How To Do A Diversity Audit

This year has definitely shaken up a lot of things in the world — starting with a very unexpected global pandemic.

Unfortunately, many people have been faced with life-altering challenges and situations. This is absolutely evident when it comes to the extreme racial injustices Black people continue to experience and are forced to endure.

Even though 2020 keeps testing us in a multitude of ways, it’s been wonderful to see some of the positive and necessary changes that have taken place, especially right here within Mediavine.

Instead of staying silent about important issues, Mediavine chose to stand alongside its employees and publishers to help support, educate and speak out about making the blogging space more inclusive and diverse.

One of the ways we took action was by taking a good, hard look at Mediavine’s own blog and social media accounts. We aren’t here just to preach about diversity and inclusion, we’re holding ourselves accountable too.

Since our world is made up of so many different people with unique ideas, it’s very important to us that our content always reflects that. We want to encourage you to do the same with your own content channels, starting with a diversity audit.

What is a diversity audit?

A diversity audit is a simple — and potentially eye-opening — way for brands, publishers or anyone, to see if the content they are creating and sharing is diverse.

No matter what type of content you create or consume, there are ways to ensure that it’s inclusive, especially if you want to reach and resonate with a broader audience.

Ways to do a diversity audit:

Take a close look at the brands and influencers you follow, engage and collaborate with.

Much like we as bloggers take time to check out a new theme, audit plugins or research hashtags, it’s important to spend time scrolling through the social media accounts of the brands and influencers you interact with.

What exactly are you looking for?

Focus on whether or not their social feeds (or your own) showcase diverse people in the images. Do you have to scroll forever to find creators of color featured?

See if the words and messages on their timeline represent a variety of voices or only one one main sound.

If not, and you want to bring it their attention and ask why, send a DM or email the brand directly. Don’t be afraid to let them know you notice their lack of diversity. Change can’t happen if we stay silent.

Evaluate your top posts.

Determine your highest performing posts — maybe start with the top 10 — which you can quickly identify via the Mediavine Dashboard, Google Analytics or Google Search Console.

Look at your videos and images, and if you realize they aren’t very diverse, try utilizing a site like nappy or CreateHER Stock to source pictures for a post or social media. They both offer lots of free, beautiful, high-resolution photos of black and brown people.

Check your affiliate links.

This part of the diversity audit can also be for both yourself or other brands and influencers that you follow.

Take some time to check affiliate links in your posts and on social. See if you can change some out to support Black-owned businesses instead.

Also, if you’re a Black creator with a product or business, contact other bloggers within your niche to ask if they would be willing to share your link with their audience (yes! backlinks).

Make representation a priority.

Representation doesn’t only mean externally, but also internally within your brand or business.

If you’re hiring freelancers, or other members for your team, be intentional and make it a regular part of your process to consider people from different backgrounds. Be sure to listen and value their voices as a part of decision-making processes.

There are many ways for brands and content creators to take action and continue to advocate the need for representation and inclusion. A diversity audit is a great start, but there is so much more work to be done.

Remember that this is not a moment in time but an important movement for change.