Influencers are pausing their marketing campaign and regularly scheduled editorial feed and stepping up to make statements about the George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter movement which has managed to generate a ground swell of support from people of all races, age groups, persuasions and ethnicities and has gone global with very large solidarity marches in places like Germany, London and even Japan.
However, a bunch are getting it wrong and the wrongness of their approach range from extreme exploitation of the movement to the subtle tone deafness of some of their messages.
The extreme examples include Washington Examiner reporter Fiona Moriarty-McLaughlin in the cover photo above who was caught faking like she was helping board up a storefront in Santa Monica, only to have been caught giving the drill back to the man who actually was doing the work and then hopping back in her car and taking off. She has since deleted her entire Twitter account.
And then we have this other woman, Russian influencer Kris Schatzel, who was busted using the backdrop of real protestors to take this above photo as part of an Instagram post she was surely looking forward to sharing.
https://twitter.com/influencersitw/status/1268916126190272514
I am in several influencer Facebook groups and the moderator/founder of one said group challenged members to release videos, statements and press releases formally addressing the outrage and protests.
Before this time, digital creators, YouTubers, Vloggers, Bloggers and ecommerce shop owners have been allowed to remain apolitical so as to not alienate any potential subscriber, audience member, customer or reader. It was a business decision and a comfortable and smart one, however, in light of the egregiousness of the George Floyd death specifically and the newfound global support of the BLM movement, staying silent is no longer an option for anyone.
Sadly, I’ve seen a few video messages from White Influencers that have gone off the rails and I have received some extremely tone deaf and down right insenstivie subscriber emails from influencers.
In reaction to these messages, I created a YouTube video to help out my fellow influencers.
In this 34 minute video below, I explain why Influencers must speak, and offer suggestions of 5 things their message should not say and 5 they should mention.
It’s fully captioned for the hearing impaired because I talk very fast at some parts. I’m working on being a slower talker!
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
