Marketing and Management Tasks During Coronavirus and Social Distancing

Due to the spread of coronavirus, we are all experiencing slow downs in our businesses.

As people pull back from social contact and work from home their thoughts also turn to their families. New business is not top of mind these days and may not be for a while. Social distancing has limited face to face meetings and creative brainstorming sessions in the office. If you’re feeling a bit uninspired and lacking drive, we get it. But, there are some critical marketing tactics you can undertake to maintain contact with your customers.

Fine-tune your business now when you have the time

If you have extra time on your hands, what can you do now that you haven’t been doing? What can you do to enhance your marketing? There are probably tasks which you’ve put off due to lack of time in the prior hectic months. Now is the time to get that list of “round to its’ out and dust it off and get to work accomplishing a whole array of tasks that will fine tune your customer outreach and improve your top of mind awareness.

Here are a number of projects you can work on now to enhance your marketing and business management.

Work on your newsletter. People have more time on their hands right now and have time to read and respond to your newsletters. If you have not told your clients what you are doing during this time of social distancing to support your staff, your vendors, and your customers your newsletter is a good vehicle for that. Have you changed your opening hours? Cut back on offerings? Changed your menu? Be sure your customers know.
Survey the content on your website. When was the last time you reviewed your content with an eye to cleaning it up? How about the last time you reviewed which content was most consumed? Take this time to weed out low-performing content and observe your higher-performing content with an eye toward comprehending how you can replicate success for a related topic. Perhaps you’ve never created the content that you’ve always wanted to create for your website. Now is the time to do the research to find out what people search for when they’re seeking to solve a problem or issue for which your product or service is the perfect solution.
Hold a Facebook Live event. Or InstagramTV event or post a video story on either Facebook or Instagram. People are spending more time on Facebook and other social media. Your followers get notification when you go live on Facebook and they might like to see and hear from you and get the news of what’s going on in your company. Since casual contacts at lunch or cocktails are curtailed for now, use the means you have to contact and connect with your clients.
Create the YouTube video that you’ve always meant to create. Do you have a longer issue that you want to talk through? Or the solution for your customers most important issues? Create a video that can go on YouTube on your Channel. If you don’t have a channel now is the time to consider how people search for support and assistance on YouTube related to the products and services you sell.
Review your Google analytics data. Do you know what people consume when they visit your website? Do you know what order they go through your pages? How about what is your most important landing page? If you use the tools available to you with Google analytics you will get greater insights as to what content on your website is most helpful to your customers.
Review your search console data. Every website we build is connected to Google search console. Is yours? Within this tool you can find out exactly how people visit your website via search. You can find out what queries they use, what keywords they use, and where you rank for those. Maybe you’ve never taken a look at it before but now is the time to get familiar with it and learn more about this insightful data.
Add e-commerce to your website. Now that people aren’t going shopping as much, what can you sell or offer on your website that people need and which you can deliver digitally or shop directly to them? In some cases you can simply embed an easy to use PayPal button to sell a single product. Or you might ask us to help you implement WooCommerce.
Analyze your non-essential expenditures and cut back. With revenues slowing, it might be important for you to decide what expenditures your business can cut back on. It’s important to save money now.
Revise your sales projections. Hopefully every quarter you review your expected income for the next quarter. Because none of us have a magic crystal ball, we can use our insights and our past experience to predict how the current situation may affect us.
Hold regular virtual staff meetings. In the absence of information people make up thoughts. Therefore, regular communication becomes vitally important in these times. Ensure your staff is continually well-informed.There are so many tools to allow you to hold online meetings but have you actually used them? If you have relied on face-to-face meetings to this point in time, now is the time to learn how to use virtual meeting platforms. From Zoom to Google Meet to GoToMeeting to join.me there’s a platform that will work for you. Some are free and some come at minimal cost. Test them out and figure which ones work best for you.

What else have you tried to keep on top of things during the coronavirus pandemic? Share your tactics and tasks so we may learn from each other.

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

A Rant: Why I May Ignore Your Social Media Invitation

Posted by Cheryl Smithem

Note: This post originally published in 2012 was updated on June 21, 2018.

