Faux Corporate Social Responsibility: Are Our Retweets and Likes actually helping?

I found this picture on Tumblr. We’ve been talking about social media and the potential uses PR professionals can employ. However, a photo like this (photoshop, of course) criticizes how professionals use to mediums to gain support. We’re counting followers, subscribers, likes, repost, and retweets. But what are those likes and retweets actually doing? If you’re working for a non-profit focusing on hunger and disease in third world countries and you have implemented a successful campaign on Facebook, but someone posts this on your Facebook page. How would you respond?

This picture poses many questions and issues that as future communication professionals we need to consider in developing campaigns. Yes, we can create campaigns and use social media to reinforce our messages, but one of the criticisms of companies’ use of social media is what are they doing for the public. Are they actually bettering the public? Is it just a message? Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming more and more important in the minds of viewers and consumers, and corporations are responding adequately. We’re seeing this with the abundance in green marketing, environmentally friendly products, corporate philanthropy, and cause marketing. Companies are talking the talk of doing social good. But are they walking the walk?

The link below is an article about the top 10 cause marketing trends in 2011. The second link is to a Forbes article talking about the competition and alliances amongst companies in cause marketing. It’s interesting to think about corporate social responsibility as a competition. Corporate social responsibility for some companies is becoming a marketing campaign or PR campaign, where the message is good but the company isn’t extremely active in the public good. I’m thinking about for-profit companies but is this an issue with non-profits? Is this something we, as future professionals, need to incorporate into our messages? We can design messages for the public but should we design messages for internal involvement in our CSR campaigns as well?

Top 10 Cause Marketing in 2011

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/top-10-marketing-corporate-responsibility-trends-2011/

Causing Marketing Competition and Alliances

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhessekiel/2013/09/17/cause-marketing-coopetition-on-the-rise/

Picture link:
http://marketinggrad.tumblr.com/post/65069277635