Higher ed institutions have often struggled to incorporate heritage moments into their social content strategies for various reasons.
But recent cultural shifts mean it’s no longer an option to simply ignore these occasions. Today, it’s up to universities to ensure their communications center diverse stories (and storytellers).
Karla Fung, Director of Social Media at UC Davis, shares insights on how to incorporate diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) into your social content initiatives in a meaningful, non-performative way, including:
- A framework for decision-making
- Guidance on approaching culturally relevant content
- Real examples of how communities are celebrated
- Challenges and concerns to consider
Let’s get into it.
Remember: DEIB is Everyone’s Job
First, it’s important to note that promoting DEIB through your social media content isn’t just down to the marketing team – it’s ultimately everyone’s job.
Karla explained that at UC Davis, DEIB messaging comes directly from the chancellor as part of his strategic vision, forming the institution’s guiding principles.
This has helped Karla’s team be highly intentional about how they incorporate DEIB into various forms of communication, including visual content, written stories, and social media posts.
But this didn’t happen overnight.
UC Davis’s DEIB journey truly began in 2016. Since then, the central communications office has played a key role in setting standards around DEIB by having frank discussions, sharing knowledge, running training sessions, and generally baking it into meetings. “We set the pathway forward and modeled this culture and work for our colleagues,” says Karla.
Start By Creating and Sharing DEIB Resources
As social media pros, your first thought is often to jump straight into content planning and creation.
But before you start sharing diverse stories, it’s vital that you lay the groundwork, Karla explained. “We need to take a step back and make sure that what we’re creating is actually accessible and inclusive to all.”
To do this, they created accessibility and inclusivity guides for campus communicators, incorporating best practices around specific formats and deliverables, such as which fonts to use for different content types. You can check out these guides by scanning the QR code below (or just click this link).
Creating these guides was a long process – Karla said it took about two years to produce the version that exists today.
But it was time well spent. The guides educated the university’s campus communicators, and the process helped uncover internal biases and knowledge gaps.
For instance, due to this work, their visual communications team has created new protocols on how and when photos get retired from their campus photo archive.
“If a photo is being heavily downloaded, or if it’s a few years old, it’s time to take it out of the collection,” Karla explained. “That way, there isn’t over-saturation or tokenization of the people depicted in those photos.”
Answer Key Questions To Guide Your Decision-Making Process
Now that you’ve done all that essential background work, you can start to put it into practice.
To make it happen, Karla recommended considering (and answering) the following key questions about your organization, your team, and yourself:
Create Guidance on Cultural and Identity-Based Content
On one hand, you want to be inclusive to everyone.
On the other, you only have limited bandwidth. However, as a public university, there are various guidelines around what you can and can’t say.
For that reason, Karla’s team worked with colleagues in student affairs, the campus council, and the school’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to develop guidance on approaching key acknowledgments. For instance, they built a multicultural calendar to ensure that major campaigns don’t clash with a community’s important holiday.
As part of this process, they also identified a bunch of key questions and guidelines around developing content:
Karla explained that these points will help you craft DEIB messaging that feels authentic to your university. “You don’t want to misrepresent your institution and the people in it or have a bait-and-switch by painting an idealistic version.”
Build a Process for Creating Cultural and Identity-Based Content
UC Davis has developed a process for creating cultural and identity-based content. This repeatable structure helps ensure they effectively incorporate DEIB into all social content initiatives.
The process starts with setting and reviewing their annual social media content calendar and includes everything from initial planning to feedback, production, and social promotion:
The results can be seen in content such as the YouTube playlist Real Places of UCD, which focuses on identity-based resource centers like El Centro, the university’s home away from home for Latinx students.
This content series wouldn’t have been possible if Karla’s team hadn’t taken the time to build relationships across campus and identify student profiles to feature.
Karla explained that content like this has helped strengthen trust with colleagues and students. “This is helpful for us from both a recruitment perspective as well as a retention perspective.”
Similarly, Chancellor Gary S May also highlights some of the university’s resources and communities in his recurring Instagram Reels content series, Thursday Thoughts:
View this post on Instagram
“These high-level spotlights have had a tremendous amount of impact on the communities represented,” Karla commented.
The content planning and creation process also helps Karla’s team add an educational element to their content wherever possible – after all, UC Davis is a university.
For example, they partnered with campus librarians to gather book recommendations around cultural awareness events and holidays, then shared the results via their social platforms. Just like this YouTube Short around Jewish American Heritage Month:
“It’s another good opportunity for folks who may not be familiar with that culture, community, or that identity to learn more about it and the history around it,” Karla said.
In addition to collaborating with librarians, Karla’s team regularly seeks feedback from community members on UC Davis Spotify playlists themed toward specific events, such as Women’s History Month and Pride Month.
“It’s like user-generated content,” Karla explained. “It enables us to create more content to support the month – and then we get to listen to these really fun playlists!”
Key Learnings
Unsurprisingly, Karla has learned a lot since UC Davis embarked on its DEIB journey. Here are some of her key insights:
- The work can be difficult and uncomfortable. “People don’t want to be wrong. They don’t want to mess up. They’re not the experts. They don’t have that lived experience. What if they say the wrong things?”
- Time commitments are demanding. “If this isn’t part of your normal workflow, adding something new in can be difficult. Talk to leadership to make sure there’s time carved out for this work.”
- Relationship-based work can be a slow burn. “Allow for the ebb and flow of workloads because when there are other pressing priorities, sometimes this work takes a backseat.”
- Build in opportunities to process mistakes and missteps. “Learn from it, write it down, document it, so that way you can move forward.”
- To maintain momentum, include updates in regular meetings. “Make sure that you’re regularly talking about it with your team, your department, and your campus partners.”
Additionally, she noted that work like this is rarely a one-and-done exercise – and that’s fine. “It’s okay when things change.”
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Featured image by Pixabay.
