After years of working in branding and having worked with numerous organizations that seek to change the world, it’s apparent that even the best of brands suffer from a great weakness: We’re not as inclusive as we need to be to truly meet our missions for all in our communities.

We cannot end homelessness if our services don’t adequately include and provide for specific segments of the population, such as black people experiencing homelessness.

We cannot ensure LGBTQ youth can grow up free from harassment if our resources and services aren’t accessible to LGBTQ youth with hearing and visual impairments.

We cannot support men with prostate cancer if 8 percent of men are colorblind and cannot access content due to the design of resources.

What each of our organizations can do is ask: “Who are we not reaching or serving today?”

I hope you’ll find these helpful in your efforts to make your organization more inclusive to all.

First, what is a brand?

An organization’s brand includes our logo, colors, visual style, photography, videography, and much more. It’s the interactions we have with constituents, the trust we’ve built with supporters, and it’s what people think and say about us.

Branding Considerations

1. Visual Representation

Stock photography is known for not being very inclusive, typically demonstrating stereotypically gendered representations of “professionally” dressed people considered to be generally “attractive.” Highly stylized and staged, stock photography can also come across as inauthentic, even if representative. It can be difficult finding stock photography that is inclusive of, or better, centers, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, people dressed in different clothing styles, with different hairstyles, and people of older or younger ages, as well as other characters often found amongst the most marginalized within our communities.

What to do:

• Invest $1-$2,000/year in creating custom stock photography with your own constituents. Hundreds of staged photos can be captured in just a couple hours, and the best of photos can often be used for up to three years before starting to feel outdated. Plan a staged photo shoot and invite constituents to participate. If possible, consider gift cards to constituents offering their image to support the organization. Don’t forget to get media releases signed by all and parent(s)/guardian(s) of those under 18 years of age.
• When stock photography is necessary, research services that focus on or include diverse audiences. Some include free services, like VICE’s Gender Spectrum Collection, PicNoi, Nappy, and Jopwell Collection: Intern Edition. and some that have free and premium services, including CreateHER, Eye for Ebony, Pixels in Colour, and Tonl.

2. Color Blindness/Deficiency

How our organizations utilize color and design can affect who can access that design. This is particularly true for the 9 percent of people who experience some type of color blindness — that’s 7.9 million Americans who are living with a sight impairment.

If design elements use certain colors together, such as color text on a color background or colors used in pie chart slices, it’s important to consider whether that design and information will be accessible to people with color blindness.

• Use high contrasting colors when designing, particularly when the color distinction is important to understanding the work. While not all people with a form of color blindness see exactly the same, designs with high contrasting colors will generally be more accessible.
• Use a color blindness simulator to test how your brand colors look and to test specific designs or images.
• When creating color-coded charts, ensure the data points are associated with the bar or pie slice, making color matching to legends unnecessary.
• Include considerations for people with color blindness in your organization’s StyleGuide to ensure staff and partners are considerate during design. See GLSEN’s StyleGuide at www.glsen.org/branding, for an example.

3. Video Captioning

Whether our videos live on our website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or are shown at events and other physical spaces, captioning videos helps ensure people with hearing impairments can access and engage with the content.

What to do:

• YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter both provide Closed Captioning (CC) functionality, allowing you to type in or upload a transcript that the user can turn on or off, hence “closed.” The captioning then appears over the bottom third of your video when enabled.
• Open Captioning — when captioning is visibly open on the video and can’t be closed — can be used for channels without CC functionality. These captions are created during video editing and appear inline with the video’s bottom third. Open Captioning not only provides hearing impaired communities with access to the content shared, but it’s also helpful for mobile users whose volume is usually muted when videos on social media channels autoplay.

4. Image Descriptions

The 3.5 million (3 percent) Americans who have visual impairments may find it difficult or possible to discern details in an image. Image descriptions can provide people with visual impairments the ability to access content typically unavailable to them via images shared on our websites, email, and social channels. While an image may not be visible, or difficult to see, image descriptions can be accessed by Screen Readers for the hearing.

Image Descriptions are already considered necessary for website accessibility, despite most nonprofits still not utilizing them. We need to change this. Make it a habit, or better, a requirement.

On social media, where visual content outperforms plain text and is often a post’s focus, such as on Instagram, it’s particularly important we consider how accessible each post is to our audiences.

