Continued Discussions on Marketing, Inclusion and Becoming Better Humans

The Sprocket Report

Probably for all of us, the current protests have prompted introspection and analysis of ourselves as a nation, as a city, and even as a business. Great changes will need to be made, but also should small changes in our own small companies. 

Here’s one small change to make: Choose marketing images for websites, blogs and social media posts with more thought toward inclusivity that reflects the real world. For big organizations who have huge marketing budgets and teams of people to create campaigns, this might be relatively easy. They might even set up their own photo shoots. For small companies, the effort will be harder, but it’s worth doing. 

If you work at a smaller agency or are doing your own marketing, you already know the constant struggle to create good content on a budget and under deadline. Graphic libraries boast that they have a zillion images for you to choose from to illustrate your blog articles or social media posts, but finding one that’s appropriate to the topic can be difficult and time-consuming. Finding one that’s both appropriate to the topic and inclusive as well is going to be even trickier, but it’s a charge we plan to undertake. 

We looked over our Sprocket Report images from the last couple of years. The vast majority are objects or graphs, but of the images that feature people, most of them are white, male, young and non-disabled. Clearly these images don’t reflect the world outside or even within our own office. Many graphic libraries don’t offer much in diverse representation, so it will require more effort on our part to search out better images until they do. It’s just a little step, but a step forward means we’re moving closer to the goal.

Of course the really big issues are way more important than an image on a tech blog and the Sprocket team is taking action both collectively and individually. But it’s important for change to happen everywhere to make a real difference, so we thought we’d share this one tiny commitment as an example. If you are also making one small change, please feel free to share it below so we all can become better humans. 

For further discussion on choosing representative graphics, here’s an article from The Content Marketing Institute on How to Do Diverse and Inclusive Content Marketing that Matters.

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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