve built up the right relationship with them, you may arrange for them to discuss your work in their blogs, social media posts or partner with you to attend/host events. 

Ideally, your CSR campaign should use a combination of different channels to promote your work. Together, each component has the potential to expand your exposure, reach and audience engagement in a variety of ways to truly make the most of your activities. 

Not sure where to start? Get in touch for help planning and managing your CSR promotional strategy.