Do you have a strategy for marketing on social media? Are you thinking of changing it during the COVID-19 pandemic?
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In this article, we’re going to describe the importance of having a social media marketing strategy and explain why you need to adapt it with the new situation.
What Is A Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Marketing via social services is on the rise as the most useful means of increasing brand awareness and building sales funnel.
Obviously, this is a highly competitive area and you can’t reach a significant outcome without a specific plan. This is why all brands try to build their own strategy for social media marketing.
A strategy is an overall approach in which you devise a step-by-step plan to reach your goals. Although any brand might have a different strategy, marketers usually think of the following matters in their strategy:
- Competition research
- SMART goals
- Relevant audience
- Suitable social networks
- Unique style
- Compelling content
- Scheduling
- Engagement
- Niche influencers
- Analytics
Depending on your brand, you need to have a certain plan for each of these items.
Impact Of The Coronavirus On Businesses
We’re now experiencing an unprecedented period since the COVID-19 outbreak. Imposing #Social_Distancing and #Stay_Home orders have caused a lot of change in personal and societal matters.
You can avoid being infected by washing your hands 20 times each day, each time for 20 seconds. But your businesses will be significantly suffered by lockdowns.
Of course, some of businesses are more critical, especially those with an inevitable physical presence. For example, transportation, travel, and restaurants are subjected to the highest losses.
On the other hand, some brands, particularly digital businesses, have taken advantage of and make good fortunes. For example, shares value of Amazon.com Inc.’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, has risen by $24 billion since the outbreak of COVID-19.
Why changing your social media marketing strategy?
As it was said, a strategy should help you pass through a certain condition with the most possible outcome.
With the rapid outbreak of the coronavirus, business affairs have changed and subsequently, marketing and advertising should also change.
People are spending time at home more than any period in the past and as a result, the usage of social media has skyrocketed. This will change the optimum amount of social presence for many brands.
On the other hand, online sales have significantly increased and you need to make the most out of it.
So you need to revise your social media marketing strategy and here are several useful tips in this regard:
Source: 500px.com
1. Take a positive attitude
Timelines on all social media platforms are full of conspiracy theories about COVID-19, from 5G to bats.
So you don’t have to heat the crisis because this won’t help your business to grow. Getting several visitors for a short period can’t lead to increased sales.
On the contrary, you’d better broadcast positive sense and helping the situation to get better. Insist on your brand’s role in solving the situation and what you can help people or even other businesses with.
Make creative, funny clips about the coronavirus, social distancing, washing hands, etc. and encourage your followers to do so.
By sharing user-generated content related to the current situation you can get higher engagement rates.
2. Search for new trends
People’s behavior has changed proportional to the crisis and social media has displayed this change clearly.
New shopping trends have emerged because of lockdowns and the panic in the wake of the disease.
If you want to take advantage of this situation or prevent losing more money, you need to search for these trends. You can’t expect people to buy anything they used to buy before the corona outbreak.
Although you can imagine the necessities of the new circumstance, you can’t rely solely on your imagination. Exact data analysis is required to build a strategy based on it.
3. Increase your social presence
With people staying home, social media channels’ visits are at their all-time high. So you need to revise your scheduling and increase your social presence. Many brands have increased their activities on the internet and on social media so you need to do this as well.
Even influencers are trying to make the most out of the situation and get more followers by posting corona-related content, based on a report by Social Tradia. Of course, buying an Instagram account is the choice of many of them to get more followers instantly.
Of course, you can’t simply increase your posts and expect better results. It’s highly recommended to use social management tools like Crowdfire to find the best posting time.
These tools also provide you with automatic posting schedules. This is very helpful when you want to manage many social accounts and posts constantly, accurately, and fast.
4. Generate analytical content
Promising, informative, educating, and funny content must be your priority during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You need to combine your niche content with corona-related content. For example, try to provide information about the impact of the coronavirus on your industry.
Try out creating branded video clips of how people should wash their hands, disinfect their apartments, and probably go to their works.
This can convey the message that your company is not indifferent about the situation. It’s also good to share similar posts from related brands to show you’re not just thinking about yourself.
Providing users with a lot of visual data about the crisis can strengthen your position as a thought leader. Various charts, info-graphs, and other data analytics work miracles these days.
Try to consider the current issue from different point views covering geo-location, gender, age, business, etc. This will draw the attention of all related users and encourage them to follow you.
Of course, you don’t need to get irrelevant followers as they can cause a drop in the engagement rate.
5. Change your hashtag strategy and caption style
The most important matter of social media is now to get more visits, increase clicks and finally, increase online sales (if you have online sales). This is vital to prevent financial losses during the corona crisis.
As you may know as a social marketer, in order for a post to be discovered on social networks, hashtags are key. If you use a certain hashtag in a social post, that post can be discovered in that hashtag’s search results page.
With the significant change in people’s priorities, their searches on social media will certainly change. You need to revise your hashtag strategy to align your visibility with the current trend.
Captions are also important in social media marketing because they add context and sense to a video or picture. Many brands define a specific style and tone of voice for their captions.
Nowadays, half of the people’s attention is drawn to COVID-19 so you need to alter your style and use a corona-niche style. The more inspiring your captions are, the more engagement rates you’ll receive.
Source: 500px.com
6. Consider global and local SEO techniques
These days, you can’t expect a high ROI simply by using previous outreaches. The circle of your audience reach should expand to find new customers.
Of course, you shouldn’t forget your previous customers but a new set of online presence is required to have more chances.
Apart from social strategies, your visibility on web pages is paramount. SEO techniques can help you to be discovered by search engines for certain queries.
It’s recommended to adopt both global and local SEO approaches to be found in the search results of both potential customers.
With the significant sales drop all over the world, you need a greater circle of search to keep your bottom line strong.
Final word
Social media marketing strategies should be shifted depending on the economic and social circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the rarest situations for all individuals, businesses, and also influencers. You need to focus on new means of audience reach and social marketing to maintain your brand identity in the market.
