How to monitor your Corporate Social Responsibility

Topics such as discrimination, human and worker rights and sustainability are increasingly central to the evaluation of a company and its strategies.

Before, some of these factors were almost completely overlooked, but now thanks to new media and the different communication forms, they are becoming more and more a comparison between company and company.

The monitoring of Corporate Social Responsibility activities requires careful attention to how issues are changing in order to be ready to quickly adapt. Digital media monitoring can help companies involved in socially responsible practices to make these changes useful for strategy.

Would you like to know how a Digital Consumer Intelligence approach can help your CSR? Book a Demo to get a free hands-on demonstration of our platform.

What the public thinks of your company is critical to its success. By building a positive image that you believe in, it’s possible to make a name for your company as being socially conscious.

In today’s socially conscious environment, employees and customers are looking for businesses that prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR).

CSR is an evolving business practice that incorporates sustainable development into a company’s business model. It has a positive impact on social, economic, and environmental factors. CSR uses to positively impact the business by improving company image, building the brand, and motivating the entrepreneur as a business owner. Consumers, employees, and stakeholders are beginning to prioritize CSR when they choose a brand or company.

Recognizing how important socially responsible efforts are to their stakeholders, many companies now focus on a few broad CSR categories:

• Environmental efforts: One primary focus of corporate social responsibility is the environment. (less consumption of plastic, fuel etc.)

• Philanthropy: Businesses can practice social responsibility by donating money, products, or services to social causes and nonprofits. Larger companies tend to have a lot of resources that can benefit charities and local community programs.

• Ethical labor practices: By treating employees fairly and ethically, companies can demonstrate their social responsibility. 

• Volunteering: Attending volunteer events says a lot about a company’s sincerity. By doing good deeds without expecting anything in return, companies can express their concern for specific issues and commitment to certain organizations.

The general public or employees often don’t really see or understand what’s going on behind the scenes at a company. Ensuring that they understand what you are doing holistically with your CSR efforts is key to growing as a brand.

Transparency and full disclosure are key to creating a stronger, more efficient social business. And thanks to social media culture, companies recognize the need for a stronger and more public social responsibility strategy. The social media spotlight new business for companies that show a sustainable lifestyle. All the more reason to create a strong corporate social responsibility strategy.

How can you monitor your strategy and that of competitors through Digital Consumer Intelligence techniques? The configuration of keywords and search terms for monitoring should obviously include the names of any CSR initiatives, sector events etc. But equally important is the monitoring of the problems that led to the development of a CSR strategy.

• Monitor for changes in public perceptions of your CSR issue. Topics and public attention can change over time, and monitoring for changes in attitudes can help a company either adjust its CSR programs or its messaging to keep up with these changes.

• Monitor for changes in the science that supports your issues. Science often changes. Each new study that comes out can shift understanding, and it is better to be ahead of that curve than behind it.

• Monitor for attention and response on social media. Are your CSR issues getting the attention you think they should? If not, monitor for the broader topic at large and see how people are talking about the issue. Getting more attention for your efforts might require adjusting the tone of voice you are using to talk about them.

• Monitor celebrities and influencers who champion your issues. Celebrities command attention, and it’s important to know what they are saying on the topics important to your company. Positive or negative—what one might say could have an impact on your issues.

• Monitor for emerging issues. This can be tricky because it can feel a little bit like trying to predict the future, but it’s still worth developing a monitoring strategy around it. The ability to see new trends, and plan for them, plays into CSR efforts and responds to consumer demand.

It is important to maximize the coverage of your efforts using social media channels, blogs, but also your inbound channels such as employee meetings, board meetings and press briefs. The important in a Digital CSR strategy is always having a long-term vision, listen and learn, innovate, and also encourage users to take part of it. 

For example, a bank can monitor the contents published on social media by its competitors, to understand in percentage terms the volumes of CSR content, the editorial plan used, creativity, tone of voice etc.

Through Digital Consumer Intelligence  AI technologies, it is possible to see how many CSR related content (sustainability, environment, sport, etc) were published by 3 major Italian banks (BPM, BPER and CREDEM), during the last year.

As we can see in the first chart, the CSR content volume that BPM bank has published on its social media is certainly much lower than the rest of the publications. But if we consider it compared to a perimeter of direct competitors, the situation changes, because we can see how Banco BPM is the first one for online sensitivity to CSR topics compared to some of its competitors, such as BPER and Credem.

Analysis like this is useful to understand who is the best competitor in some segments and consequently how to structure your strategy.

Monitoring for CSR isn’t that different than monitoring for other issues faced by a company, but it does require careful attention to how issues are changing. If companies are going to commit to socially responsible practices, they need to embrace how these topics can change over time and be ready to adapt. Monitoring can help make these changes seem less sudden, if you have the information at hand, you can plan.

Would you like to know how a Digital Consumer Intelligence approach can help your CSR?

Book a Demo to get a free hands-on demonstration of our platform.