How to be Culturally Aware as a Content Creator
We’ve all had those cringey moments when we’ve realized that a company, blogger, or business has made an egregious error. Whether they meant to or not, they posted or published a piece of content that was culturally tone-deaf leaving their audience isolated and often irate. Recently we witnessed the backlash major YouTuber and makeup artist Jackie Aina faced from her audience with the release of her new Nigerian culture-inspired candle. While her efforts seemed genuine, her audience disagreed! They felt like the product release was a slap in the face due to her lack of support with various Nigerian issues. This is just one example of many.
Every time we watch the fury unfold, we’re reminded how important it is to be culturally sound in everything that we create and put before the world. However, it’s impossible to keep everyone happy right? So how can we be genuine and make an impact while highlighting issues and events in our community and around the world? Today we’re chatting about how to be culturally aware as a content creator. We’re diving deep into what cultural awareness is and how we can be genuine when sharing issues with our audience that resonate with us!
What is Cultural Awareness?
The Quirky Pineapple defines cultural awareness as an understanding of differences between themselves and people from other countries or other backgrounds. We live in a world where social media makes information more accessible than ever before. This means that we can have current news, events, and trends at our fingertips. With this access comes responsibility if you want to be a brand that creates content responsibly. Being culturally aware means that you pay attention to how culture and current events impact the way you do things, how you speak, and how you recognize others who speak about these issues differently than you. Simply speaking on current events because it’s the trendy thing to talk about at the moment is not only disingenuous but performative activism.
If you remember from our blog post, Why Performative Activism is a Copout, Urban Dictionary defined performative activism as someone using a cause to ensure their social following knows that they care about said issue. Individuals who participate in performative activism use causes and societal issues, more often than not a tragedy, to gather attention, support, and even monetization. As a result, little to no research is ever done to educate their audience on the issue at hand so community members can take appropriate action. Participating in this type of behavior can do irreparable damage to your brand.
It can seem like there's a never-ending list of questions to ask yourself before pressing publish, but here are a few questions to keep you grounded as you create:
What phrases or words might this new global community find offensive?
How can I approach more difficult topics of gender, age, socioeconomic status, etc.?
Can anything I say be taken out of context?
Do the colors I’m using have a different meaning in a certain country?
After all of this, you still may be stuck on how to create content that's culturally sound while avoiding performative activism. Here are a few ways to make sure that your constant makes an impact without driving your audience away.
Treat People like People, Not Dollars
When it comes to brand messaging, it's important to see and understand your audience as off-screen people, not just as your target audience, dollar signs, and sales! Your followers are full of people with aspirations, hopes, fears, families, and various backgrounds that you influence. They follow us online but often fall in love with our content based on what we do and the type of person we are when there’s not a camera around. Just like your habits and interests, your audience is constantly evolving and changing. These people are not just customer personas, rather they allow us to connect and build a community with individuals all over the world, who oftentimes are different than us. So treat them like people, not dollars. Speak to the issues that they struggle with genuinely and not for clout.
Avoid Stereotypes
This kind of seems like a no-brainer, but it’s always worth mentioning that playing with stereotypes is likely to do more harm than good. We’ve heard the “jokes” and have seen the ill-advised taglines. We’ve even seen brands transform like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben where companies have had to rebrand due to being criticized for their racist and stereotypical logos. That rebranding process costs more than just money, it costs time and your audience's trust. So hear us when we say: avoid clichés. Don't joke about things that might seem funny at the time, at someone else's expense.
Research Topics to Encourage Discussions
We want to be culturally aware so we can sound the alarm on societal issues, but we must do it in a way that encourages growth and we can do that by fostering discussions. The research part comes into play because nothing is worse than reading a “think” piece and realizing that the author didn’t do much thinking at all due to the piece including an immense amount of misinformation. Research your topic heavily and don’t go with the first perspective you see! You want your audience to continue to trust the content you create knowing that you’re an expert on the topic at hand.
So you want to create content that’s culturally aware huh? We hope that this blog post helps! While you’re pursuing cultural awareness we also want to encourage you to look into cultural knowledge and cultural sensitivity. Understanding cultural differences among other ethnic groups, religions, and cultural beliefs go beyond political correctness in social contexts. Consider. While it may seem trivial at the time, certain off-topic remarks can quickly alienate your audience, or at least create an unintended perception of your brand. Avoid this by using these tips above, and as always, happy creating!
Always in your corner,
The Content Queens
