At a time of sociopolitical upheaval—and heading into a U.S. election season, no less—apathy and outrage online are at an all-time high. Amid the conflict, social media, while still a relatively new technology, has changed for the worse. It’s become increasingly difficult to connect with other humans online without risking ridicule or provoking outrage.

Finding ways to bring people together and transcend the divisions that social media seem to sow is key for brands seeking to strengthen engagement and build community. Repeatedly posting the same sales-driven content is no way to empathize. 

Instead, by producing a diverse array of content, brands can achieve a multifaceted presence that provides opportunities for genuine understanding and interaction. To effectively move customers through the sales funnel, social content must be relevant and engaging. Paying attention to community and engagement is paramount.

As marketing professionals, we need to understand our audience from a demographic perspective—meeting them where they are to fulfill their needs as consumers. By using our platforms to reach out to one another and foster authentic relationships, we can increase brand awareness and keep conversations fresh and active while also spreading a little happiness along the way.

How to lead with empathy online 

Leaning into empathy can be a dangerous proposition for brands. Disingenuous attempts to gain consumer trust are easily spotted—and called out in an instant. You need a real human—preferably someone with deep reserves of kindness and a sense of humor—as your community manager. In a world riddled with artificial intelligence and deepfakes, authenticity is hard to come by. The good news? When people see it, they take notice and respond in positive ways.

Most of the time, when customers complain online in a public forum, what they want is to feel heard and understood. Brands speak to their audiences in an empathetic way by listening.

Create content that speaks to the concerns and curiosities of consumers. Look for patterns of repeated questions or comments on your posts, and seek out intel on forums like Reddit for an in-depth understanding of customer needs. By viewing your brand through the lens of social listening, you will discover fresh insights to drive your content creation. For example, if you see a lot of questions about the differences between two products, consider creating an animated infographic breaking them down. 

For an enhanced human touch, short-form videos and live broadcasts on social media provide an opportunity to address concerns and feedback. Supporting campaigns with live broadcast events where people can interact with brand ambassadors in real-time is great for expanding reach. It helps customers feel seen and heard. Taking notice of direct messages and recruiting real people to respond to them is invaluable. With the advent of chatbots and AI communications, it says so much when a person reads a DM from a brand and can tell they’ve received an actual, personal response.

KPIs are often measured by brand awareness, units sold, reach, etc. But positive feedback, comments and engagement also play an important role in our bottom line. While more complicated to quantify, it is still vital to understand and apply to social strategy.

Who’s doing it right?

There are several brands at the empathy forefront:

The Dove Self-Esteem Project

Dove’s Super Bowl commercial resonated with the current social media landscape, utilizing blooper-style videos of athletes. But much more importantly, its very real commentary about body confidence stuck a nerve, backed up by data showing that 45 percent of girls quit sports by age 14. The up-tempo comedic music is briefly silenced for emphasis of these facts as Dove explains both the problem and their efforts towards a solution in the creation of the Body Confident Sport Program.

Brooks “Marathon Season” 

This Curiosity-led long-form YouTube series centered on three runners of varying levels of skill and experience as they prepared for a first 5k, a half marathon and a full marathon. Viewers were given an intimate look into the human side of running. Beyond the fact that each runner was, of course, wearing Brooks gear, this series delved into the heart of the experience and the mental, physical and emotional energy invested in the process. 

IHOP “Stacking Up Joy”

IHOP shows consistent dedication to cultural relevance and social media literacy across its content. The new “Stacking Up Joy” program, however, stretches beyond fun memes and directly towards tangible charitable efforts with a local focus relevant to where IHOP franchisees work and live. Moreover, the community platform opens up more opportunities both for philanthropy and to connect with users of their loyalty rewards program.

Taking care of your empath

Since community managers are instrumental in forging direct and authentic connections, it is necessary to ensure that people in those roles are well taken care of—and not just compensatory speaking. Practicing empathy is taxing to one’s mental, emotional and even physical energy, especially when they do it as a full-time job. Community managers spend their time fielding customer complaints, praise, questions and everything in between. So, they need support from their team to know that their efforts are not only measurable from an ROI standpoint, but respected for their legitimacy and importance. These roles frequently lead to burnout and compassion fatigue. Brands should work to safeguard against undue stress.

