Progress not perfection: get real to build trust with your audience
I’m about to make a case for crafting content about those sustainability targets that you’re not smashing.
Bear with me; by the end of this two minute read, you might just have all the inspiration you need to put together your next winning blog or social media post.
The story of UpCircle’s non-recyclable problem
As a long-time lover of (in my opinion) one of the most effective caffeine eye creams on the market, I often find UpCircle’s social media content high on my feed. Not only do I rate their beautiful products, but there’s a lot to learn from this waste-fighting, eco-beauty brand’s approach to storytelling.
An Instagram Reel I was served from their popular account last week served as a perfect reminder of the value of putting progress before perfection.
Despite sustainability being at the very core of UpCircle’s brand, the packaging of a few of their products contains a small amount of glass, metal, plastic and rubber – in the form of tricky-to-recycle droppers, spray nozzles and pumps.
For beady-eyed consumers of eco-beauty products, these packaging elements are far from hiding in plain sight. But, rather than allowing customers to wonder whether UpCircle had simply forgotten to take care of this small (but wholly non-recyclable) detail, the eco-beauty brand chose to build it into their storytelling.
Their short and succinct social post (coincidentally, also a detailed page on UpCircle’s website about their plastic negative certification – content repurposing at its finest) breaks down:
The challenge: some small pieces of packaging with combined materials, which are common in beauty products, are hard to recycle.
Self-awareness: UpCircle know exactly (and I mean exactly) how much plastic they produce and it clearly doesn’t sit well with their values.
The response: profits from UpCircle sales fund international impact projects to remove plastic from coastline environments.
A positive takeaway: recovering twice as much plastic as they create, UpCirlce are leaving a net-positive impact on the environment worldwide.
Build progress into your brand storytelling
If there are awkward areas in your business where you’re not 100% meeting your sustainability dreams, you might just be sitting on a goldmine of great brand storytelling.
Balancing your environmental losses by investing in solutions says as much about your brand values as your core product or service – and keeping quiet about the effort you put in to make a net positive contribution to the world is doing your business a disservice.
Accountability and transparency in your online content will:
Create authenticity (a key building block for SEO, social media engagement and – ultimately – sales),
and build trust with your audience, making them more likely to stick around and buy again in the future.
Simply, putting progress under the spotlight will reap rewards for your business.
3 steps to writing your progress story
If you’re ready to celebrate the progress your business is making, here’s three steps to help you tell the story behind your big sustainability hurdles:
Open up about where you’re not meeting a specific sustainability goal or where a part of your product or service is currently in conflict with your values. It should be an area where you’ve made genuine progress or worked hard to mitigate a challenge.
Tell the story of your behind-the-scenes response to this; this will give your brand values a chance to shine through as you explain how your business responds to bumps in the road. Like UpCirlce’s Plastic Negative certification, formal initiatives will help create a sense of credibility, but aren’t essential.
Don’t forget to back up your story with clear stats or information: to avoid falling foul of greenwashing, be precise about your situation. For example, you could quantify your net impact on the environment, value the alternative you’ve put in place, or share the stepping stones you’ve lined up to help you reach your goal.
Communicating progress over perfection could lead you to incredibly high-performing web and social content, ultimately helping you to build authenticity and trust with your audience.
And if you’re ready to start telling that story but you’re not quite sure how, then why not contact me? I’m here to lend a hand.