New Social Media Platform Looks To Emphasize (And Modernize) Social Impact In Wake Of Seismically Shifting Consumer Trends Toward Social Good
By Sam Amsterdam, ImpactWayv Marketing Director
There’s no way around it. Despite its promise, social media is failing us.
Yes, social media allows us to connect with family and friends, and to keep up with current affairs in real-time. Yet many of the positive aspects of social media have been overshadowed by toxic superficiality, bitter partisanship, hate and division.
The public has grown tired of these increasingly toxic aspects of mainstream social media platforms. A recent CNN poll found that three out of four American adults believe Facebook negatively impacts society, while Instagram continues to face mounting scrutiny for causing adverse effects on teen mental health.
It’s time to make a change, one company believes. Change starts with creating a platform that singles out the more wholesome and socially productive aspects of social media, breaking away from the white noise and rampant superficiality that characterize so many other platforms.
Meet ImpactWayv, the first social media platform focused solely on social good. The platform brings people, businesses and nonprofits together to interact together around the causes and topic areas that matter most–providing a dynamic ecosystem to engage in social issues and hold all sectors accountable for working to create a better world.
With previously obscure terms such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) now hitting the mainstream, and charitable giving reaching a record $471.44 Billion in 2020, the climate is right for a purpose-built social media platform like ImpactWayv.
Unlike other platforms, ImpactWayv utilizes metrics based on transparency, accountability and social action. For instance, the company has moved away from “Likes,” and created a new metric called “Impacts”, which quantify—in a cumulative way—how users are effectively spreading positive awareness and inspiring other users to take action across the different causes (or “Wayvs”), they care about.
“Instead of, ‘how many likes can I get with each post’, the thought process on ImpactWayv becomes, ‘how can my post benefit others and make an impact on the issue areas that I care about?’” an ImpactWayv spokesperson recently said.
In addition to individual users, the platform provides a forum for companies to showcase and engage users and stakeholders interactively in their CSR and ESG efforts. Businesses on the platform can highlight their purpose-driven efforts via their corporate profiles and posts to the public feed that reach a target audience of consumers and stakeholders more likely to make brand loyalty decisions based on businesses’ social good profiles.
Along with dynamic CSR content coming from the companies on the platform themselves, users can view third-party CSR scores for nearly 20,000 companies—and benchmark them against the industry average. This profile model furthers ImpactWayv’s mission to create transparency around corporate citizenship and to empower consumers to make more informed buying and employment decisions. And ultimately, it can help more effectively focus companies that trail their industry peers when it comes to ESG.
As strong CSR and ESG programs become more critical than ever to companies’ success in this evolving “purpose” economy, the time has come for a new type of digital platform that highlights these efforts in a more transparent and dynamic way. By bringing social impact to the heart of social media, ImpactWayv aims to create the next-generation digital ecosystem for social good, where people, businesses and nonprofits can come together for a more meaningful and informative social networking experience—and create greater and more transparent impact in the process.
About the Author
Sam Amsterdam is a Carleton University Public Policy graduate with international marketing and public relations experience in New York, Toronto, London and Brussels. He is the CEO and Founder of Amsterdam Group, a boutique Social Media Public Relations Consultancy with offices in both Toronto, Ontario and Washington DC. He is also currently the Director of Public Relations for the Arcadia Foundation.