What to do:

Exercise: Take one minute and look at your Instagram account’s last 10 posts. Try to ignore the images and just read the text posted with each. Or have someone share with you just their post copy and no images. Do your posts still resonate or is there missing context the visual provides?

• Learn how to write alt text and image descriptions.
• Implement organizational standards that all images, whether on websites, email, or in social media, should include concise descriptive text.
• Configure Content Management Systems (WordPress, Drupal, custom websites, etc.) to make the Image Description a required field for all images.
• If working in an organization with distributed communications access to the organization’s web, email, or social channels, provide sample Image Descriptions to help staff create a concise descriptive copy.
• On Instagram, use the Description Text field found under Advanced Settings while posting an image to create.
• On social channels without built-in Image Description fields, add the description to the post copy — often done after the post copy and before the hashtags, as seen in this example.

5. Brand Diversity

Many brands are coming to understand that the exact same look and messaging won’t work for every audience. For nonprofits, this is crucial. We cannot complete our missions for all of our communities without understanding the specific communities and experiences each of us holds.

What to do:

While our experiences and identities vary, we can find commonality and community amongst our shared values and goals. Further, we can make our brands more accessible — and center inclusivity as a brand value — by finding ways to allow our brand to be diversified while maintaining overarching brand consistency across messaging and visual design.

1. One consideration demonstrated in GLSEN’s StyleGuide is the use of differently colored business cards from which staff could choose from when hired, to best match their audience or personality.
2. Examine how our organization’s messaging can be diversified to help folks use what’s most effective for them and the audience they’re communicating with. For example, the statements, “I believe in safe schools for LGBTQ youth” and “I believe in safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression” both share the same values, yet will resonate differently to different audiences. How can you create variations to standard messaging that is most effective with the communities you’re not reaching.
3. Consider how design can utilize our primary colors and a palette of secondary brand colors strategically by using secondary colors differently for content shared across different audiences. Certain colors or color combinations may appeal more to different audiences. Likewise, design styles using the same primary brand colors can be implemented slightly different on communications to different audiences.
4. For photography-focused efforts, use multiple images in the concept that represent a diversity of constituents — either rotating use on emails/fliers/banner ads/etc. or shared as a social media carousel post or album of images.

6. Deeper Audience Profiles

Many organizations — and certainly any marketing agencies worked with — are creating audience profiles of our primary audience segments. They will often include a picture or artwork depicting “the average donor” or constituent group, such as parent, student, income level, race, gender, etc., along with a summary of research and assumptions about this audience segment.

What to do:

While such segmentation is incredibly important for understanding audience profiles, it also can generalize our primary audiences to the most common currently engaged. For organizations that have historically struggled to serve the most underserved amongst our communities, this topline profiling can reinforce existing disparities in access to programs and services.

7. Tech Accessibility

While this still holds true, it’s also ensuring our websites are mobile-responsive for people on the go and those who may not have access, or safe access, to personal computers to easily connect.

We often think tech accessibility is about whether people without Internet-accessible phones or personal computers can access our websites or social channels to find information, utilize resources, or engage us for support.

It’s meeting our audiences where they’re at, such as The Trevor Project did, when recently announcing its expanded 24/7 service for text and chat messaging support for LGBTQ youth in crisis. In fact, here are 10 organizations providing crisis response via text message to make their services more accessible.

And it’s ensuring that we maintain offline access to our organization, whether printed resources, postcard marketing, newsletters, or other methods. While these may not be distributed widely to all constituents, how can we create for those in need?

And so much more…

Website accessibility; the format of resources and downloads; languages content is produced in, and the style of language used to communicate with different types of constituents; physical accessibility at events; access to all gender restrooms at events, and how staff who teach, lead programs, or otherwise train/help/support constituents are prepared to meet the different learning styles and abilities of different constituents most in need of our services.

Some folks may wonder whether event accessibility is really a branding issue, in which I offer this consideration: if people can’t get in the room to experience your brand, or even participate fully once in the room, then our brand isn’t inclusive.

Practice Makes Possible

The truth is, practice won’t make you perfect, just better. More importantly, practice makes inclusivity possible.
 — Chris Tuttle, Tuttle&Co

Inclusive branding and inclusivity within our organizations is not a goal to reach, but a practice needing active nurturing, learning, and organizational culture change. Implement what you can, where you can, and identify what more can be done. Find ways in your organization to make habit, procedural, or a requirement the practicing of inclusivity.

