How can you handle sensitive online topics without alienating your audience?

If you have personal experience of the topic you want to write about, try to include this in your piece. This may be difficult but people find personal experience relatable.

It’s a lot about social listening.. like they say read the room! For me, it’s about brand, audience and persona. Take the example of Barbie vs. Bud Light. One was a marketing master stroke while the out completely ignored what their audience resonated with. A good thumb rule is to be empathic with your message + remember the reason why your customers associate with your brand, what makes them resonate with those values? Listen & your words accordingly. Bud Light for example could have used its all-American image to spotlight how it helps the community; give out custom beer cans marking the achievement like they gave the influencer but in this case a campaign for everyone who submitted their milestone.

For those of us who work mostly on assignment, "why you want to write about it" isn't really relevant. The client wants an article on that subject and is willing to pay for it. The relevant question is whether the degree of difficulty and potential legal and reputational risks of writing about a sensitive topic are worth the fee.

There's no better way to show credibility in your articles than research. Depending on the type of article, you will have to conduct different types of research. The primary research method is useful for new and specific findings. It might be time-consuming but the benefits will be beyond expectations. The secondary method is relatively convenient. It will require the writer to delve deeper into the data and find out the relevant content for the article. It's less targeted.

This is the sort of generic advice that an AI program might give. For actual human writers, it's pretty much worthless. Your audience is the client who gave you the assignment.

More generic AI-generated advice. In reality, if you're going to make a living in this business, you've got to keep getting new assignments and producing new articles. You're not paid more to respond to comments on old articles.

The gap between communication INTENT and actual IMPACT can be VAST if you don't review what you're publishing, not just for accuracy and clarity, but for interpretation. When writing about sensitive topics, review your content MANY times, wearing MANY different hats to understand how it might be perceived by someone with a worldview, lived experience or belief system that's completely different from yours. This isn't an easy task for everyone, especially those who struggle with empathy, so don't be afraid to tap people in your inner circle who fit the bill to give you honest, critical feedback.