2012 Sustainability Index
Innovation is the sustainability buzzword of 2013. So, for the August 2013 update of the SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index we’re taking a look at the more innovative ways companies are using social tools and technologies to communicate their sustainability activities and Sustainability Reports in particular.
Why Sustainability Reports? Surely these are graveyards of innovation, the place where great strategies and case studies become entombed in dull, passive corporate speak, safe in the knowledge that no one is going to read the report anyway. That’s one way of looking at sustainability reporting and it’s the approach still favoured by the majority of FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies. As our most recent Index showed, just 40 of the top 100 companies profiled took the time and effort to either share their entire report with social media audiences or to cherry-pick and create engaging social media content from its findings.
In our opinion, sustainability reports shouldn’t be viewed as a dull but necessary part of sustainability compliance. Instead, these reports should be seen as the raw material for dynamic sustainability storytelling that reaches online communities far broader than the traditional target audience quartet of investor, employee, NGO and media stakeholders. After all, consumers and communities are demanding more information about corporate sustainability and responsibility than ever before, and they are sharing their opinions and judgments about companies online. All too often the information that would impress these consumers lies buried in the sustainability report but isn’t mined to help demonstrate a company’s true sustainability credentials.
In the next series of posts we’ll offer a snapshot of the companies who understand that sustainability reporting can be a springboard for storytelling, and the social tools they are using to tell those stories.
