Maintaining an Inclusive, Accessible Social Media Strategy

Feb 13

When building a social channel, the first things you want to take into consideration are the makeup and needs of your audience. But in today’s social media climate, there’s also a need to ensure that your message is as inclusive and accessible as possible. We recently caught up with Destanie Morman, communications director at Vote Run Lead, to learn more about how to cultivate a social feed that’s inclusive for all. Our conversation came ahead of her panel on the subject at Ragan’s Social Media Conference at Walt Disney World in March.

Putting inclusivity into practice on social

An organization’s ability to be inclusive on social is important for a very simple reason — it allows them to reach as many people as possible through its channels. While a one-size-fits-all approach is fine for some organizations, it’s going to place some pretty significant limitations on the audiences you’re able to reach.

“It’s important to take the diversity of your audience into account. For example, some people you’re reaching out to might have hearing difficulties — how can you ensure that the message is getting to them too? If you’re able to communicate with people where they are, there’s a better chance that they’ll trust your brand because you’re taking that extra step to cater to them,” Morman said.

Morman added that word choice on social media is important to consider. She stated that if you’re using words that don’t relate to your target demographic, you’ll risk losing that all-important engagement.

“It’s also really important to learn from the diversity of your audience and figure out how to apply it in other modes of communication across your organization,” Morman said. “For example, if you’re finding success with the inclusive language you’re using on social media, you might consider adapting it over to external email communication as well.”