Each of us can do this by constantly asking the question: “Who are we not reaching or serving today?”

What To Do Now?

1. By no means are the considerations shared here the full list of ways we can make our brand more inclusive. Let me know what I missed and what ways you’ve seen organizations be more inclusive?
2. Think about which of these inclusivity considerations, or another, you want to work toward making a habit at your organization, and create a plan to make it happen in the next 90 days.
3. Identify the one thing you need to do this week to begin the process. For example: meet with my supervisor/team and discuss brand accessibility, and who we are not reaching and serving, or ask my colleagues/supervisors in what ways we’ve worked to make our brand more inclusive to date.
4. Schedule one hour within the next month to craft a 90-day action plan with clear next steps needed toward implementing the inclusive branding consideration.
5. Implement that 90-day plan and the inclusive branding consideration(s) and let me know how it went?

Chris Tuttle is a frequent speaker, trainer, and consultant on digital engagement strategies with more than 20 years of experience working with hundreds of nonprofits in creating digital strategies and campaigns that effectively build awareness, engage constituents, and drive constituents to take meaningful action and increases organizational impact.

Connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Originally published at http://www.tuttle.co on May 13, 2019.

Every week I hear about folks discussing, testing, and promoting various tech tools that will, supposedly, improve our digital lives: whether wearable tech like Google Glass, tools like Topsy, or social networks, like ello or Peach. And let’s face it: we probably spend more time playing with these shiny objects than we benefit from in utilizing them.

I am not immune to Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS). While it may vary in usage, let’s simply define SOS as the distraction by the latest and “greatest” new tool, topic or process.

For me, it’s often technology.

I love new technology, I love playing with emerging tools, and I love figuring out how different tools might be used in digital campaigns. I also acknowledge that there are more advancements in technology and emerging tools than I could possibly keep up with, and I imagine you might feel similarly overwhelmed.

As others have noted, one of the ways to avoid SOS is by letting others play and test for you. Why waste your time, when you can allow others to waste theirs?

Here are 5 tech tools I’m thrilled to have “wasted” my time with, as each has paid off in spades.

Full disclosure: Several tools recommended below currently only work with Gmail, Google Inbox and/or Google Apps. Also, some links may include referral codes that provide me with account upgrades, however I am not paid for any of these recommendations.

MixMax

(Freemium: Core functionality with limited snoozing per month; starts at $9/month for additional features)

MixMax is similar to the Boomerang App (formerly Boomerang for Gmail + Boomerang Calendar), and yet so much more. Although billed as a productivity suite for sales, I’d argue it’s a more like a productivity suite for Gmail.

In addition to the email scheduling and email reminder functionality found in Boomerang, MixMax also has polls, surveys, templates, giphy integration, email read counts/notifications, and cloud integration with Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive, among other things. It’s also simply a cleaner integration.

How I use MixMax

1. Providing 1-click-response scheduling directly in emails with my contacts. MixMax helps ensure I don’t double-book and limits the back-and-forth of email scheduling, including group scheduling.
2. Group polling, which can be helpful beyond simple scheduling, such as choosing a type of restaurant or gathering answers from small groups of colleagues.
3. Snoozing important emails that I can’t immediately get to but I don’t want to lose track of or to crowd up my inbox, such as emails related to meetings that I schedule to resurface just before a meeting or something that deserves my unfettered attention… tomorrow.

4. GIFs. Sometimes pictures can say more than words and Giphy integration provides for the quick and simple inclusion from thousands of GIFs to express any feeling you’re having.

And sometimes they just make us smile. Many thanks to Ritu Sharma, of Social Media for Nonprofits, for recommending MixMax to me. I offer you this rolling Frenchie GIF with gratitude.

Cons: No tool is without fault, and there are some issues users may have with MixMax, too. First, the free plan has limited functionality and usage limits, with premium plans starting at $9/month and quickly escalating. MixMax is also currently only available for Gmail and Google Inbox, and only on desktops. No mobile app.

Sign-up for MixMax here.

x.ai

x.ai — pronounced (ĕks)-(dŏt)-(ā)-(ī) — is an artificial intelligence powered personal assistant that schedules meetings via email.

