Ep 31: Social media messaging - we can do better

In this episode I'm digging into social media messaging and some examples of where, when I've run things through my own values filter, the mark has been missed. Hold onto your hats (your critical thinking hats hopefully!) for this one my lovely humans.

This episode may make you feel some sort of way...but the intent is to get you curious and thinking about how you can use your own values filter to ensure the messaging you use in your marketing is congruent with the way you show up in your practice.

Let's dive in.

Links, resources & mentions

Authentic, human centred marketing workshop

The movement maestro post that inspired this episode

Episode Transcript

Laura Jean 0:04

Hello Hello and welcome to another episode of the dietitian values Podcast. Today I want to talk to you about messaging and marketing, around how you communicate things to the humans that you want to work with and even the humans you are working with. and I want to check in with you or offer you a prompt to see what is coming through in maybe some of your posts or messages that you send out to the humans you want to work with. And to check in if you are inadvertently using any shame or guilt or blame, if inadvertently you are removing your own responsibility from situations and also if inadvertently, you are dehumanising the people that you actually want to work with. so let's dive in and talk a little bit about that.

I know marketing and messaging and how we write things can feel a little bit rife, and I know sometimes as practitioners we can have frustrations around questions we get asked, the same questions we get asked over and over again, or the situations we might find ourselves in. And I want talk about that. And so this post this episode was inspired by the movement Maestro Shante Cofield putting up a post, about asking people to really consider about how they speak to the humans they want to work with. And basically, she was saying, let me find it because I think it was good. It was basically a public service announcement a PSA, to anyone using social media, "stop making posts about how annoyed you are when the general public expresses goals and desired outcomes that run counter to your approach, meet people where they're at. Recognise folks don't have the same education experience or understanding as you and yes, they're likely influenced by mainstream media. Instead of shaming or making fun of them for this show them the possibility that comes with thinking differently doing things differently and working with you.: And I loved this and it got me really thinking because I'd been thinking about a couple of things along these lines anyway, so that's what I want to talk to you about.

Before I jump into the meat though, I just wanted to highlight that I'm running a workshop around values and marketing on December the seventh, which this podcast will go out early December and it will be the week before so if you're listening to this when it drops or very close thereafter. I'm running a workshop on December the seventh Australian time. From 10am to 12pm. Two hour workshop and that will then be December 6 6pm Eastern & 3pm Pacific on authentic values based human centred marketing. so I'll drop the link in the show notes or you can go over to dietitianvalues.com and there's a link through my workshop and Events tab to sign up if it's something that interests you. It's 50 Australian dollars so it is a paid workshop. There's no like pitch and sale. It's a workshop where I'm going to give you content give you strategies give you some practical applications that you can walk away with to move towards a more values aligned way of marketing for you.

Okay, so let's dive into today. So I want to give you a few examples because what is this kind of nebulous thing I'm talking about around posts I or content or ideas. I'm going to share some specific ways or ways of talking that I do see people in the non diet space make, and I'm not sharing this to incite shame or guilt in you. I'm sharing this to encourage some critical thinking, to encourage some thought and to open you up to potentially curiosity and awareness and to think about how we use our words and to think about where we are putting responsibility when we are making posts. So the first thing I want to say is that when you are creating posts, particularly I'm going to reference theis to posts, so like social media posts, but it can still be blog posts, it can be other spaces and places where you communicate with humans. It's not limited to but I'm going to just talk with that as a reference point so that I'm not kind of talking all over the place. So one thing that we can look out for and a strategy we can utilise is to look at who we're centering or look at where any blame might be going. Where could any blame or shame or judgement be going? Now, what we would want to be doing as a general rule, without telling you what to do, is to be thinking about who benefits if the shame and blame is put on the individual versus the system or versus the culture. So what we know, if you work in the non diet space, is that diet culture is the system around us it's space we all swim in, and humans are so influenced by that and impacted by that. And so where, if you are creating posts where there might be blame or shame or ajudgement, making sure that who is centred is the system and not an individual. When we centre individuals like the dieter versus the diet industry, then we're shifting blame for a cultural systematic problem onto an individual. So that would be the first thing, the first filter I'd run any posts through. So maybe it's a bit of a sassy post calling things out, making sure that you are centering the system and the culture versus the individual.

Really, I would encourage when you are creating posts where you're putting forward maybe a controversial idea, or where you're putting forward something that you centre it in your own practice, that you centre it in your own values, versus centering it outside of yourself. Avoiding telling people a thing. We're really good at doing that. And we've been trained as dietitians to tell people a thing, to be the expert to be the one with the answers. And even when you unlearn all that even when you've been looking at that and working on that. It's still an easy default to pop up. So avoiding telling people a thing, and if you must tell people a thing, or if you do feel like telling people a thing. don't tell people a thing about themselves. For several reasons one, I think it creates a space where humans can then internalise that shame and guilt even if that wasn't your intention by telling them a thing about themselves, but also it positions you again as the person who knows about them.

