Does your ESG program have social influence?
“By not tweeting you’re tweeting. You’re sending a message.” Anonymous
There is no doubt the last year has generated an incredible amount of interest in ESG programs. It seems every day another fund is committing to sustainability goals, and unfortunately, every day, we are also reminded of why sustainability is important. Heatwaves bear down on populations unprepared, droughts worsen, while wildfires continue to engulf hundreds of thousands of acres. We see ocean plastic islands the size of states, and we are reminded all the while that rising temperatures are melting ice and rising sea levels.
If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that through the magic of social media, an event can be shared and reshared with incredible speed. In fact, that very platform has become the information-sharing platform of choice amongst Generation Z and Millennial activists from Greta Thunberg to the Sunrise Movement. The reason why is there is an audience interested in the message. This was verified by a recent Pew Research Center poll that showed the majority of Americans state that climate change should be a top priority (source).
The power of social media should come as no surprise to the real estate industry. How often have we seen various online rating platforms used to voice displeasure with a property, whether justified or not? Let’s face it; an online negative social reputation can have real impacts. So much so that a cottage industry has emerged to help businesses deal with the consequences of negative online reputations.
From an ESG perspective, this intersection of increasing social media activism and potential negative impacts needs to begin to emerge as an area of business risk that we need to consider. It really comes down to messaging and potentially leveraging social media to engage residents who may be looking for your support of their cause.
Regardless of where your sustainability program is, realizing that this platform provides the ability to raise awareness and encourage action amongst residents is a key strategy that needs to be considered.
One strategy is to develop a campaign focused on behaviors that you may want to encourage your residents and employees to engage in. Let’s take something simple like programming their thermostat. Face it, we all get busy. You may have good intentions of setting up a program, so you are not keeping your apartment quite as cool during the day while you are at work, but you just haven’t had time yet. Something as simple as a tweet highlighting the potential savings associated with programming their thermostat might spur them to action. It reinforces the message that you are trying to help reduce the impact on the community.
Campaigns can be drawn up around awareness months and dates; for example, October is Energy Awareness Month. Developing in advance a series of messages for social media for each day during the month of October aligns your program with a larger cause and helps establish your brand as a thought leader.
If you reflect on my post on storytelling a few weeks ago, this is another strategy to potentially leverage social media to engage residents and employees. This might be a story about your organization or highlighting your efforts in collecting food to support organizations such as Move for Hunger. Telling a story can often “speak” to the audience in a way that statistics just cannot.
Another strategy is engaging each community to include sustainability messaging in their own social media campaigns. Often our leasing and marketing efforts are already advanced in terms of leveraging social media to increase awareness of a community. By partnering with the marketing department, you can essentially develop a toolkit of messages that can be amplified throughout your organization by each community sharing pre-planned messaging.
The key to an effective social media campaign includes:
Regular and consistent interaction on the social media platform
Engaging the audience, which may include pre-programmed responses to reposts and retweets
Tapping into trending topics which help include your message in the conversations it might not otherwise have access to
Encourage tagging and sharing, you know, drop me one of these:
The bottom line is, there is a mountain of evidence that your residents are increasingly using social media to interact. If the goal of your ESG program is to engage and encourage behavior, then you need to be considering how to leverage these platforms. Want to see how social media and sustainability are a natural fit? Take a look at this video by Jeff Sutton in this article published by Triple Pundit:
A growing number of your tenants are already out there, waiting for someone to engage them, and you have a story to tell. To effect change, you cannot do it alone. Don’t miss out on this ready and willing resource. It is something to consider as you build your own program….
You can help reduce the impact of the built environment by sharing this blog with your peers. Together we can impact the 39% of greenhouse gasses attributed to the built environment. It starts with awareness, and we succeed with teamwork.
Stay well!
Chris Laughman is the ThirtyNine Blog author, a blog dedicated to reducing the impact of the built environment. When not blogging, Chris is helping the real estate industry reduce energy and water impact as the Vice President of Sustainability for Conservice, the Utility Experts. Whether Multifamily, Single Family, Student Housing, Commercial, or Military, we simplify utility billing and expense management by doing it for you. Our insight into your utility consumption provides an opportunity to identify risks. Leveraging innovation and experience, we ignite solutions with real impacts and track performance to ensure the trendline stays laser-focused on the goal. To get there, we must build relationships within our organizations and outside of our organizations building the critical mass needed to truly make a difference. We have before us a tremendous opportunity. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we will get this done. Contact me at claughman@conservice.com for more information.
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