Going by Amy or Andrew, x.ai allows you to set perimeters around the meetings you schedule (length, type, location, availability, etc) and then it schedules with your recipient(s) on your behalf, once prompted by an email CC.

x.ai is certainly a shiny object. It’s far from perfect, as I’ve learned when meeting invitees have replied confused over a) why we were scheduling happy hour drinks at 2pm in the afternoon, b) wanting to use different locations or phone numbers than x.ai provided, or c) when your invitee curses the AI (thanks, Joe Moran).

To their credit, the makers of x.ai have fully stated the tech is in beta. In fact, you can only request access as a beta user at this point. Even still, I’ve found by limiting my usage to those meetings that are the simplest of scheduling has saved me many an hour from the hell of “what days work best for you” email replies.

How I use x.ai

1. Scheduling of simple 30 minute phone calls, particularly when the recipient’s response may be delayed or my otherwise provided availability may quickly change.
2. Scheduling requests while using mobile. While I most often use MixMax to provide availability via email with one-click scheduling, there currently isn’t a mobile app or integration with my phone’s email apps. In these times x.ai has been very helpful in passing off scheduling duties while maintaining a clean inbox.

Cons: Currently only works with Google Calendars. As outlined above, x.ai is currently beta and not a perfect scheduling solution.

Request beta access to x.ai here.

HelloSign

(Freemium: 3 documents per month for free; starts at $13/month unlimited)

HelloSign is an easy to digital signature tool with a extensions for integration with Gmail, Google Drive, DropBox, Box, OneCloud, Slack, Evernote, Hubspot and more.

HelloSign turns the process of printing, signing, and scanning documents into a simple click & sign in your email, cloud drive, or via the mobile app.

How I use HelloSign

1. Signing contracts and completing PDF documents while traveling. It’s that simple. I did just this with a recent contract received while I was flying home. While I could have waited until I was home to print and sign, or even send it to my home printer to await my arrival, it was easier still to click the “sign” button overlaying the attached document directly in my email, insert my signature and return it via email reply in just a couple minutes.

Cons: Only 3 documents a month are offered in the free plan. This may be enough for you, or may be enough to supplement offline signing, but for many a paid plan will be needed to utilize.

Sign-up for HelloSign here and download the HelloSign for Gmail extension.

Rapportive

(Free)

Rapportive is a Chrome browser extension that pulls important LinkedIn data and displays inline within emails.

Although not as accurate as before LinkedIn purchased in 2014, this tool still saves me countless hours of looking up email recipients across LinkedIn and other social networks by displaying key user data alongside your email in browser.

How I use Rapportive:

1. One-click connect with colleagues via LinkedIn.
2. Although not as accurate (as it relies on user shared information within LinkedIn profiles versus an independent channel search), Rapportive does often provide quick links to the recipient’s Twitter account, which is a channel I frequently use.
3. To recall a recipient’s job title, work history and/or shared connections.
4. To lookup titles, bios and shared connections of those cc’d on emails whom I may not know.

Cons: Usage only via Desktop and Chrome browser. Since LinkedIn’s buyout, Rapportive no longer searches for profiles across each social network and instead relies on user provided information within LinkedIn profiles, which may be outdated or incomplete.

Install Rapportive here.

Authy

(Freemium: free for personal use, under 100 authentications/month; Starts as low as $0.09/authentication for unlimited usage and/or business-class functionality)

Authy is a two-factor authentication service for usage with Facebook, Gmail, Dropbox, or any account that supports Google Authenticator.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the need for a time-sensitive code to be used when signing in to a service, in addition to your username or email and passcode.

Simply put, 2FA is a must have for anyone working with private information, such as client data, or who simply wants to better protect their online accounts. Although 2FA requires your time each use to lookup additional codes, the amount of time it saves in dealing with account hacks and data loss is priceless.

How I use Authy

1. Authy provides an easy to use mobile App for iOS and Android, and desktop access for Windows, Mac, and Linux via the Chrome browser.
2. One of my most used apps for the Apple Watch is Authy, allowing me to quickly access site-specific codes in a couple clicks, without pulling out my phone… even while flying, as Authy utilizes data services versus text messages.

Note: Authy is only as safe as access to it is limited. Be sure to fully utilize mobile, wearable, and desktop security options to limit access to Authy.

