Navigating social media, let alone the world in 2020 is no easy task. Konnect Agency is here to help you navigate these uncharted marketing territories as your go-to resource for all thing’s social media, public relations, marketing, and more! With the uncertainty of today, there are steps we can take on social media to ensure that we are being sensitive and appropriate during these challenging times. Below are our top recommendations for maintaining an appropriate brand presence in 2020.
Monitoring:
Now more than ever things on digital are changing by the minute and it is extremely important to be as diligent as possible in monitoring the overall sentiment towards branded content on the platforms. With important conversations around things such as COVID-19 and the BLM movement circling the internet, brands need to consider where and how they fit into the mix to evaluate the appropriateness of content and advertising on a weekly/monthly basis. We recommend monitoring daily both on your brand’s profiles, competitor profiles and general conversation across the platforms. Paying close attention to feedback/comments from your fans, popular hashtags, and trending content. Having this insider’s perspective will help ensure your content is not coming across as tone-deaf to the platform’s current conversations. Advertising is another content source that needs to be monitored closely. Often times brands have ads that are “always-on” and running year-round. Given the ups and downs of online conversations, these ads popping up in users’ feeds may not always be appropriate. For example, if your brand sells products or has a service that forces you to go in-store or in-person to purchase or experience, depending on your timing that content may come off as insensitive. As numbers in COVID-19 cases are fluctuating up and down across the country and cities are shutting down again the way you speak and advertise to your consumer needs to reflect the current consumer sentiment on travel, in-person shopping, activities, etc. These “always-on” ads are not the best approach in these uncertain times. It is best to create new ads sets on a regular basis that reflect current shopping behaviors and moods. Monitoring daily or weekly to evaluate performance and feedback. Another important aspect to monitor ads is your location targeting. Different parts of the country are experiencing COVID-19 on different levels and messaging that may be appropriate for one area of the country may not be for another. It is important to take all of this into consideration when creating content, ads, and messaging for brands on social media.
Flexibility:
With the uncertainty of the world, brands have had to make huge shifts in marketing plans. From the cancellations of events, sampling activities, partnerships, and content strategies, brands have had to roll with the punches since mid-March. The brands who are doing the best with these changes on social media have been extremely flexible in content planning to adapt to the current conversations online. For example, creating content that is more relatable to the world we live in (i.e. work from home tips, at-home workouts and recipes). As a social media marketing agency, we work with our clients to create relatable content stories that fit into today’s current climate and we create opportunities for our brands to join the conversation online to make a more meaningful connection to their audiences. Scheduling content is another aspect of social media planning that has required a large level of flexibility over the past several months. Pre-scheduled content and planning too far in advance is no longer an option. Social media experts have had to adapt to the changing climate and evaluate strategies on a weekly basis to ensure the appropriateness of planned content.
Creativity:
In a COVID-19 world creative resources are limited with the lack of photo shoots and group gatherings content development is challenging. Brands and influencers alike have had to get extremely creative to create these assets. Leaning on user generated content (UGC) is the best way for brands to leverage relatable and sharable content during this time. Like mentioned above, recipes, work from home related content and at-home workouts are three pillars of content themes that continue to thrive during this time. Working with influencers as content creators can bring these stories to life in an authentic way. For example, if you are a better-for-you snacking brand, protein product or any other pre/post-workout essential working with a local trainer to create a series of workout videos to share on your IGTV or IG Stories creates content that brings value to your audience and keeps theme engaged with your brand without directly selling to them.
Marketing as we know it has changed and it is still extremely unclear if we will be going back anytime soon to the ways in which we used to do things. This truly is our “new normal” and how we navigate changes truly depends on how diligently we are monitoring, how flexible we are in our planning and how creative we are in finding new ways to market our brands in today’s culture.
-Christina Dobson
