The four types of compassionate content
Why bringing compassion and creativity into your social media strategy is great for your sales and for your soul.
My mission in life is to find a way to make the internet a better place. There is no longer a separation between your digital or ‘virtual’ life and your analogue or ‘real’ life. If someone’s horrible to you on Twitter, or if an influencer’s highly edited Instagram posts make you feel inadequate and worthless, those emotions will affect your behaviour towards yourself and others. Nearly a quarter of women in the UK follow a fitness influencer who makes them feel bad about themselves. A recent study from RSPH found social media users aged 18 - 34 who use social media once a day or more are almost two thirds (64%) more likely to have low mental wellbeing than those who use it only a few times a week.
I believe that if I can make users kinder and encourage responsible practices for brands and content creators, I can help protect the mental health of social media users so that they can enjoy their lives more.
The best way I’ve found to do this is by creating compassionate content. I’ve been doing this for around a year now for different brands, and it’s yielded great results.
We’re conditioned to believe that business is a tough, hard world. You might think that ‘ethical’ or ‘compassionate’ practices when you’re trying to sell on social media mean a sacrifice in engagement and revenue. But they don’t. Here’s why:
Most algorithms favour accounts who behave like users, which means you need to demonstrate that you’re interacting fully with the platform by posting, commenting, liking, sharing, listening and really being there for your audience.
Power on social media lies with the audience and not with the publisher. They can choose to follow or unfollow, and most importantly can choose to be openly critical of your practices if they like.
The more value you actively share with your audience for free, through compassionate content or engaging earnestly with them, the more likely they are to understand who you are and what you’re selling and then make a purchase.
An engaged community is a wonderful way to future-proof your business. They’ll stick with you through thick and thin, support the growth and development of your business, buy subscription products, come back time and again to make repeat purchases and, crucially, give you a kind of marketing so good that money can’t buy it: earnest word of mouth recommendations.
What Compassionate Content Is Not
So how can you make compassionate content? Well, let’s start with what it isn’t:
Posts that exist only to sell something without demonstrating its benefits
High-frequency ad campaigns
Content that distorts reality and creates unreachable expectations for users
Content that sells by creating feelings of lack, scarcity or FOMO
Content that denigrates a group in order to create a sale
Any content created solely for the purpose of hopping on a ‘trend’
Content that you make and publish for your boss/board/funders and not for your everyday consumer
The Compassionate Content Types
Before we get into this I want to say that social media is a form of communication, and just like any form of communication it works the best when you start by thinking about the person you’re talking to. Keep your target audience in mind whenever you make content.
All compassionate content fits in to one or more of the four compassionate content types outlined below. I tried to make this a fun acronym but Google told me that EUEC is not a word - do tweet me if I’m wrong.
The compassionate content types are:
Educational: it teaches you something about your world
Useful: you could use it to solve a problem or improve your life
Emotional: it gives you an opportunity to experience emotion
Connecting: it offers an opportunity to connect with others
Incidentally, you can frequently see these reflected in reports about the most engaged with content on social media. For example how to videos (useful content) are the most engaged with form of video on Instagram.
These content types are consistent across all platforms and formats, because they are about the human end-user and not a brand or a company.
How can I tell if I’m doing it right?
Below I’ve included some suggested KPIs for each content type. You should always match your KPI to user behaviour, not to your sales targets or which metric looks the biggest on the report. If you do this you’re more likely to measure real positive outcomes for users.
Without further ado let’s look at some excellent examples of compassionate content and talk about how you might be able to make some compassionate content that enriches the lived experience of your audience.
Compassionate Content Type One: Educational Content
Educational Content is content that teaches you something about your world
We’re not talking edutainment here. You don’t need to make it fun (although, as in the long-form video example below, fun can be very effective). You need to make it good. To be good it needs to be thoroughly researched, provide sources, have a low barrier to entry (for your audience) and be well presented in a visual format.
Here are some examples of great educational content.
