How To Practice LGBTQIA+ Allyship In Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Are you looking for tips on how to incorporate allyship into your influencer marketing campaigns and overall practices? We know that in order to support our LGBTQIA+ friends, there are steps we can take to include them in the conversation and show them respect, support, and love while doing so.

While we do not consider ourselves to be the ultimate source of truth in this area, we’ve aggregated a host of tips from allyship resources and activists that we trust. Here are a few ways to be inclusive and promote LGBTQIA+ concepts all year long.

 

Influencer Marketing Best Practices 

Within influencer marketing, there are several campaign touchpoints in which you will be working directly with creators. Allyship certainly occurs in the ways we speak to and work with creators, but it also starts during the campaign planning stages, all the way through sourcing, application development, and within your campaign’s creative brief. Let’s break down how to make inclusivity a cornerstone of your campaign from start to finish. 

Planning Your Campaign

      • Include queer people in your marketing demographics. They are a marketable and reachable community all year long with $3.7T spending power worldwide as of 2019, according to Entrepreneur.
      • Hire queer people year-round for all varieties of campaigns and positions, year-round. Queer folks — especially queer people of color — are disproportionately affected by the pay gap and unemployment. 
      • Avoid queer-baiting with Pride month-only logo changes and seasonal support. Queer baiting hurts a brand’s reputation within the LGBTQIA+ community.

Campaign Brief and Creative Concepts

      • Listen to creators who express concern or discomfort about your brief, prompts, product, vision, etc. 
      • Remove gender and sexuality assumptions from your campaign plans. For example, instead of offering a female-typical item to review to only female-identified creators, offer the same item to all sourced creators. 
      • For product promotion, normalize offering a variety of options and avoid assuming that all creators will be able to promote the same things. 

Sourcing and Working With Creators

      • In group communication, avoid gender-specific salutations like “you guys”; instead, go for things like “you all,” “everyone,” “friends,” etc. 
        • Introduce yourself with your name and pronouns.
        • In one-on-one communications, ask the individual how they’d like you to refer to them.
      • On creator intake forms or always-on applications, ask for preferred names and pronouns in addition to legal names for contracts.
      • Be respectful of a queer person’s identity, pronouns, preferred name and pronunciation, and boundaries. 

Before, During, and After

      • Challenge inappropriate remarks on your brand’s social platforms.
      • Donate a portion of proceeds to pride- or rainbow-specific product lines.
      • Don’t out people without consent. 
      • Accept that there is always more to learn! Be an ally by listening and taking action to stand by the queer community. Seek out education and find actionable ways to make a difference. 

 

Learning Is Lifelong

We know that this is just the first step in a greater move to provide underrepresented individuals with equal opportunities within influencer marketing. As you incorporate these practices into your campaigns, we hope you’ll find more chances to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion tactics into your strategies. 

Looking for resources? We trust these organizations and individuals who are providing education and action items to help all of us be better allies: 

 

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