It’s October. It’s also Pride History Month, Latinx/é Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Relationship Violence Awareness Month. A few weeks ago, it was Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Next month is Native American Heritage Month. The list goes on as the months progress.  

And if you’re like me, not just a social media strategist, but someone who wants to justly celebrate and bring awareness to these identity groups, creating inclusive social media content like this can be extremely daunting. This three-part blog series will explore three common mistakes (and possible solutions) I’ve made myself or seen when creating identity-focused social media content. 

In these blog posts, identity-focused content means content created specifically about a particular identity or something that a particular identity group values. Examples of content could be a heritage, history or awareness month, week or day that centers on any sort of racial, ethnic, nationality, gender, sexuality, ability, age, religious affiliation, political affiliation, socioeconomic status, and/or health-related identity. And identity group will refer to the group of people the content is about.

So, let’s dig into part one!

To post or not to post?  

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen or made myself is posting identity-focused content without considering whether or not that’s a good idea. Often, the act is performative, meaning the reason for posting is to say you’re supportive without actually supporting the groups beyond a social media post or campaign once a year. An example of this might be an organization posting about Equal Pay Day on social media, but at the same time, they are not paying equitable wages to particular groups of employees, like women employees or historically minoritized employees.

Here are some questions to help you decide if it’s appropriate to post:

Why are you posting this content?

If the answer is because “everyone else is doing it,” make sure you’ve got solid answers to the next few questions. If your answer includes things like, “it’s important to our employees, social media audience or customers,” or “this type of content and message aligns with our organization’s values,”  or “we’ve got resources or information that we think is important for our audience to know on this topic,” those are all pretty good reasons to post. Here at CSU, our Principles of Community and overall university values are two of the most important reasons why many of us are posting identity-based content. 

Does your organization actively support this community beyond saying you support the community?

If the answer is no, then you may reconsider posting this type of content. By posting content about identity groups that your organization isn’t doing anything to support, you may be viewed as performative and ungenuine. You may also want to ask yourself if your organization is doing anything that’s actively harming the identity group in question, because that’s a surefire way for your social media content to backfire on you.

If you’re actively supporting the identity group or making changes to better support the group, then pursing that identity-focused content might make sense for your organization. In your content, consider talking about what your organization is doing to be supportive. Other content ideas you can consider are:

• Amplifying the social media content developed by the identify group on campus
• Providing lists of campus or other resources for the identity group to tap into
• Creating educational content for those not within the identity group to help them better understand the primary identity group
• Highlighting people on campus within the identity group you’re posting about, as long as you do so appropriately (we will get into how to do this in part two)

Do you have the resources to create this content effectively?

When considering how much identity-focused content you’re going produce, thinking about resource availability can really help you solidify your plan.

• Do you have have the bandwidth to commit to making this content as good as possible? The worst thing you can do for the identity group you’re creating content about is doing it poorly and too quickly. Before committing to too much, make sure you have enough time to create the content, especially if you’re going to be asking for help
• Do you have the relationships and tools to make sure all your information is correct? Out of all the questions I ask myself, this is the one I find most helpful because I only fit into a few identity groups, including many dominant groups. The relationships I have with people from those groups and my own knowledge toolkit are extremely important for me in making sure I’m creating identity-focused content as accurately and inclusively as possible. If you don’t have the right relationships or tools, think about how you can establish both of those well before it’s time to start creating content.

What communities do you not normally highlight on social media? 

This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself, because it focuses on the identity groups that may be historically ignored. Take a look through your social media content from the past year and see which identity groups are important to your organization, but are not represented in your social media content as often as they should be. If you find identity groups you’ve not mentioned for a while, make a plan to include them in the upcoming year.

What’s next?

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed about creating inclusive identity-focused social media content, that’s okay. This work is not easy and will always require substantial and consistent commitment to do justly. I have made so many mistakes creating inclusive identity-focused content over the course of my career, but I continue this work because it’s the right thing to do. Deciding whether or not to post is just the first hurdle, and I’m sure I didn’t even cover everything I could have on this topic. In the next posts, we’ll explore bringing the identity group into your content creation process, and the third post will focus on educating yourself and further resources.