It’s time to get back in touch with the human side of marketing. Accomplishing this requires realigning with customers by speaking to them in a way that will inspire conversions, brand loyalty and repeat business. From a sales perspective, it can drive results. And it’s simply the right thing to do.

This might be the year’s cheekiest ad so far, as Dude Wipes drops trou and pumps up the CPG commercial parody with a tuneful ’80s vibe.

It’s all in service of extra-large, flushable wet wipes designed to take the place of conventional toilet paper.

When I was around 10, my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It didn’t take but a second to answer. I responded “Farmer!” rather dreamily. At least that’s how I hear it replayed in my head. Since I was young, I have always idealized farming as a way of life. But I had never taken that dream seriously or had any push to make it a reality. In short, I never did anything about it. 

That was until 15 years ago, when I found myself at a crossroads in both my career and my personal life.

At this time, my children were kindergarten age. I had been searching for the “exact right” school when I stumbled upon Waldorf education. For those who aren’t familiar, the Waldorf method—particularly for young children—puts a heavy emphasis on experience. The mission is to embody the head, the hands and the heart. For example, when my children, whom I eventually enrolled in a Waldorf kindergarten, learned about the Middle Ages, they learned jousting—not by reading about it, but by doing it. They painted castles and took on roles to show what it would feel like to be a part of the caste system. 

Around this time, I began studying sustainability as a socio-cultural trend. The more research I did, the more I felt compelled to do something. It was like method acting—I became my subject matter. I questioned my lifestyle and pushed beyond the known into the unknown. 

It started with small, personal changes within our family unit. We began composting, getting outside more, studying more Eastern philosophies. It then moved into getting a hen house and bringing 10 baby chicks into our basement so we could start raising chickens for their eggs. We then moved on to beekeeping, starting with two hives and then saving two other swarms. We started growing some of our own foods and eating more local.

By year three, it was starting to feel like a new way of life. We weren’t pretending to be more eco-minded—we were walking the walk. We continue to evolve as people. Even this past year, we moved on to seven acres into a “tiny home” (relative to American standards) as a personal challenge to see how much we could reduce our footprint. 

So, how did this make me a better strategist?

Albert Einstein once said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Waldorf education showed me that my children embodied learning differently by doing. By throwing myself into sustainability, I learned a teaching method for empathy. I also tapped an emotional connectedness with others.

In my previous methodology for work, I would read about something and embody it for a few days. But through my new way of experiential learning, I have become a witness. I learned I can show the deepest level of empathy for consumers when I see life through their eyes. Nowadays, I use empathy in Every. Single. Thing. I do. There are days I need to feel the feelings of a 15-year-old boy buying his first stick of Old Spice deodorant. I then have to be a 60-year-old taking a cruise with high school friends. I then need to have empathy for a couple married for 20 years buying life insurance for their family.

So, what is the art of “doing” versus observing? Growing up with a bunch of scientists, birders and literary geeks, we were taught the art of observing. But this shift in my thinking has allowed me to “do” more. At my agency, Curiosity, I coined it field research.

I just sent two people on a cruise for seven days to understand the feeling of being a 65-year-old traveler. We are currently conducting research around foodie foods from Brooklyn while also studying Michelin restaurants. We are tracking the mental-health trend, which has come with a whole host of out-of-the-box field studies. We have had teams organically start “therapy” sessions with each other (voluntarily) and share back with the company on their progress.

When we work with clients, we literally and figuratively put ourselves in the consumer’s shoes. When we pitched and won Brooks Running shoes, the first thing I did was purchase a pair of Brooks and I began my own personal run journey. I rounded up consumers (real people who love to run) so we could run and they could storytell within the activity. It was quite the meta version of research. 

When I stopped being philosophical about my work and became more kinesthetic, I was born again as a strategist. Living sustainably was a new lifestyle for me personally, but also a new philosophical lifestyle for my work as a strategist.