Social media etiquette – introductions are requested

How often have you invited someone to Link, Follow or Friend without reminding the person how you are connected? There are some “rules” for social media etiquette that somehow don’t cover this topic and some that do.

Social media etiquette makes the Web a nicer place

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter all have suggestion mechanisms to help you find and connect with those that may be your friends, former co-workers, colleagues, or even former sweethearts. In the drive to “get the numbers up” many people click, click, click to add new peeps.

Twitter and Instagram allow you to follow people without their permission. Though on Instagram, if an account is private, you will not be able to see or follow. So, understanding new connections’ motivations is not as much of a concern as it is with Facebook and LinkedIn. With these two social media platforms, the emphasis is on a personal connection. I like what Cision’s Yvette Pistorio wrote in her blog post:

Introduce yourself. When you follow/friend/engage with people who may not know you, introduce yourself. It helps break the ice and open the door to conversation. Let them know who you are, what you do (if connecting for business) and how you came across them…it might just make a great impression. Be transparent about what you are connecting with them for.

Now I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but if you want to be my Facebook Friend isn’t it just polite to introduce yourself? And if you want to be Linked, shouldn’t I know that you’re not a ball and chain?

Tell me who you are

I’m delighted to get to know new people, after all, I do brand myself “The Connection Maven,” but if I don’t know you, I don’t always understand your motivation. Do you want to sell me something? Do you want to become a client or do you just want to ask me out for a cup of coffee? Or maybe you want to find a new job? I’m not a mind reader and so I have no idea why you may want to become connected. So, just tell me and we’re cool.

I’ll be your Friend. LinkedIn posse member and I’ll re-tweet your amazing tweets. Just give me some context for our pending friendship.

After we’re connected

And after we’re connected, please do not tag or mention me in every post.

Especially on LinkedIn. You know. You’ve seen them.

The posts where someone attends a meeting and then proceeds to humble brag about how awesome the event was, how much they learned, and mentions/tags 35 of their *friends* or connections in attendance, all in an attempt to increase engagement. If someone there said something cogent that you want to credit them with, for heaven’s sake, do mention and tag them. Give them all the credit they are due. But just piling on the mentions for the sake of ginning up some response to your post should be avoided at all costs. It feels and looks like begging. Events are all about face to face connections. Take selfies with the peeps you sat with and post away. Then you have a reason to mention them.

If it feels forced. If it feels like something you would not do in real life then stop. Don’t do it. Keep it real. Keep it human. Keep it sociable.

Thanks, and rant over.

Photo credit: flickr user Kate Ter Haar

Setting Facebook Page Notifications and Managing Pages

Posted by Cheryl Smithem

Facebook Page management help

How closely are you monitoring your Facebook Page? Have you reviewed your settings for your Page so that you understand who can post to your Page? Are you receiving notifications when someone does post to your Page?

Apparently one Lowcountry nonprofit organization is not paying very close attention to their Facebook Page. It’s a bit after 3:00 PM and I’ve noticed that a post which entices people to view sexy videos of scantily clad women was made to their Page in the morning – and it’s yet to be deleted. Certainly this is not the kind of service this nonprofit wants to promote. Fortunately, few people visit a Facebook Page after they have liked it, preferring instead to interact with Page posts within their personal newsfeed or Page feed. (On the screen capture below, we’ve obscured the name of the organization and people depicted in the section of the Page captured.)

Facebook notification settings

When you set up your Page, review your notification settings to be certain that you will receive notifications for each and every type of action made on your Page. Below is a screen capture showing you what to click on to get to the area of your Facebook Page’s management area to adjust and customize your notification settings.

If you have staff turnover, also remember to modify your Page’s admin roles to change who receives the notifications from the Page.

Many organizations’ managers forget to do this and as a result, have people no longer responsible for a Page receiving notifications and still permitted to access a Page’s information and insights.

Before you go another day, why not check your Facebook Page settings to be certain that you and / or the appropriate people are receiving Page notifications and have the correct Page admin role to administer the Page.

Need assistance managing your Facebook page? Give us a call at 843.628.6434. We’re available to assist you with page management, content development or strategy.