Cons: Requires time to setup each website, to use each login, and requires access to the Authy app via mobile, wearable or desktop in order to access connected websites and services. If you were to have your phone and desktop stolen, it may prove difficult and require work to regain access to connected accounts. Thankfully, similar difficulties should also prevent those with your stolen items from accessing any accounts, provided your stolen items are secured.

Download Authy for mobile or desktop here.

“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

I’m always looking to learn from others, too. Do you have a tech tool that’s saved your digital sanity? Let me know in the comments or tweet me @ChrisTuttle.

I’m back in NYC after a great week of learning with the nonprofit tech community at the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Jose, California, and I’m thinking about all of the great conversations had around digital engagement with social media. As I’m cleaning out my missed emails I find Simply Measured’s Newsletter in my inbox, titled The Death of Organic Social and the Integration of Social Marketing.

After giving the email and article title some serious side-eye, I took the bait and clicked to find an editorial whose points I mostly agree with:

1. Organic social, despite the title, is not dead (shocker)
2. To quote the post: “Brands have to pay-to-play if they want broad reach, exposure, and traffic.” (The operative word being broad)
3. Brands may create better quality and relevant content if they have to pay, after all, click-bait articles were common in the days of 100% organic social. (Ironically, they’re still quite common)

Where the article succeeds in making the point that there is room for both paid and organic search tactics in our communications tool belts, it fails in sharing how.

The good news for communications professionals of both nonprofit and for-profit brands is that content remains king and organic social is the crown. So wear it well. Paid social helps people to see your content; Quality or relevant content gets people to engage with it.

So whether or not you can pay to be seen on social — and I do recommend every brand start budgeting a minimum $100/month on social marketing — here are 5 tips for ruling social content:

5 Tips To Rule Both Paid & Organic Social

1. Know Your Goals

I’m constantly in awe of the number of brands — particularly nonprofits — that aren’t sure what their social media goals are. Or who focus social solely on gaining likes and follows, often with some expectation that deeper actions will later materialize on their own.

Instead, let’s think of our social communications as an event. It’s not enough to have a large invite list or even get enough RSVPs. We need to ensure people have a good time once they’ve arrived, so that they’ll want to donate or spend, and ultimately talk about us and return again.

2. Know Your Audience

Utilize Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Google Analytics to better understand who your audience is and what content they most meaningfully engage with (meaningful = as it relates to your goals).

If your existing audience is not the best audience for the social goals you’ve determined, reconsider the content you’re creating, who is delivering the message, or your social goals and target audiences.

3. Find your Content Sweet Spot

Chances are, your brand’s goals will not directly align with your audience’s reasons for using social media. We want to raise funds; our audience wants to hear about progress made on our issue. We want to sell something; our audience wants to LOL at cute cat videos.

Some brands focus on the 80/20 Rule of Content (80% of content is focused on what our audience wants, while only 20% promotes our brand); while others utilize a more comprehensive approach that recognizes types of engagement and looks to build upon past actions, such as with the Engagement Pyramid.

4. Targeting & Segmentation

Where possible, use targeting and segmentation to better align your content with the right audiences. Facebook provides Preferred (targeting) and Restricted (segmented) posting for organic social postings in order to help you reach the best audiences based on their interests, age, gender identity, location and/or language. Even deeper targeting capabilities are available for paid social on Facebook, and Instagram and Twitter also provide post targeting options for paid social.

While Instagram and Twitter don’t yet provide targeting options for organic social, we can still utilize tactics such as posting strategically across time of day and day of week (including audience time-zones), posting in different languages, and ensuring our voice matches our target audience’s expectations.

5. Create Meaningful Content

Ultimately, the best way we can increase meaningful engagement is by creating meaningful content.

It’s telling stories that inspire over memes that provoke without recourse. It’s creating spaces to engage in authentic dialogue over speaking to our audiences in headlines. It’s providing solutions in our resources over clickbait titles and hollow content.

Many thanks to Angelica Ross, CEO of Trans Tech Social, for inspiring conversations this past few months whilst planning our 16NTC session, Making Deeper Connections with Digital Communications. The session presentation is available to download for free with more tips and strategies on putting the social back in social media.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Let me know what ways you’ve learnt for effectively engaging your audiences by sharing your ideas, tactics and strategies in the comments.

Chris Tuttle
@ChrisTuttle