13 Top Corporate Social Responsibility Tips

 Skip to the top 13 tips, if you don't have much time. 

Fair warning, this is a long-form post. 

With regards to growth hacking Millennial marketing, there are a few pillars you may want to focus on. CSR while not recent, is gaining a lot of mainstream adoption by companies and brands who realize it's importance, especially with regard to the changing value system of consumers, as Millennials are having families, settling down and seek to make ethical purchasing decisions. 

Pillars of Millennial Marketing 

 

Here are some top areas related to Millennial marketing. The 10th we mention here, is CSR. 

1- Video & Micro Video marketing 

2- User Generated Content Marketing (UGC)

3- Influencer-Viral Marketing (IVM)

4- Visual Marketing (IG, Pinterst, Tumblr, Snapchat)

5- SMS Marketing 

6- Personalization via customer data analytics 

7- Augmented Data White Label Loyalty Rewards Programs 

8- Mobile and Omnichannel Optimization (MOO)

9- Location & Real-Time Marketing (LRT)

10- Corporate Social Responsibility  (CSR)

 

 

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

 So in this article, we are going to focus on corporate social responsibility. I'm not an expert, but this about a topic very close to my interests, and a defining keyword in how Millennials are changing business & the corporate culture forever.

While some large companies may use CSR as a marketing gimmick, with the evolution of social media, ethical branding is becoming more equated with philanthropy now, more than ever before. 

Good branding for Millennials, requires that you can demonstrate you actually care about giving back to causes, community, human and minority rights and vulnerable populations.

This holds true if you have customers who are millennials, or if you have employees that are millennials and seek to have  higher retention rates and higher employee engagement. 

Ask yourself this, what are the values that your corporate culture stands for? If it's only profits, you may have a problem. 

• Does this job not sound fun? 

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. Read the posts  here , then  write your own  (use  #BigIdeas2016  in your piece). 

I'd like to suggest that CSR, or the way it will be done in 2016, really is a trend to watch in digital marketing. 

 

The Ramifications of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Identity 

 In this day and age, CSR is not optional, it's a brand trust necessity. Keep in mind that if you company does no CSR activities, your Millennial employee retention may suffer from it, not to mention your online reputation management (ORM) of your brand in the local community. 

It's not by accident that CSR has been embraced by major companies and the biggest brands world wide. This stuff matters, and demonstrates your company is sincere via community engagement, energy efficient business practices, charitable giving & sustainable manufacturing, among others. 

The idea is to tie your brand objectives and company growth goals with a corresponding value in the real world, that can be universally admired.

It impacts a company relationships both externally and internally. Relationships such as  your VC investors, advisers, consultants, interns, future employees, office neighbors, social brand advocates, mentors, general community and of course, your prospects, clients and customers. 

CSR takes a mission statement, and it takes employees who are pro-active. It takes the commitment from management that CSR is worth your company's time and focus.  

CSR is all about aligning your company's persona, the very core of your brand identity in action, with social good.

Social good can mean many things to many people, so don't fret whatever forms yours takes. Focus on the giving, focus on empowering others. It might be, that your entire unique selling point, already has an embedded CSR component.

Brands that have Corporate Social Responsibility Embedded 

 

I'll give you an example, for instance, Thirdshelf, is an SaaS solution that champions SMB indie retail stores that are brick and mortar.

Helping small independent retailers compete with Ecommerce & bigger stores with better marketing, analytics and loyalty, Thirdshelf therefore empowers these stores and local shops to create high-value relationships with all those unique, gritty, occasionally hipster and typically young customers. 

The fact they can demonstrate proof of ROI is very sustainable to these small retail stores (often family owned) who have slim to non-existent profit margins. That is, they can tell the stores how much each loyalty campaign earned them in $ dollars. With an embedded CSR component to their brand's unique selling proposition, Thirdshelf is a startup that is an example of good CSR innovation. 

 

“Moving Forward, Giving Back”—meaning every initiative is committed to moving people and communities forward with energy. 

TOP 13 CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY TIPS 

 

#ValuesThatMatter

 

 

Have a meeting of all interested parties in your company about CSR, the person who cares the most will step forwards.  

1- Let your social media, communication manager or PR person do "CSR campaigns" and integrate this with the culture of your company, startup or future company if you don't have an employee that specializes in CSR. 

 

Embed CSR as part of your Branding Strategy - for Millennials especially, it's real. 

2- Define what practices are authentic in relation to your branding, write them down in a guide, and actually follow through.

 

Charity can be simply Financial, don't underestimate any form of Giving.

