Well, now you know where everyone is and how to best to reach them. Now what?
Effectively engaging your customers, potential customers, and colleagues is not easy and takes a lot of preparation and practice. There are certainly experts out there who can help (we know people), but here are three tips to keep in mind during this time.
#1 Be serious rather than sorry
While normally social media is a place to be casual, witty, and sometimes humorous, current circumstances dictate that you err on the side of caution. This pandemic is affecting so many people in terrible ways, both personally and professionally. We recommend keeping a positive, inspirational, and helpful tone. Certainly humor can help during this time but best leave that to people’s personal network at present.
#2 Focus more on them than you
This is always a good one on social media and in person too. Good sales practices have people focus on asking questions to discern pain points rather than jumping into value propositions and selling points. This is true now more than ever. Focus more on contribution rather than conversion right now. Though your KPIs are looming out there, adjust your expectations, work on relationship building and getting to know your customers and colleagues better so that you can better serve them in the future. Cash flow is king at present so people will not be buying as they were before. Invest in them now and they will invest in you later.
#3 Support other businesses
Now, we’re not saying you need to go out and promote your competitors but talking about another company’s good work shows you are engaged in the industry and committed to moving it forward. Have a client that is doing great things? Write about it in a blog post on your site (with their permission of course). You can mention how your product or service helped make it a success but really focus on the customer and how their project is making the world better, safer, saving money, etc. This kind of outreach builds your relationship with them and draws in your audience to want to hear more for you. It also positions your company as one that others want to work with in the future. We’re all suffering right now so supporting others is key to coming out of this and rebuilding successfully.