Content Marketing for Social Impact:

What Actually Works (And What’s a Waste of Time)

Social impact brands have big goals across the board, whether they’re looking at the pragmatic business operations side of things or considering the overall impact and brand voice side of the equation. Both performance numbers and core values should be prioritized in their content marketing strategies, but here’s the problem: Many social impact brands get lost in the complexities of elevating marketing and social impact objectives at the same time.

While it’s never easy to keep both content marketing outcomes and social impact expectations top of mind simultaneously, we think that most brands make it more complicated than it needs to be. Instead of trying to do it all, this guide is designed to help you narrow your content marketing efforts down to the most effective strategies that work well for short-term and evergreen results, all while highlighting your brand’s mission, vision, and values through a social impact lens. 

Your time is limited and your goals matter; these tips will help you focus on the most effective solutions while avoiding time wasters that disguise themselves as good marketing practices.

Top Strategies for Social Impact Content Marketing

Focusing on the Brand Story at All Levels

Who are you? What does your brand stand for? How do you communicate those values to your audience, and more importantly, how do you make sure you’re reaching an audience who will care about the same social impact cause you do? 

It’s time to get your messaging strategy in place, focusing on the core brand story you want to tell. This is a short narrative that explains to customers, prospective customers, and even investors how and why you came to run this type of business, why it matters to you and your customers, and how your story has progressed as you’ve continued to grow your business. It’s often found on the “About Us” page of a company’s website and is best told through a story-like narrative for maximum impact and audience recall. Like with all good stories, your audience wants to see the full trajectory of your brand’s narrative through your brand story and why it matters for the impact cause you support.

Your core brand story can be broken down into micro-content that you share over and over again, like case studies, blog posts, social media graphics, customer testimonials, and multimedia content that each tell part or all of your story in a creative way. Regardless of the storytelling content format you select, it all needs to sound like you, with an emphasis on the mission, vision, and values that you stand for. We highly recommend developing (or refining an existing) brand guide so that your content writing do’s and don’ts are clearly spelled out for reference and continuity. 

Practical Ways to Implement This Strategy in Your Business 

Developing Thought Leadership and Educational Content

Establish yourself as an expert in your particular niche by creating regular, interesting content that teaches your audience new things about your social impact cause. In our experience, many potential customers (especially for social impact brands) spend considerable time in the top-of-the-funnel marketing stage, reading your educational content to determine if you’re a reliable brand in this field that they care so much about. 

If your values, messaging, and actions don’t line up, you risk losing your audience; this is why consistency of all kinds is so important. Both consistently showing up in your audience’s preferred channels in order to stay relevant and showing up with consistent words and actions that align with who you are matter. Consistent thought leadership and educational content will keep you on customers’ radar and help them to see why they should work with you instead of competitors with less of an expertise footprint on their website and social channels.

Practical Ways to Implement This Strategy in Your Business

It’s time to develop and hone your own expertise, then get to crafting new content. Examples of thought leadership and educational content that work well include blogs and email newsletters written by the leadership team, LinkedIn articles on various relevant topics, contributed articles from third-party experts, podcasts, webinars, in-person and online workshops, infographics, explainer videos and blogs, FAQs, and more. Think about where your marketing and creative teams’ talents and interests lie, because their passion will shine through in the content formats that get them excited.

Selecting Thoughtful Brand Partnerships and Collaborations

If you choose to pursue influencer or partner-driven marketing tactics, make sure you’re working with people and companies that align with your brand and its values. Do your research on what they’ve already supported, who their core audience is, and if any controversies they’ve faced might hurt your brand. From there, if you’ve determined that they’re a good fit, be thoughtful about the partnership projects and campaigns that you work on with them. Be clear on what you want them to say and how you want them to interact with your product or service, and be prepared to handle follow-up questions and opinions, both on your channels and theirs. 

Practical Ways to Implement This Strategy in Your Business

Well-planned and co-planned social media campaigns get a lot of attention and are often worth the time they take if you find a partner you align with. Look for brands that you admire and reach out to them to see if they would be interested in a short campaign, workshop, or other partnership opportunity; you never know who will jump at the opportunity!

Also, when looking for companies or individuals that share your values, pay pragmatic attention to what they offer. Ideally, they sell a product or service that complements one you offer. The packaged programs, products, and services you can then offer will be a value-add to both of your businesses (and your customers).

If you’re not interested in a full-fledged third-party partnership, you can still benefit from a partnership-driven mindset by collaborating with or elevating the voices of people who love your brand. This can be as simple as including a positive testimonial or quote from previous customers in your content, even if they aren’t true influencers. They likely have other friends and family members who will be interested in this social impact area, too.

Creating Reports and Other Content That Showcase Social Impact Progress

This is one of the most important content marketing strategies for social impact brands because it immediately sets you apart from most of your competitors. It can take significant effort to develop reports and share data in a compelling way, which is why many companies don’t bother with it. But we firmly believe it’s worth it to create interesting reports, infographics, and other resources that back up your social impact goals. This type of content marketing showcases your expertise, improves your transparency and authenticity ratings with both existing and potential buyers, and offers a unique visual resource for buyers and investors alike to understand what you’re doing to make a real difference.

Annual impact reports, progress trackers that show movement toward internal goals, and detailed blogs or newsletters that explain what you’re doing to contribute to a greater goal are all great examples of this type of content. Social impact audiences tend to care just as much about your actions as they do about your words; displaying social impact data through a creative content marketing lens really works because, unlike most forms of content marketing, it provides a transparent look at a brand’s tangible results.

