The majority of Americans remain under stay-at-home orders, social distancing during this health crisis. This is resulting in the pausing or cancelling of most production projects and avenues for content creation. Marketers and production personnel are, rightly, considered non-essential with few exceptions.
This leaves some of our clients wondering, “what are our options for creating content to keep our message in front of potential customers and clients, especially without your in-person involvement?” Our response is first and foremost: “what are the most important and appropriate messages you want to communicate?”
Answers have ranged from: “We’re still open for business!” to “We’re working in a limited capacity but will be back up to full speed as soon as we’re able.”
In reality, changing formats of content creation and distribution isn’t terribly difficult to accomplish, depending on your messaging. Our clients and customers are finding that reimagining the processes in which the content is created is important in keeping their message in front of clients during this time of social distancing.
Distributing a video on LinkedIn or sending out a newsletter to contacts at the beginning of this crisis is a good start, but reinforcing your ability to continue servicing your clients is vital. We’re seeing that companies with the most engagement during this time are companies that are being consistent with content creation and messaging and adapting to the tools that they still have at their disposal.
Here are some creative ways you can keep your name front-of-mind as we stay in lock-down mode.
Film Yourself
We’ve covered this with some recent posts, but filming yourself and delivering the video to a multitude of distribution channels is both easy to do and can be done with the “good enough” quality that is becoming more and more acceptable. We’re seeing Late-Night Hosts broadcasting from their homes.
Saturday Night Live aired a new episode from Tom Hanks’ kitchen. As we’ve been saying even before social distancing forced this new normal, filming with your phone and adding just a bit of polish is all you need to create video effectively and affordably. (See our recent posts for tips and tricks about filming yourself.)
Host a Webinar
A handful of our clients had conferences they were either hosting or planned to participate in postponed or cancelled outright. Live and in-person events are great avenues for informing clients and prospects about new technologies and capabilities, and they’re important in reengaging with customers in the sales pipeline.
Our go-to suggestion is to take these engagements into a digital realm using webinars and the resulting recorded video. Invite your vendors to talk about their new line of products or services and give your own seminar about how you’re servicing clients safely during social distancing.
The topics are endless. You can create a campaign leading up to the event. Additionally, you can use multiple pieces of micro-content pulled from the long-form video. This increases the content’s shelf-life even more. Keep in mind that smaller snippets of video content can be used on platforms such as Instagram.
Events like this can be hosted with services like Zoom and can include large audiences and participants, especially with the right strategy while marketing the event. Use the ‘record’ function available with most hosts and download the full-length event that can be released to a larger audience.
Use Free Time to Your Advantage
Are there avenues of content creation that you haven’t taken advantage of during your busiest times? If you have free time, create blog content that you can backlog for release over the next couple of months. Start to plan campaigns around events that you’d like to highlight over the next year, especially if a calendar is built out for 2020 and beyond the crisis.
Back to Basics
There are plenty of ways to re-engage a relationship. Sometimes a simple email or phone call to a customer you haven’t talked to since the crisis began helps. Let them know you’re still available if they need anything, as people turn to planning for life after lockdown.
We recently started using a great service called Thnks (www.thnks.com) for clients we have been reengaging. Sometimes it’s the simple things that have a lasting impact.
Rely On Us
We, at Steady State Media, are still open for business. This means we are able to help clients overcome this difficult time. We offer marketing strategy, video production, and content creation, even when companies are working-from-home and social distancing due to COVID-19.
