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How To Create Inclusive Content To Make Your Audience Feel Seen

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How To Create Inclusive Content To Make Your Audience Feel Seen

For diversity and inclusion to thrive in content marketing, they need to be top of mind in every conversation – the ones brands have publicly and the ones they have internally.

While your content team can’t address all possible perspectives in every content effort, they can make great strides by implementing new thinking and processes and developing “muscle memory” for championing diversity in your content marketing.

We spoke at Content Marketing World with African-American Marketing Association founder Michelle Ngome about integrating diversity and inclusion into a brand’s content marketing. Watch the video below for highlights of that conversation. Then, read on for tips from Michelle to turn her advice into intentional actions that deepen customer engagement and drive business growth.

Start internally

Michelle encourages organizations to start from the inside by examining who gets invited to the decision-making table. “A lot of organizations are diverse, but are they inclusive? Do they have [representation of] Black people, Latinx, Asians, American Muslims, neurodiversity, and people with disabilities involved in their marketing conversations?” she asks. “If so, I would like to think they’ll speak up [to help your brand] avoid things that may be sensitive to [any of those] communities.”

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A lot of organizations are diverse but are they inclusive, asks @MichelleNgome via @joderama @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

That representation should also extend to those who create the content. If it isn’t possible on your in-house team, Michelle suggests, bringing on a freelance writer or consultant, or partnering with an agency. They can expand your team’s frames of reference and contribute new ideas and perspectives to your storytelling efforts.

If you don’t have the budget to outsource, interview customers or subject matter experts to share their stories and experiences with your content creators, then use your brand’s content platforms to amplify their voices.

Cultivate a welcoming environment

Simply inviting diverse team members to your content planning sessions and strategy meetings isn’t enough. You also need to cultivate an environment where each person feels encouraged and empowered to speak their truth even when it might conflict with the ideas and perspectives held by the majority of the team.

For this, Michelle recommends that team leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and look for ways to make outliers more comfortable expressing their views and experiences.

“It takes a lot of confidence to speak up in a room. If you’re a manager, how are you reading the room? Do you see someone who seems kind of timid? [Engaging them] it might be inviting them to a one-on-one like, ‘Hey, let’s, let’s go to my office’ or ‘Let’s do a 15-minute Zoom call and talk about this.’ They probably do have thoughts – they’re just afraid to speak up,” Michelle says.

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Inclusivity often involves managers asking timid team members to talk one-on-one, says @MichelleNgome via @joderama @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Specific and prescriptive multicultural marketing training can also help shift your team’s mindset, making them more aware of their unconscious biases and motivating them to eliminate biased language and ideas from their content.

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Audit your brand communication

Michelle also suggests companies do a full audit of their communication to identify areas where unintentional imbalances or subtle exclusions may exist. Examine internal messaging as well as the content across all your digital platforms:

“What kinds of content are you sharing on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn company pages, and Twitter? What do your messaging and images look like? Is there a healthy balance of perspectives shared in [your] choices of topics and the [faces and voices behind] your messages? Is the language welcoming to all, or does it prioritize the experiences of some groups over others?”

Exploring aspects like these can identify existing inclusion lapses in your brand communication.

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Though content marketers may not have influence over some enterprise-level communication, the team can take steps to counterbalance them with more inclusive messaging in the content they create.

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Revamp operational processes

You also can take a few more deliberate steps to implement an inclusive content marketing strategy:

  • Add diversity-related categories to your editorial plan: Note such things as the audience segments the content effort might appeal to.
  • Gather direct insights: Conduct surveys, host one-on-one interviews, meet with focus groups to learn how a BIPOC customer journey may be different from other targeted audience members.
  • Develop a diverse editorial advisory board: Create an ongoing resource to suggest ideas, fresh sources, and speakers from multiple perspectives.
  • Watch your language: Don’t simply write or say that your brand is diverse and committed to inclusion. Show your audience by using descriptive words that reflect concepts like “connection,” “openness,” and “balance.” Aim to use gender-neutral phrases (like they or them instead of he and hers) and refer to sources by their chosen pronouns (if you aren’t sure, ask). Where possible, free your content from biased statements that assume a level of wealth or experience that might exclude some of your target audience.

#Inclusivity can be as simple as using your source’s chosen pronouns. Not sure their preference? Ask, says @MichelleNgome via @joderama @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Michelle recommends a few resources to sharpen your inclusive language skills, including her company’s Language of Inclusion Glossary and guidance provided by Diversity and Inclusion Work.

Brands like people don’t always handle their diversity challenges perfectly. But remember, there’s room for all kinds of businesses to grow more inclusive. It’s also never too late, even for those that have made high-profile errors in judgment, may have been ill-informed about an issue, or placed their bets on the wrong horse.

 Register to attend Content Marketing World in Cleveland, Ohio. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute




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MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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MARKETING

More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.

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