Practical Ways to Implement This Strategy in Your Business

Pick metrics that matter to you and your audience, and find practical ways to measure them at regular intervals. From there, decide on the format that resonates best with you and your audience to share your results. We like these snippets from Schneider Electric, an impact company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. The first is from a 2024 impact report, which includes both a written explanation of their progress and this helpful visual aid for seeing how they’re performing now and how they’re progressing toward future goals.

But we also like the second example from them and think it might be a more practical first step if you’re just getting started with measuring impact. Commitment and pledge statements both tell your audience what you care about and what you’re working toward; in fact, they tie in perfectly with the brand story we talked about earlier, making them a great way to build on your impact while also increasing your story’s visibility.

Content Marketing Strategies That Work Less Effectively for Social Impact Goals

Writing Content With No Message, Substance, or Call to Action

Fluff content and viral trends may get some attention, but they’re unlikely to hold the attention of your most serious and aligned customers. In fact, participating in a project that contains little to no substance may actually turn away your customers who are looking for a reliable social impact resource.

If a fun trend makes sense for your brand identity and overall goals, that’s one thing – but one-off social media posts and blogs that serve no real purpose and don’t match up with your overall brand values will detract from the other great work you’re doing. Focus instead on content that is interesting and informative for your audience. 

Additionally, think about the purpose that each piece of content you create serves. Is it designed to attract new audience members by educating them on a relevant topic? Is it for prospective buyers who are further down the funnel and may need a clear call to action to take the next step? Ask yourself what each piece of content is supposed to be doing, so you can make sure the message actually works for your goals.

One last thing: With artificial intelligence popping up everywhere, don’t give in to the temptation to mass-generate content with little thought behind it. Relying too heavily on generative AI is a pitfall that many companies will face now that these tools are so easy to access. It might not always be noticeable, but your most loyal followers will likely recognize if your content starts to lose its heart and become algorithmic. Don’t lose your brand voice for the sake of easy content generation.

Prioritizing Content Quantity Over Content Quality

This one is simple, and hopefully, it’s a breath of fresh air for teams that are pressed for time and resources. You don’t need to post multiple times a day, and you don’t need to be on every social channel. Do some research upfront to determine where your audience spends most of their time, and focus on creating content for those channels. 

From there, consider what your team has the capacity to create. This is not a question of how much content they can crank out; instead, it’s a question of how much time it will take for them to brainstorm and formulate thoughtful content that will engage your audience rather than leave them scrolling right past it.

Optimizing for Generic SEO Keywords and Phrases

Since we’re more invested in content quality over quantity, you’re not as likely to defeat the content farms that churn out tons of content to rank higher in Google’s SEO algorithms. Instead, you need to play it more strategically with SEO. 

Here’s an example: If you’re a green clothing retailer, you might not want to focus all of your efforts on optimizing for the search term “sustainable clothing,” because lots of other brands will already be targeting that simple keyphrase. Instead, you should get more specific and optimize for longer-tail keywords. Something like these keyword phrases might give you better results, not to mention a more focused and motivated buyer set:

• “Sustainable clothing brands for infants and mothers”
• “Sustainable shoes made from upcycled plastics and materials”
• “Green textiles for workplace clothing and fashion”

Running Campaigns That Don’t Nurture the Right Audiences and Values

If you’re running a strict outreach campaign to build your follower list, cold outreach is unlikely to be your friend unless it’s highly targeted and you’re putting in the necessary research ahead of time. Many companies that are sending messages en masse, like the generic ones you might receive in your email or LinkedIn inbox, are reaching out to thousands of contacts and ending up in spam because they’re not targeting the right people or doing any research to make sure that these contacts actually line up with their target audience.

This strategy simply does not work for social impact brands and brands with fewer resources on hand. After all, social impact brands primarily need followers who share their values enough that they’ll want to invest in the products and services you sell; the average buyer won’t be a good fit if they don’t share these values. Generic email lists and non-targeted cold outreach tactics will take time and energy but leave you with few true leads or new contacts. A true time waster.

As for more traditional marketing campaigns, these can be successful if done with intention. That means that you map out the campaign, infuse the campaign with a consistent brand voice that feels and sounds like you, and think about what the CTA is going to be each step of the way.

Most importantly, don’t let your messaging and efforts die out as soon as the initial campaign is over. Social impact brands have to stay in touch with the people who engage with their campaigns, continuing to nurture their involvement with the brand in organic, authentic ways. If you don’t, they’re likely to fall off quickly, and more crucially, they may begin to believe that your social impact efforts were only about building your contact list or making a quick dollar. Nurturing your email list even after an initial sale is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. After all, it’s much less expensive to retain an existing client, customer, or donor than to bring in a new one.

Make Your Content Marketing Investments Count

Whether you’re handling content marketing work internally or hiring a third party to help you get your content out to the world, content marketing is an investment that can quickly turn sour if you’re not operating with an intentional strategy. Especially if social impact is a top priority for your brand, you need to come at content marketing with a holistic strategy that looks at the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit) and also at how your values and big-picture goals will be reflected through your efforts.

At Mane Impact, we pride ourselves on content marketing, branding, design, development, and strategy services that account for the whole of your business and your social impact identity. We’ll never make you a marketing plan that focuses solely on the analytics or the contacts we generate; it’s about so much more than that, both for our brand and for yours.