3- If you are a successful company, make donations to causes and get local Media to cover it. 

 

Embed CSR with a more healthy company culture 

4- If you are a fit company, introduce events like a walk for breast cancer and such events that embed CSR as part of your corporate culture, as well as make fitness & health a priority for your employees. 

 

Let your CEO be a Visionary that Makes a Difference 

5- Have the CEO conduct events, or talks, where proceeds of the event are donated to charity or product giveaway occurs, if applicable. Having C-level executives on board with CSR is essential, for those are the players with the best social authority where people will actually take notice. 

 

Practice “ Survival of the Kindest.” The theory states that sympathy is our strongest human instinct, and helping others is critical to the survival of the whole species. These days, corporations are starting to have the same realization. It's good PR and something your team can be proud of for your corporate culture. 

Listen and Learn, you may not have to recreate the wheel. 

6- Track what top companies are doing with CSR and how you can apply it to your company. No matter how small your business, you can contribute something back to the community. Listen and learn. CSR will evolve with technology, for instance even giving interns a chance to learn at your company is actually an act of CSR. 

 

Ask your Employees what they Want to Do, Tailor CSR to your Exiting culture 

7- Conduct an employee survey to mine their preferred approach to CSR, for it has to be genuine to be successful. Mine the creativity of your employees, after all, they will likely notice the CSR campaign more than the public, your clients or your social media followers. 

 

CSR may not be a Full-time Job at your Company, But it's a Step towards Humanizing your brand

8- Realize the variety of CSR, what a lot of people don't realize is CSR has aspects of sustainability, employee engagement, monitoring & evaluation, community investment, partnerships and events, marketing & PR, and reporting and analytics. So keep in mind CSR is a more ethical and sustainable way of doing something that has implications to Marketing, HR, PR, Outreach, branding, lead generation, social marketing, Email marketing, and viral marketing. 

 

Make your CSR Events come to Life with Real-Time Social employee sharing 

Employees are at the heart of CSR, so let them help you do Social! 

9- Do an employee content driven (ECD) Social media campaign where your employees are armed with suggested twitter and Instagram #hashtags so they can share their journey in real-time on behalf of your brand. Picture this, we go to an event as a team, and we share our experiences on social media, we are doing this for a good cause, so we are spreading the love both through our actions and our social media sharing. 

 

Leadership must value CSR, for it to work in your Company! 

10- The CSR community manager has to make sure senior leadership buys-in, not just opts-in. Since they have to lead by example. The vibe of the altruism has to permeate all levels of the company, has to be fun, and not be mandatory. CSR has to be embedded into the company's DNA. Creating an ethical place to work means creating a work environment that's full of psycho-social rewards. And what is altruism but an intrinsic self-reward apart from it's very real social-collab contribution to others and the spirit of reciprocity that permeates humanity. 

 

Use CSR as a Team-buiding Innovation Experiment 

11- CSR can be part of how a company does innovation. Each corporate culture will be inspired to do CSR according to their share values. One idea, is for each month a different department decides on the CSR topic of the next month, or next quarter. This way, over time, your company will develop it's own CSR playbook, that not only demonstrates a nice historical timeline of your ethical practices, but also ways you bonded together as a group from day 1 of being a startup, to day 2 of the pivot, to day 3 of scaling and so on to becoming the company you are today. 

 

Make Video Content with your CSR Events 

12- Companies can leverage CSR to whole new levels, if they are a creative group of do-gooders. CSR campaigns are some of the content about your company that has the best chance of going viral. For this reason, you must create video content around the event, campaign, moment. In the future, it may be your company CSR video content that made me want to work for you! Think about it. 

 

Don't be Afraid to take Risks, Life is Short

13- One more risky initiative, is to actually pair a publicity stunt with a CSR campaign. This is aggressive branding, but in a viral world, sometimes good publicity has its own reward.  

 

Why Make CSR a Priority?

 

CSR is not just  a PR mechanism, it's creating a community in your corporate culture that actually can significantly attract employees with the right values and cultural fit, all the while, retaining them better.

Ask your HR department, this has just huge and has global implications on how productive your company can be. Think industrial psychology here. 

If employees have a stronger value fit with your organization, they will work harder. CSR then is a hack for employees to opt-in with their heart. Obviously that's not the goal, but certainly one of the benefits. 

CSR is about accountability and having a brand that Millennials and younger people can relate to. Btw, Zuck's open letter to his son, does it qualify as a CSR message, or does it not? Comment on this article, with your point of view?