Social Media Archives - StoreyManseau, LLC

Wearing masks has become more than a necessity for businesses during the pandemic, and marketing has taken on new methods as a result.

Businesses are back to work after an uncertain year that changed how we work, buy and interact. The implications for marketing have been profound.

The pandemic has been one of those times in history where momentous change happens. Businesses aren’t immune to the seismic shift. In many cases, what we were thinking about and planning for down the road, has exponentially sped up in an effort to survive in an unprecedented market.

If your business survived the shutdown the pandemic brought about, it’s probably because you swiftly pivoted your business model. The decisions for business owners today are:

Go back to the way things used to be;
Stay with what got them through the shutdown, or;
Create a hybrid of both.

Truth is, despite our expectations that once COVID retreated, we would be back to the way things were, that’s not happening. Normal has changed, because COVID changed us.

Yet, the good thing about change is that it prompts innovation. Case in point: we didn’t realize we need services that will shop for and deliver goods to us until going outside of our homes meant exposure to a deadly virus. With that reality, the personal-shopper industry emerged, thrived, and is going strong, even as we emerge from our homes, now vaccinated.

Evolution Results from Pandemic

Businesses that evolved during the shutdown can’t rest on the laurels of success. Customers need information to show how these evolutions make things better for them going forward. One key component in promoting the advantages of the changes made is how businesses and customers now utilize technology.

A good example is health-care delivery. When providers were forced to shift care delivery to telemedicine in 2020, they realized their ability to analyze patients’ needs weren’t diminished. Diagnoses are just as effective and patients like the convenience, comfort, and privacy of being at home, while receiving care.

While the health-care industry was moving in the direction of using telemedicine, the shutdown from business-as-usual pushed providers to immediate adoption. Telemedicine is now an entrenched reality that has changed care-delivery systems. The window of opportunity to increase business with telemedicine exists now. Providers are seizing the opportunity to market the benefits telemedicine provides.

New Marketing Tools

Marketing to existing and potential customers requires tools not used prior to COVID. Apple’s highly stylized product reveal events, with hundreds of people packed in an auditorium, may have changed forever because of COVID, but didn’t stop the company from releasing new products just before the holiday season. Unable to bring high-profile celebrities, business executives and reporters into an auditorium, Apple pivoted to a virtual unveiling, streamed across social media channels. Some presentations were pre-recorded, ensuring flawless performances. Rather than the hands-on events of the past, Apple sent review devices to reporters and social influencers for further news coverage.

The necessity of providing online shopping, take out, curbside delivery and home delivery brought about innovation and massive growth for companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Carvana, Uber Eats, Vroom, Grub Hub and others. The good news? Customers appreciate these innovations, are opening their wallets, and responding with enthusiasm.

When the pandemic took hold, people learned new ways to fulfill their needs. Nowadays, we’re marketing services we never imagined. But the innovations created in a new world of business require modernizations in how we market them.

One marketing tool hasn’t changed, though. Understanding what customers think today is the first step in knowing and evolving how we speak to them.

I’ve been watching the news every day with anticipation for the latest Tweets from our President-Elect Trump. I know I’m not alone!

Social Media is our form of communication today

Whether you’re cheering his words, or shaking your head in dismay, there’s one thing for certain; Donald Trump is addicted to Twitter and we better get used to it, because this is how he’s going to speak to us.

Twitter has been around long enough now that people have gotten comfortable with communicating in 140 characters. These little written “sound bites” have forced us to get to the point quickly.

We have discovered that pictures and videos can say what words never could, so we post them to Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube, with no hesitation. Heck, now you can even speak to a full audience – hundreds and thousands of people – live whenever you like! Our political leaders have jumped on the opportunity to speak directly to us – minus the press’ filter – through Facebook Live. This is how we socialize!

When I train executives on how to speak to reporters, I tell them to put their most salient points into short, easily digested phrases. Give the reporter a heads up that the phrase is coming with something like “And, what I want people to really understand…” and then let the phrase rip.

What I don’t encourage them to do is speak in a stream of thought – to say whatever flashes through their heads. I teach them to take a breath and consider their words, to put up a yield sign in their brains before speaking.

Social media is a profoundly effective communicating tool. I would argue in several cases that we have never had a tool that has worked as successfully as social media.

But, there is the other side of social media that presents a challenge. Too often, people are lulled into the comfort of a quick way to communicate and forget that their words are on the Internet for the world to see. Once out there, they can’t be taken back. Far too many celebrities, business leaders and politicians have learned that lesson the hard way.

So, here’s my advice, and it’s the same advice I give my teen-aged son. If you wouldn’t say it to your mother, don’t post it on Twitter!