So let me give you an example. 'You don't have to count calories'. I see posts like this all the time. Now is it really like problematic, the worst thing that I've ever seen? no. What I want to unpack with that post though, is a little bit of a critical analysis around this. To just show you or just invite you to get curious. so you don't have to count calories. The first thing is we're centering the human, not the system. We're not centering the problematic nature of counting calories. We're centering the human you don't have to. So that's the first piece that I would be watching out for in a post like that about counting calories. Who do we want to centre? Where do we want to be taking that apart at the individual level, putting the responsibility on the individual or at the system that encourages humans to count calories? We're telling somebody a thing and so put yourself, and this is where some empathy come in and I'm not saying you aren't empathetic and like I said at the start such a huge caveat - If you've made a post like this, I don't want you to internalise any shame or guilt. I want you to take this as an opportunity to get critical and if this resonates to then consider- know better do better. You know make a change. when we see something from a different point of view there's an opportunity to be 'Oh, actually, yeah, that's not the feeling I want to instil'. So it could be that it creates a space of permission, but it also could be that the human over there who can't stop themselves, or feels like they can't stop themselves, who feel stuck, who feels like there's no other way. who feels like the only way they feel in control of their relationship to food is through counting calories. And so how do they feel now when they read this thing that says they don't have to but they can't not or they can't think of any other way or it's the only way that works for them. Some people will just walk away and be like well 'that's not a post for me' but some people internalise that stuff. Then the next thing I would ask you to consider is when when we're doing, what would be another another way where you could still be opening somebody up to possibilities and getting them to be curious. So like, here's an example. So what about instead of a post that says you don't have to count calories is a post that says What need does counting calories meet for you? How has counting calories been supportive for you? you know, getting somebody to get really curious around that and then maybe how has counting calories not been supportive for you? So I know sometimes we want to get the quick, quippy short kind of post that makes an impact and it gets shared and things. But I think this is where we have the opportunity to think about what is the purpose and what values do you want that post to be aligned to? Is it the intent of the posts to support somebody to know that they don't have to count calories, or is it just to tell them a thing? Where could you open them up to possibilities? And where could you ask that client to get curious about their own experience with counting calories and how that could shift and how could that be communicated through a post? Will it be as quippy as 'you don't have to count calories' period full stop and post? Probably not. I think though it's around thinking about what is our intent with what we're posting, and how can we dethrone ourselves, I suppose if you'd like to think of it that way. How can we take ourselves off the pedestal of being the expert and put ourselves on the same side as our clients where we peer at things together? versus telling them not to do a thing? How can we sit together and encourage them to get curious about a thing that they are doing and whether that is supportive or not for them, whether it's nourishing. without an agenda to stop them, even without an agenda to change it? Because maybe that client does feels they need to count calories. Maybe that counting calories does serve a very real thing for them. maybe controlling their food and attempting to change their body, that there's actually truly things that we can't know or understand about the benefits that that provides for them and when we put up posts that tell them that what they are doing maybe to survive, as maybe as you know, quote unquote, maladaptive as we might see that to be or as you know, counter to actual survival we might see that to be where, by telling somebody that what they're doing to survive is not a thing, or not something that they quote unquote, should do we're continuing to undermine their lived experience, even if we're doing it with the best intentions. So that's one example.

And like I said, How can we create the way we talk to clients, with the way we message thing, the way we we set up posts to get people curious, to open them up to possibilities and like I said to come to create a space where we're sitting with them or peering down with them. and I think about it like I'm a mum, I've got three kiddos and clearly I'm much taller than them. And a lot of the time when communicating you know, you're up here and they're down there. And then sometimes when you're out exploring, children love to inspect things in front of them, so I think of it likecrouching down with a child to look at the world with them, to get curious about the world with them, versus to tell them about it. You know, they see a lady bird on a leaf and rather than standing up here telling them all about a lady bird. We're getting down and we're looking at that Lady Bird and we're experiencing it with them and we're getting curious with them together. And I think there's elements of the same thing we can do with our clients, with the humans we work with and the humans we want to work with around some of these diet culture, things. We might see the impact of them and feel that overall they're things we don't want humans to be subjected to. And we come at it from the best intentions, I think we can consider where maybe we're putting ourselves back in that expert space. Again, maybe we're telling people a thing about themselves. Instead, where can we shift the focus.

