Social media marketing is not easy. Ethical social media marketing is even worse. There are thousands of us out there, doing whatever we can to outperform others. It is really dog eats dog world where the same ideas seem to be floating around copied, re-copied, and regurgitated in a bit different form. The same nothing with added text, changed background, shifted context. Quotes associated with Elon Musk or any other Kardashians of this world. The same followed by the same.
And when we don’t have anything to say we just add another “Pizza Day” or “I don’t know what to Post Day” to have something to say. Even if it says nothing. And is cloned millions of times to say exactly the same – nothing.
And then there are times something happens, some great tragedy, and we jump into that as it was a celebration. This is what this article is about. About ethical social media marketing. About being decent in the world where money can buy (almost) anything. About trying to have integrity where everyone else is having a fire sale. What is it in us that we manage to cheapen our deepest moral standards?
what about ethical social media marketing?
So about ethical social media marketing. Ethic, as defined by Merriam-Webster is a set of moral principles, a theory or system of moral values. Simple enough? It seems so. It seems obvious. Ethics is about being decent. Doing what we should instead of what is easy, what is convenient. Doing the right thing. Not only in some abstract situations, in conceptual settings. And that’s the thing. Ethical behaviour, moral standards, can and should be applied to our everyday situations. What we do, what we say, how we behave… all this has to be measured through the prism of ethical standards. The same with what we post online. Especially there. It’s so easy nowadays to be rude, to call people names, to ridicule. We don’t see those we address the same way we see our neighbours. It’s so easy to hide behind online profile, to log out when we are done. It’s so easy not to think about consequences of what we do and say. All too easy.
we do what we have to do
Social media marketers are not different from ordinary people. We also look for easy way of doing our jobs. Every day we search for content we can utilise. Not that we are not creative but in this line of business the competition is deadly, and we cannot afford to stay behind. If we don’t post new content we don’t exist. So, we scavenge for it, we copy with a twist, and post. We use social media calendars with silly things to celebrate… It’s not exactly Doppelgänger Brand Image but are getting there. Well, not really. This is something different, worse. And unvoidable. We do what we have to do.
Being decent
What’s not ok though is when we use tragedies like Ukraine to boost our presence. We utilise hashtags of tragedies because they are trending now. That’s not OK. It’s a shortcut, an easy way to get ourselves out there… but it’s not OK. We should be better than that. We should be able to discern between what’s good and what’s bad. Not only in these conceptual, abstract settings but in our everyday situations. So PLEASE, think before you post something using a hashtag that is related to real life tragedy. Consider what it means before you use colours that symbolise something, symbolise tragedy and deaths. Think and decide to be human being. We are all in it together so let’s have some decency to be human.