A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a brilliant chat on Twitter. It was my first ever Twitter chat and I loved it. Amazing how much insights got shared in a number of minutes, how many brilliant people tweeted their input and thoughts, how much I got to learn and what great connections I made. What was the chat about? The issue of CSR and sustainability reporting.

David Connor – CSR, sustainability and comms expert – invited me to join the chat that was organised by 3BLMedia. Last year, David was so kind to participate in an interview with me for my second dissertation about social media and sustainability, so this time I just couldn't say no.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter chats, these are basically normal chats conducted on Twitter at a specific time on a specific date with a designated, unique hashtag. The chat usually has a moderator who asks questions via tweets and integrates the hashtag in each tweet. Participants follow the conversation via the hashtag and share their answers or insights by tweeting and including the hashtag too.

For this chat our hashtag was #3BLchat.

3BLMedia organises regular chats on the issues around CSR and sustainability. The expertise shared during these discussions is simply amazing!

As mentioned, this one-hour chat was centred around CSR and sustainability reporting, meaning we wanted to explore how companies engage with stakeholders and communicate their sustainability efforts, corporate results and achievements. The many aspects of corporate reporting were discussed - for example storytelling, content creation, engagement and channel strategies etc. - and many best practice examples were given.

I am very glad that I was able to join in. Looking forward to the next one, I simply have to share with you my takeaways from the chat.

Key takeaway #1: Measurement against objectives

To measure the success of any CSR or sustainability report companies must start with their objectives first - why do they publish a report, who do they want to read this report, what is it that they want to communicate and why etc. You can't realise or analyse results without having first defined what that result should ideally be - that's just business 101.

Key takeaway #2: Engagement, transparency, engagement, transparency

Yes, companies have to find appropriate and interesting ways to engage with stakeholders, but it's not just about fostering that two-way dialogue, it's also about really walking the talk. Content must be backed-up by context. False messages or greenwashing are inevitably found out, which can lead to a serious crisis of trust, reputation and leadership.

Key takeaway #3: Innovation is key for content and channels

Being innovative, different, cool, creative, fun, interesting and relevant both when creating and when distributing your reporting content is crucial to have your messages heard and to start a conversation around them. If companies don't make their efforts easily available to their audiences, i.e. if they do not communicate in the right language and on the right channels (incl. social media), even the greatest achievement won't matter or rather won't be made to matter.

Key takeaway #4: Reporting is not a one-off thing

Communicating company sustainability activities should not be focused around producing just the report. Sustainability is progress, it's many actions and many steps made every day. It's the little things that make up that big achievement. And these little things must be communicated not only to keep the audience timely up-to-date, but to also make the connection more personal and authentic by sharing the entire journey from A – the objective – to B – the end result.

You can read the entire chat on Storify or have a look at the recap from 3BLMedia (I'm mentioned there too :P).