These are the moments in which the news about COVID-19 keeps changing fast. And It’s evident that what we face is unprecedented — not just as marketers, but like friends, parents, and colleagues. And all of us are in it together.
People look at each other and their societies in times like these to find out how to react. Over the last few years, we’re very grateful to have built up such a large community of people who are using the products, following our blogs and listening to our podcast, and we think it’s vital that we’re all trying to tackle these challenges. This is why we want you to share these thoughts. It is best often just to start a conversation.
As we all know that social media is such an important networking tool in 2020, and as we all try to overcome unexpected and unimaginable obstacles, many of your customers and teammates will turn to social media for some sort of help. And when many across the globe are isolating themselves, social media may become an even greater medium for contact and a sense of community.
And what does handling social media look like in the coming weeks and months? We are trying to find it out.
We hope the reflections below will serve as a starting point on which to work as we tackle the current and future challenges.
This Is Not An Opportunity
The first thing to say is that this is not an opportunity to market. The COVID-19 pandemic should not be looked at by marketers as anything to capitalize on.
Even if it’s not quite business as usual — every message, campaign and ad you run will require an extra layer of care and empathy in the coming days and weeks — it’s okay to keep promoting and selling your goods or services, we know that some businesses that don’t sell products will affect some of their teammates’ livelihoods. Just don’t use COVID-19COVID-19 as a platform to self-promote.
Stop And Rethink Your Plans (And Goals) For Social Media
If you haven’t already, now is the time to focus on your current plans for the end of Q1 and move to Q2.
Many campaigns and pieces of material that you designed can be saved best for another time. We suggest that you reconsider your content and social media strategies to adapt them to the changing customer needs right now.
And as priorities may need to shift, it’s also a good time to focus on any goals you’ve had in the coming months. For example, new goals for customer acquisition might change to a focus on customer retention and support.
Now is a good time to take a look at the bigger picture and what social media means in a time of global crisis for your company.
When you want to postpone any ads or content and find yourself with a few spare hours that would have been spent on producing, marketing or reviewing content, now may be a perfect time to concentrate on some of the social media activities that aren’t specifically consumers facing like an audit.
Is Your Company Able To Help
You never want your brand to be shoehorned into a discussion it doesn’t belong to. So most brands aren’t explicitly part of the COVID-19 conversation.
But that being said, COVID-19 can affect almost every company globally in some way, and in these moments there might be some small things that your company can do to help.
Communicating Closely And Clearly With Customers
Over-communicating is almost certainly easier than under-communicating. Particularly in crisis times.
If you shut your office and the staff operates from home so it doesn’t bother your clients, it might not be what you’d like to connect. If the staff shifts to remote work impact customer service reaction times, or distribution times, that’s something worth talking about.
With too many businesses influencing customers, they get much more feedback from the products and organizations they interact with than normal, make sure that the content you send them is empathetic and based on conveying the important messages.
The specifics matter when it comes to finding out what to do when you’re sending out a statement in the coming days and week. In order to give you consumers as much time as possible to respond, try to make all contact transparent and appropriate, and avoid making conclusions and communicating decisions early.
Help And Keep The Team Informed
The career will look a bit different for us all for a while, and it’s good to accept the idea of over-communication with your team and with your clients as well.
In times of crisis, staying in close touch with each member of your team and setting clear goals for what research may look like over the next few weeks or months is crucial.
When employees adjust to changing work methods efficiency will not be at its normal pace, so it is important to let the staff know how the business wants to cope with the COVID-19 implications and the current work climate.
There’s already a lot going on to sort out, but it feels extremely important to be pro-active in helping their colleagues and each other with business members and teammates alike.