Text-based: soyouwanttotalkabout
Graphic: NYTGraphics
Long-form video: history of japan
Short-form video: Bromine by nilered on TikTok
How you can do it
It should take you a bit of time to make good educational content. Unless you’re a 100% expert in your craft and know all your references off by heart, you should approach this content knowing that there’s a high time and potentially cash investment here. However, your return on that investment is also likely to be quite high if you employ the right content strategy. The key ingredients of a good educational piece of content are:
Low barrier to entry (for your audience)
Well researched and potentially referenced
Enough narrative structure to keep people interested
If video, fairly pacy - with different sections if it’s a deep dive
Links to further reading for an extra bit of added value
Here are seven magic content questions you should ask yourself when you’re making educational content:
Which part of my audience is this for?
Do they need to know it?
Has someone else already done it?
Am I the best person to be teaching someone about this?
How will creating this piece of content help me make sales?
What is the best format for displaying this information?
Do I have the time and money to make it?
How you should measure it
My suggested KPI for this type of content is any KPI that demonstrates that your audience appreciated learning about it.
Instagram: shares, likes
Facebook: friends tagged in comments, likes, audience retention
TikTok: likes
Twitter: retweets
YouTube: likes, audience retention, minutes watched - also look out for where your traffic is coming from. If it’s coming from outside YouTube it could be that people are sharing it in messenger apps or linking to it from blogs.
Compassionate Content Type Two: Useful Content
Useful Content is content that helps you to solve a problem or to improve your life
My dear friend Joe was once tasked with finding a way to insulate the windows of a meditation cabin. It was winter in Vermont and we were living in a Monastic training centre. His task was to insulate the cabin using things we already had in the centre, before one of the monks, Daniel, went into the cabin for a 3-month silent retreat.
Joe created the window insulation using some old bits of wood, cling film, a hairdryer and a YouTube video like this:
Examples of Useful Content
Text-based: Rachel Cargle ‘The Classroom Ally’ on instagram
Graphic: Sun Salutation A by Dianne Bondy on instagram
Short-form Video: How to cut a jackfruit by Tasty on Facebook
How you can do it
Instructional, useful content makes for great numbers on almost all platforms. Its key ingredients are that it is:
Straight down to the point and fairly no-nonsense
Well-paced and clear (I’d advise going slower than usual)
Foregrounds the activity you’re demonstrating, not you
On YouTube, include links to times in your video when you enter a new stage of instruction so that users can navigate to it easily
Includes enough of your brand’s tone for users to build a relationship with you
The first thing you probably need to do is decide what you’re going to teach people how to do. Here are some more magic content questions to help guide you:
Which part of my audience is this for?
How will it benefit them?
Am I contributing anything unique?
How many steps does it take to complete this?
How can I lay out the steps in an easy to understand way?
My suggested KPI for this type of content is any KPI which shows that your audience found it useful.
Instagram: saves, likes, comments
Facebook: saves, comments
TikTok: Shares (you can download videos from TikTok this way)
Twitter: likes, retweets
YouTube: time spent. You also want your graph to indicate that people are watching and re-watching parts of your video, because that indicates that they’re doing everything step by step.
Listening: if you use social listening, you might want to see if the words ‘thank you’ or ‘helpful’ show up a lot. This could be a good indicator that your audience finds your instructional content useful.
Compassionate Content Type Three: Emotional Content
Emotional Content is content that gives you an opportunity to experience emotion
Sometimes you just want to feel. The rise and rise of TikTok, essentially an endless stream of joy, is testament to this.
While I was at the BBC, some of my esteemed colleagues created the BBC Make Me campaign. It helps you find content based on how you want to feel and was created off the back of some audience research which showed that audiences were choosing what to interact with based on what emotional state they wanted to be in. I also worked on the brand strategy for BBC Stories, a digital current affairs brand which explores macro issues through the micro lens of a single human story, connecting with audiences on an emotional level to help them understand their world.
But how do you offer your followers an opportunity to feel and explore, without manipulating them? Simple. Don’t include a specific call to action. Take the view that if they want to follow, like, share, buy - they’ll do it. Create the content with love and don’t expect anything back in return.
