When it comes to establishing a brand, marketers and strategists will tell you that getting clear on your values is one of the first things you need as a foundation for your business.
They’re not wrong, and here’s why.
Values are the principles that your brand lives and breathes as you carry out your work. They influence the decisions you make, the clients you support, the people you hire, the way you communicate... pretty much every move you make in your business should be driven by a clear set of values.
It’s not enough to just slap some values up on a poster on the wall, or write them up in your employee handbook. Values need to be imbibed by everyone within the business, and demonstrated through every touchpoint and engagement. Establishing these values ensures that everyone is focused on achieving the same outcomes with a cohesive approach.
At The Social Shop, we’re pretty clear on our objective of Social for Good. To help us in our mission to inspire good across social media, we’re committed to six values that bring life to the spirit of our business. These values ensure that we’re achieving what feels good for us, but also what is good for our clients - and their community.
Here’s our credo for serving up Social for Good:
Communication
We know that things fall over without good, honest, transparent communication with each other, and with our clients. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people. We seek to understand, and then be understood - kinda like the way good social media practice should be too, right?
Innovation
We’re not here to deliver the samey-same approach just because it’s the way things have always been done. We push boundaries to challenge conservative thinking - within our own team, with our clients, and with our industry. Social media is fast-moving and ever-evolving; staying curious means we’re staying ahead of the game for our clients’ benefit too.
Collaboration
We’ve very consciously grown our team to ensure that we all have unique strengths and value to bring to the table. None of us are better than another. We lead and learn from each other in knowledge, innovation, and service. We work together to achieve shared goals - an approach we love to also see our clients take up when it comes to social media. Social isn’t just the responsibility of the marketing team! Buy-in and support from the wider business is important too - and that comes with a good strategy and demonstrable results (which we serve up!).
Integrity
We don’t take this word lightly, and in the social space, brand integrity is everything. Taking responsibility for how we show up - as individuals and as a business sends a message about what matters to us. We’re proud of the work we do, and the impact we have. Honesty is everything - and sometimes being vulnerable, knowing our boundaries and being transparent about that is actually what can help connect us with the right people.
Connection
Speaking of connection, we recognise that we are part of a community and we measure our success against how we benefit that community. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here - or in our social spaces. We’d love to see more brands taking a stand and speaking up about what’s acceptable in their own communities. With this in mind, we help our clients also get clear on the kind of space they want to create for their own community.
Commitment
We don’t expect perfection, we expect improvement. We approach every day with a positive attitude and a new willingness to grow, learn and challenge ourselves. We’re humans first, and balance is important, but we’re always thinking about how we can raise the bar for everyone around us. That’s how we like to approach social too - inspiring others, kickstarting beneficial conversations and spreading good everywhere we go.
As a brand, you might have already given some thought to the values that are important to you. But have you considered how you’re demonstrating these through your social media content? How aligned is your content with the way you really want to contribute to the world around you?
Values play an important part in building an authentic, valuable and rewarding brand on social media too. Creating content in line with the things that matter most to you will help you feel good about the messages you’re contributing to your online community. You’re more likely to connect with the kind of people you really want to do business with, and find opportunities that truly light you up.
And hey, if you need a hand with that campaign, it’s what we’re here for! We help brands who give a damn, share meaningful messages and create genuine connections with their communities. You can dig into how we do that here. If you’ve got a message worth knowing about, we’d love to help.