So, a couple of other examples that I would love to talk about. So this is a one that I must admit, when I first saw these kinds of posts. You know, I probably had a giggle but as I've, I suppose, sat with this stuff and as I've kind of really, really thought about the values and really thought about the way I want humans to feel about themselves based on what I've shared. So the one I'm thinking of now is the old 'I don't want to hear about your diet Karen'. Or 'if you tell me about your diet I'll eat you' or something along those sorts of lines. Now, like I said, I'm not trying to instil any blame or shame or guilt in you if you have laughed at those. I've laughed at them. if you have reposted them if you've created your own, but what I want to encourage us is to think about the humans that sit in front of you. So let's say Karen shows up to your clinic room. The very first thing you want to hear about is her diet, and all the diet she's been on and all the things and so when we create that kind of post there's a disconnect between actually how we show up. And I suppose what I'd encourage us to think about what is the purpose of these posts. because I want to hear about Karen's diet. I want to hear about all her diets. I want to hear about how they made her feel. I want to hear about her fears around those diets. Her fears of giving them up I want to hear about what they gave her, what she's looking for. I want to hear about all of it. I want to hold space for her to be seen and heard and known in this experience that she has had with diets and diet culture. Now if that's how you practice and that's how you show up in practice, is it congruent then? Are the humans that are coming across your feed, seeing that? Yeah, they might have a laugh. They might think of their neighbour Karen who shares her diet with them and that they don't want to hear about either. But what about Karen, who's reading your posts, not actual literal Karen, but what about as well as possibly there could be and I don't want to dig into this because I'm no expert on this and problematic pieces with that because I know that that term has been used in other spaces. So what about though the humans that are reading your posts that are still really stuck? Are they going to see? Are they going to feel that your space is one where they can share their experience or where their experience is not, not wanted? Not listened to? Again, these are just opportunities to ask yourself questions, to think about what is the impact for the humans you want to work with, from the words that you are sharing.

And this is my third one that I want to share, third example where it's often the whole, you know, the scenario is a stranger coming up to you in a social setting to ask about diets to tell you about their fad diet. And you know, it might be something like I don't want to hear about your diet to the co worker in the tea room, it's along that whole idea or you know, the face I pull when a stranger starts asking me about keto at a barbecue or whatever it might be. So basically the premise here is there's a human who finds out you're a dietitian. And so therefore, they want to tell you about this thing that you don't want to hear about, this is the premise of the post. Again, I've laughed at these posts. I've looked at them myself. And I suppose what I want to think about this one that kind of got stuck I was like what is going on here that makes me feel a bit something about this and something around it. So this one is that there's a human and maybe we don't want to hear about what they're sharing though. And what I was thinking about is when you go out into social situations as a dietitian, and I suppose there's been a couple of things for me one is actually I really like to talk to people about food when I'm in social situations. And I don't mind if people ask me questions because I see it for myself as an opportunity to, you know, maybe plant some seeds. However, I'm not saying that everybody has to be comfortable with that. Sometimes people just don't want to be talking about work. Sometimes you don't want to be doing that. What I would ask you to consider though, and absolutely it'd be easier if people didn't ask you the questions but now they've asked you the questions. Who are you? Where do you want to place the responsibility - on that human for asking your question, because they found out that you're a dietitian, getting annoyed at them because they've asked you? what if it was your ideal client? Would you be annoyed at them if they came up to you and started talking and then you could provide them with you know, plant a seed and offer your business card and potentially work together? What is really going on? So possibly there's some annoyance at diet culture. And so this is where we really want to make sure we're putting the blame and judgement and guilt and shame in the right place on the system's. So yeah, maybe you are annoyed about the dude at the party telling you about his paleo diet, but you're not really annoyed at him you're annoyed at the system and the diet I would purport, actually I don't know, I don't know you maybe you are annoyed at him, maybe he's a really annoying guy. But often it is that system. That's coming through that person and we place it on them we dehumanise that person versus actually toggling back out to look at the system. And the other thing that happens in that situation is we're called upon to place a boundary, we're called upon to show up, show our commitment to our boundary. so if you are in these situations, and you're annoyed because you don't want to talk about work, or you don't want to be asked these questions, and you just don't want the person to ask you, and maybe the reason you don't want the person to ask you is because then you don't want to have to put in place a boundary. And as people pleasing, perfectionist dietitians, which most of us are, It can feel uncomfortable to put in place a boundary. it can feel uncomfortable to not help somebody so it does feel much easier if they don't ask and it does kind of feel much easier maybe to shift our discomfort from ourselves from that having to put in place a boundary, which doesn't always feel great to do, to the person. like why don't they just not ask me versus Why not creating a way that we show our commitment to our own values and our own own boundaries? Because in that kind of situation, you say you're a dietictian and somebody starts talking about some things in relation to dietetics if you don't want it, if you don't have a want for that, that's absolutely fine. It's about taking the responsibility for that in that situations what I think versus shifting the responsibility on the human like just don't talk to me, just because I'm a dietitian at a barbecue doesn't mean I want to talk about bla bla bla bla bla it's actually could be more that that responsibility is ours to say, 'Oh, thanks for sharing..' whatever you know, in your own words, 'but oh, I'm actually just here to enjoy the barbecue. I'm not really wanting to talk about work tonight. You know if this is something you want support with I do offer support I can give you my website. or you could just straight down with a no or like, you know, 'I just have a no for this conversation right now. Let's go sit down and enjoy our meal' or whatever it might be.

