The coronavirus pandemic has changed everything for many businesses in 2020. Many businesses have temporarily shut down or have shifted to remote work. While everyone is staying home and practicing social distancing, social media is a great way to keep in touch with each other. For businesses, it’s a fantastic way to keep customers engaged during this time.
But how should your social media strategy change to reflect the times we’re currently living and working in?
Try Different Posting Times
You may have found a posting schedule that works for you. But while that’s a great schedule for normal times, a pandemic is far from normal. More people than ever before are working remotely. Others have unfortunately been either laid off or furloughed. This means that the ideal time to reach your audience may have changed.
There’s no one right time to post. It depends on your audience, where they live, and when they tend to check social media. The most important thing is to be consistent with your posting times. If you’re changing when you post, stick with it for a while to see if the new time has any impact on your audience engagement.
Adapt Your Posts to Reflect the Current Climate
The content of your posts should be carefully thought out to reflect the current situation. This means no posts encouraging people to get together. No photos showing large groups of people in a crowd. You don’t want to risk being seen as tone-deaf to what people are going through during the pandemic.
Some people have sick loved ones while others are working the front lines at hospitals and still, others are quarantined at home. That isn’t to say that all of your posts must be serious, but they should take into account what’s going on. Each post is an opportunity to educate and inform people or even to make suggestions about what they can do while maintaining social distancing.
Focus on Helping Others
Because so many people are experiencing financial hardship during the pandemic, a focus on selling may end up seeming tone-deaf to many. That doesn’t mean you can’t still sell. But your focus should be on helping others. The focus of your content should reflect that.
An overt sales campaign may turn customers off more than it gets you sales. The backlash from appearing to take advantage of the crisis could lose a company a lot of sales. But if you focus your content on helping people get through the pandemic in a way that’s relevant to your business, those people will remember. When the pandemic is over, they may become customers.