Living with coronavirus has become the new normal. It has completely turned our life upside-down. In all seriousness, brands and businesses are facing troubles alike. The unfortunate truth is that businesses have been hit in a number of ways.
The global pandemic has caused massive uncertainty in the digital marketing world. Nobody knows what the future holds and how to mitigate the current situation.
So, after discussing the impact of COVID-19 on digital marketing, in this blog post, we’re going to discuss how to use content marketing to benefit you and brand or business in these tough times.
Let’s dive right in.
Importance of Content marketing during a global pandemic
Coronavirus has changed the way we communicate with our customers, for now. Having a proper content marketing strategy in place is the safest way to remain in touch with your audience.
The burning question on everyone’s tongue right now is how should we go about sharing content about our businesses during a global pandemic? How would it look to our customers? Is it even important to make room for this topic in our content strategy?
All these are legitimate questions and the answers depend on what you’re trying to achieve from your content strategy.
Have a goal for your content strategy right now: The biggest mistake you could possibly make right now is to jump into content marketing without having a clear goal in mind. Your business could have a number of goals. It could be to support and educate your customer about the current times or to build long term trust within them. It could be to educate the customers about how your business helps during COVID or engage them in creative ways.
The bottom line is that you have to have a goal to survive this pandemic successfully. You may have different approaches to identify and fulfill these goals, depending on your business, our only recommendation is to have one.
How much should you deviate from your pre-COVID strategy: Following the estimation and elimination strategy is probably the best way to go about it. It is as explanatory as the name suggests. Take a look at your pre-COVID content strategy and estimate what and how much you’d need to invest in, create, considering the current scheme of things, if you keep building on it. After this, you can eliminate anything that doesn’t work with your current strategy.
Should you really invest in COVID content strategy: This is a difficult question, but as they say, “desperate times call for desperate measures”. Investing in content marketing strategy is the need of the hour. You may have to direct investments from plans you’d otherwise have pursued, but current times call for time-sensitive content to help your business grow.
You can write blog posts focusing on your niche and tie it by adding a couple of appropriate statements with the current situation to keep the content relevant. By doing so, you can also edit out those statements when the flames have died around the hot topic, yet again making your content relevant.
Content marketing trends during the pandemic
The past few months have really changed the way we have lived and done business until now. Innovation, right now, is the need of the hour, and content marketing is just the right place to start.
These are confusing times, and people have many questions of which they need the answers. Content marketing presents us with an opportunity to innovate and engage people with fascinating content trends.
The top 3 current trends in content marketing, right now, are –
- Virtual gatherings and webinars: With the exponential rise in work from home culture due to the ongoing pandemic, webinars or virtual gathering have forayed in our lives like they always existed in it.
Virtual gatherings and webinars can be very informative and create a lot of buzz for your brand or business with the only condition of doing it right. It can also be the foundation for all types of content that you want to introduce to your business.
Here are some ideas to get you started –
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- Host a Zoom virtual event for loyal customers only. Answer as many questions as you can in this meeting and work on building brand affinity.
- Offer people experience and education. Provide valuable educational information from industry experts and thought leaders through webinars.
- Live videos: If you use the social media platform Instagram by chance, you must be aware of the live video feature. As people are quarantined all over the world, we can see actors, musicians, digital marketers, influencers, etc. making use of this feature to the fullest.
Facebook also offers similar live video feature on its platform.
Live videos are a great way to engage with the audience first-hand. Hence, it is the perfect time to start creating.
Here are some ideas to get you started –
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- Set a time to go live and dedicate this time to introduce your audience to the workings of your brand or business during the Coronavirus pandemic. You can also offer exclusive deals and discounts to the people who turn in.
- You can also invite the audience to a shared live video where you can interact with them directly, thus working up your brand affinity.
- Content collaboration: Collaboration is an absolute necessity today. Collaboration sees people or brands coming together to share at they’re good at and to vouch for each other. The cardinal theme is to spread an essence of support and togetherness in these hard times.
Collaborating with celebrities and influencers is the hottest trend right now. Not only does it expand the reach of your brand to their audience but also fulfils your responsibility as a brand to educate and engage your customers.
Here are some ideas to get you started –
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- Identify the influencers in your niche and collaborate with them.
- Collaborate with your audience and have them act as micro-influencers for your brand or business. You can also run an Instagram Live series where you can share tips, tricks, and ideas related to your industry with this audience.
Positive brand messaging
A global crisis can make or break the image of your brand or business. People are hyper-aware of the products and services that they are offered and how brands treat them.
It all boils down to customer service. What you choose to do as a business will impact the positive or negative image for your brand.
Below mentioned are a few tips to help your through it –
Don’t take advantage: Though the global pandemic shut down everything for a while, the business resumed as soon as the market reopen. So, the business is waiting to happen at any given opportunity, and if the business is happening, then so is marketing.
Marketing in tough times is essential to keep the business afloat. After all, it is the only way to get your brand or business’s message across, but you should never take advantage of a situation to score points for your business.
Taking advantage of the situation may incur short-term profits for your business, but it will hurt your brand image in the long run.
Offer support and help: Your content strategy should focus on the ways you can help and support your customers and others in these tough times. Not only does this cast a positive image of the brand but it also fulfils your main cause to help those who need it.
You can offer your help in different forms like making donations or offering to educate others through webinars or live chats.
Be mindful that when you offer to help someone, you should do it without expecting anything in return. Offer your selfless support and it shall reap you good deeds later.
Be empathetic: Staying at home has given people a lot of time to reflect outside what’s in their minds. It could be different feelings like anxiety, anger, etc. which is why you should build your customer service on the foundation of empathy. Although it should be a general criterion, you should practice it more now.
Your customers and people will always remember how a brand or business treats them when the times are chaotic.
Displaying humanitarian emotions like authenticity, compassion, and support can do good for your brand or business.
Message in content: You have to strike a perfect balance between optimism and sensitivity in your message. The best way to go about this is by acknowledging the on-going problems and sharing the experiences of your brand with it. This also humanizes you and people can trust you more.
Don’t dwell on the negative aspects of your business, rather focus on spreading optimism and feel-good content which will make the people come back to you.
Wrap up
Coronavirus is going anywhere anytime soon. If the unfortunate reports are to be believed, then coronavirus is here for the long haul. This is why it is important that you step up and take action to ensure the safety of your customers as well to keep your business established.
One thing to learn for sure is that value-adding content never goes out of style. Understand the importance of content during these times and work on devising a strategy accordingly. Identify the on-going trends in your niche and leverage them to create content.
So continue to work on your strategy. You may strike a few hits and misses, but that’s the beauty of any digital marketing strategy. You can always try again from scratch.
Reference:
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