Text-based: Rupi Kaur on Instagram
Graphic: Forgive Yourself - @recipesforselflove on Instagram
Short-form video: Waking up to Linus the Chinchilla by Chinpals on TikTok (a must watch imho)
Also just for funsies: This naughty labrador by aharvodonnell on TikTok
How you can do it
The key ingredients of a good emotional piece of content are:
Focuses on a single story or emotion
Provides something relatable to identify with, or something desirable to be a part of (e.g. being best pals with Linus the Chinchilla)
Leaves room for reflection at the end
Doesn’t include a specific call to action
Here are four magic questions to help you when you’re making emotional content:
Which part of my audience is this for?
Am I doing this to help people feel, or to make them do something?
Ask yourself the question above again, with no self-judgement.
If sharing part of your personal story, are you doing it because you think it will help or because you want your audience to do something?
Remember, we’re not trying to get someone to do anything because we’re helping them feel and not manipulating their emotions to get them to do something. Because is… unethical.
Instagram: likes
Facebook: any reaction emoji that ISN’T a like
TikTok: Shares (you can download videos from TikTok this way)
Twitter: likes
YouTube: Likes, comments
Compassionate Content Type Four: Connecting Content
Connecting Content is content that gives you an opportunity to connect with someone
Anyone remember when social media was called social networking and it was all about connecting with other people? Well, funnily enough, it sort of still is. One of my core principles is that social media was not made for brands. It was made for people. The platforms reward you for engaging actively in conversations and for publishing content that is of value and starts or joins in with conversations.
According to a recent report from Sprout Social, 91% of people believe in social media’s power to connect people and 64% of them want brands to connect with them.
A good place to begin thinking about how to connect with your audience is to keep in mind that everything you publish should be good enough to share or take part in. You should always aim to create meaningful conversations that your audience can be a part of either with yourself as a brand or amongst themselves. This will be great for your engagement numbers and also for your brand affinity.
Examples
Text-based:
Graphic: Leo Season Bingo from Sanctuary app
Long-form video: lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to by ChilledCow on YouTube (included because of the chat)
Short-form video: Everyone doing the #WAPChallenge (TikTok via Twitter 👀)
Groups: Mindful Mastermind
How you can do it
The key ingredients of a good connecting piece of content are:
Room for interpretation of the content by the audience, and for feedback
Clear call to action to connect with another person or with the brand
If it’s a challenge, a simple and easy-to-follow format
If you’re in a Facebook group, ensure you keep conversations going with regular content updates
Here are five magic content questions to help you when you’re making emotional content:
Which part of my audience is this for?
Would I share this with a close friend or family member?
Will this help my audience connect with me and my brand?
Is there a clear call to connect with another person or to connect with me?
Have I made connecting easy to do?
The KPIs on connecting content are fairly clear. It’s any KPI that indicates that your content helped create a conversation.
Instagram: shares, comments
Facebook: shares, comments
TikTok: shares, comments
Twitter: retweets, replies
YouTube: shares, comments
In Conclusion
All content should satisfy as many of the Compassionate Content types as possible, although leaning hard into one of them can help your content creation and reporting processes. Match your KPIs up with human actions rather than benchmarks or targets, and you’re more likely to measure things that will make a real difference to your business.
Why should you care about creating compassionate content in the first place? Two reasons. Firstly, it’s the right thing to do. If you’re the kind of marketer who wants to exploit the parts of social media that are bad for us just to make sales, then perhaps you need to ask yourself some more fundamental questions about the moral choices you make.
Secondly, it’s good for your business. Better than a fitness influencer using angles and lighting to make themselves look unattainably toned while holding your product. Better than a time-sensitive offer that uses FOMO to make sales. Compassionate content is good for business because it creates brand affinity and loyalty, and those two things will keep you making sales no matter what the world throws at you.
Brands and content creators need to take more responsibility for what they put into digital spaces. The platforms themselves are not bad for us. They just react to the things that we do. We’re the problem.
Make compassionate content. Think about your audience. Be part of a positive movement towards a kinder internet.
