April is Celebrate Diversity Month, a time to acknowledge and fête the array of different backgrounds and cultures that make up our world. It's also an opportunity for content marketers to review their work and identify opportunities to make our work more inclusive and representative.
Take a look at what we're doing here at The Word Factory to get some ideas.
3 ways to make content marketing more diverse, inclusive and representative
- Sources: We seek out diverse experts for editorial content.
- Reach out to BIPOC PR pros and publicists
- Query associations and trade groups representing diverse groups
- Subscribe to NPR's Source of the Week
- Identify non-male experts in industries dominated by men and vice versa
- Connect with diverse professionals on LinkedIn
- Follow diverse accounts on Twitter
- Images: We select more representative images.
- Source images from BIPOC and LGBTQ creators and stock photo curators like CreateHERstock
- Feature people of all skin tones, ages and abilities
- Depict a variety of relationships and situations
- Language: We carefully choose words, spelling and usage.
- Capitalize Black and Indigenous, not white (The AP Stylebook strives to stay up-to-date on terms and capitalization preferred by people in these groups)
- Reference backgrounds, ages or abilities only if cogent to the topic
- Avoid terms like "suffers from" when writing about people with medical conditions or disabilities (Check out the National Center on Disability and Journalism's style guide)
These practices are baked into every process and project and our work is better for it.
How to be more DEI vocal and visible
It's also important to be what the Black Creative Group calls DEI Vocal and Visible. In addition to the action items above:
- Use your social channels to promote diversity, equity and inclusion; and to amplify BIPOC and LGBTQ experts
- Recommend non-white, cis, hetero people for opportunities and nominate them for accolade
- Spend with BIPOC- and LGBTQ-owned businesses
Track your progress on these five initiatives (or however many you engage in) and report them annually. Here's our most recent accounting.
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