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Effectively communicating your Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) credentials through content marketing is an essential requirement for companies of all sizes today.
However, there are currently three major trends in ESG that you should be aware of:
- The first is the politicization and controversy over ESG as a term, despite the general recognition of underlying values, leading to ‘greenhushing’, especially in the US.
- The second is changes in sustainability reporting requirements, especially in the EU.
- The third trend is changes in greenwashing legislation to improve consumer protection.
The “anti-ESG” movement may seem distant, but it could have a domino effect, creating mistrust around the term and associated action. This can create a discouraging and difficult atmosphere for ESG communications.
While the CSRD requirements currently impact large companies, it is likely that they will trickle down to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
How does this apply to content marketing?
Normally you might associate greenwashing with misleading statistics or words, but it’s important to remember that the Green Claims Code applies to all contexts, including visual contexts such as images, graphics and videos.
It is important to consider tone, context and written content when marketing sustainability and climate claims.
Use an impact report to market your ESG efforts
An annual report focuses on the organization’s business performance that year, while an impact report focuses on the impact the organization has on people and the planet.
In general, an impact report communicates your ESG goals and strategy, and reports on your progress in achieving them. You can connect this to the mission and culture of your organization. For example, if your goal is to reduce CO2 emissions in Scope 3 by 20%, you can describe how you aimed for this, and include your actual CO2 reduction in Scope 3. You may have used a company culture initiative to achieve this, such as implementing a bike-to-work program or a travel policy.
Transparency about your results is important. Remember the anti-greenwashing rule that selectively omits! If you haven’t achieved your goal, honesty builds trust, and the accountability in the impact report will prompt your organization to reassess its strategy.
It is important that these are part of your organization’s business strategy. For example, if your organization has focused on SDG 3 ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages’, you may have focused on reviewing workplace wellbeing or illness policies, or offering a membership from a gym as a perk at work, as well as corporate donations that year going to global health charities.
You can then look at the effects of this. Did your staff feel more motivated by the focus on health? Have fewer sick days been taken? How was their mental health? Have you received feedback from the charities you donated to? You can include any quotes from your staff or other stakeholders. Weaving compelling stories between your data points makes it more interesting and adds authenticity.
Another part of the impact report, as with any content, is data visualization. Having clear and compelling images helps readers understand your data and statistics.
How do you market an impact report?
As a public document, it is important that your impact report complies with anti-greenwashing guidelines and the Green Claims Code.
Therefore, any assets syndicated from this central report should also be monitored, especially in the context of a social media profile. For example, posting only about the “good” parts of the report, or only sharing certain objectives, could be construed as selective omission. It is also relevant to ensure that you always link to the entire impact report so that the reader can find more details.
You can maximize the value of your impact report by breaking it down into social media items. For example, you can take the key highlights and turn them into an icon image for LinkedIn titled “Our Top Three Impacts This Year.”
Any data visualization or image can be reused as a visual element for a LinkedIn post, along with a link to the full report.
TikTok
Video footage of possible volunteer projects, or of employees cycling to work, etc. can be turned into a light-hearted TikTok post. You can create a highlights overview of the past year of positive impact, or even create a TikTok asking your staff if anything surprised them in the impact report.
Blogs
There is a lot to write about the idea of an impact report: why are they important for SMEs? How did you do yours? What did you prioritize? What problems have you encountered?
A blog is also an opportunity to delve deeper into a topic from the report, for example why your organization has chosen this specific charity. Or perhaps a team member would like to share a personal testimony about something from the impact report; an intern can share their story and their steps since leaving the internship.