Overheard at GMM HQ
“Being different makes you relevant. That’s what the media wants to cover.” — Holley Miller on the mistake that costs you media coverage and market domination.
Awareness Days—What They Are and Why You Should Care
I’m almost too embarrassed to share social media blunders like these, but there’s an important lesson to be learned here. Over the last month, I saw a medtech company (who shall not be named) publish a general holiday post on LinkedIn. Most holiday posts are pretty harmless, but this post, in particular, missed the mark. Why? Well, it lacked authenticity and inclusion in its message. The post only acknowledged stereotypical and outdated ideals, which ignored and diminished a wide variety of individuals and relationship dynamics. It was clear to anyone looking at the negative comments below this post that something went awry.
Campaigns around national holidays and relevant awareness days are important to leverage. Brands need to go beyond a one-time statement about diversity on social media and integrate equity and inclusion into their social strategies for the long haul. One of the best ways to do so is to plan your social media strategy ahead of time to acknowledge these holidays and awareness days on social media in a way that matters to your audience.
Make It Matter
From International Women’s Day to National Hospital Week, we’ve seen a handful of life science companies begin to craft more sophisticated, authentic and relevant awareness day social media posts. There are a plethora of awareness days in which your company can share relevant content to your company’s industry, get involved in a movement, or simply generate more brand awareness.
Now, we don’t suggest going gung-ho on each and every awareness day because some of them may not make sense for your company to engage with. Despite some awareness days seeming a bit niche or obscure, we recommend looking at these with a creative lens by seeing how you can leverage them with your social media marketing goals in mind.
Free Gift: Your Awareness Day Calendar
To help you plan for awareness days and trending holidays, we created a downloadable calendar that you can use to guide your social media content strategy year-round. Aside from the holidays life sciences companies typically acknowledge on social media, we’ve also included more niche awareness days that our clients and the GMM team create social posts for.
Pro Tip: Be sure to include an awareness day-related hashtag in the caption of your post. For example, when celebrating National Hospital Week you could include #NationalHospitalWeek or #NationalHospitalWeek2021 to avoid having your post get bogged down by an onslaught of posts using the more general hashtag.