So there are a couple of posts that I've seen. So there's the ones where we tell a person they don't have to do a thing. Can we open them up to getting curious about why they're doing the thing. There's the one where we tell humans, potential humans that we want to work with that we don't want to hear about their experience. I don't wanna hear about your diet. When in fact, maybe that's not congruent with how we practice. And then there's the third one where maybe we're in a situation where we have discomfort at our own responsibility, whether it's around a boundary or whatever it might be, and it feels easier to shift that discomfort into a judgement of someone else. There's many more examples about this? And so what I would encourage is when you are writing posts and things, particularly if they are an attempt, or they are not an attempt, you're probably a very funny dietician. Particularly when you are injecting humour into your page, injecting you and what you find funny or what you notice about the world is a couple of things. One is to look for who is being centred and where is the possibility to centre the system versus the individual. The second one is if we are centering the individual can we do it in a way, or if we are creating an approach to them in a way that doesn't tell them a thing, particularly doesn't tell them anything about themselves. in a way that it takes us from that expert space and gets us crouched down with them looking at that bug, crouched down with them getting curious about their experience together. And so that leads into the third one is where can you shift the wording or language or the way you're writing messages or posts because like I said, particularly kind of talking about posts, to encourage people to get curious. to encourage people to get critical of the system not of themselves, to encourage maybe them to get curious about what's going on for themselves, to encourage people to look at what's going on. to actually open people up to opportunities, open people up to possibilities versus the judgement, shame, guilt, blame kind of thing. And like I said, i feel pretty positive that you're not attempting to do that overtly. However, it's really easy without our own values front of mind without running things through our values filter, that we can inadvertently create that sort of environment of blame, shame and guilt for an individual when we sort of aren't laying it through those filters. And also, ensuring that how we put our messaging out and how we are talking to the humans we want to work with is congruent with how we show up in our practice. So to use that example of if you're telling people you don't want to hear about that diet, but the very thing you do in your practice is actually ask them about their diet and all of the things that have been going on about them in their relationship with food, and what's the intent of that post? And is it congruent? And does it actually show humans how you show up in your work? I used some very specific examples. But this wasn't about any particular dietitian, so I couldn't even tell you off the top of my head anyone that's posted those things, they're just things I notice going around the social media spaces. So if you have ever posted or shared anything particularly of those specific examples, please know this is not a shame blame guilt situation. This is a 'let's get curious'. Let's look at how we want to show up. Look at how you want to show up your values and look at how they are showing up in your marketing messaging. Let's look at this as an opportunity to look at are you congruent? is how you show up in your marketing message the same way you show up in your practice? And look at is there alignment, is how you show up in your marketing messaging in alignment with the values that you want to bring. with the way of feeling that you want humans you want to work with and humans who are working with you feel. you can't control how someone feels but you can create ways of talking and ways of messaging things to definitely move towards a way of feeling and away from other ways of feeling. so a way of feeling of like possibilities and opportunities and hope and values alignment versus shame blame guilt judgement.

So that's what I wanted to leave you with. I hope that this has been supportive or that this is just, like I said, planted a seed got you curious about things. if this sounds like something that you would like to get some more support on then like I said I, am running a workshop around marketing, particularly human centred marketing and how you can create your own values based plan and filter to run marketing through. And also if you have questions, comments, concerns about what I brought up in this particular episode, then please feel free to reach out. I'm always open to questions, comments, concerns, and I'm absolutely open to different opinions. I'm not putting forward what I've observed as the one and only truth. merely what comes up for me when I run these things through my own values filter and the things that I start thinking about. And then also the things that I feel like we could shift towards, other ways of doing things and ways of opening up possibilities and opportunities and questioning curiosity versus you know, the traditional us as the expert telling people things about themselves and transferring inadvertently, the blame, shame and judgement that we want the system to hold inadvertently transferring that to the individual. So please reach out if you have any kind of follow up from this episode. My DMs are always open over on Instagram @dietitianvalues. Go to the show notes over at dietitianvalues.com and you'll find the link to the workshop if that interests you. And also on the website you'll find my email address if you want to send me an email about this with any questions or follow up because I know this could be a little bit, make you feel some sort of way. So I want you to know that I'm not just dumping this and running that I'm open to continuing the conversation about this and I'm absolutely open to opposing views around this as well. Okay, I will catch you again soon. Until then, bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai