What happens after a disrupting event? Everything Changes. So Should You.

This is the fourth in the series on Managing Social Media through a Prolonged Crisis.

In the first post, we talked about what you should be doing during this time.

Then we tackled what happens when your strategy is altered.

Finally, we addressed changes in audience after a lengthy crisis.

Now it’s time to look at the thinking and process to wake up your social media channels so you are ready when country starts to open up too. 

We’re making the assumption here that you may have let your social media sit idle or may have pursued an interim schedule to assist your community or industry. We’re also assuming that you’ve studied your audience changes, their new consumption habits and can see what’s different from last year at this time.

The first thing to do is to test the limits of your social network. 

How to Test the Social Network

You can’t just go back to the way things were before this happened. Going into a full posting schedule for most organizations might make your audience’s heads explode. 

Instead, try this.

Try one or two test messages at what would normally be a peak time of day for your audience. You know, fly a trial balloon as the military would say.  Then heavily monitor the sentiment around those messages, including reactions, comments and shares. 

Analyze your results.

What are you seeing? Positivity or persecution? Thumbs up or angry emojis? Or the reaction could be really mixed.  Let the data from the reactions guide your next move.

How about another test at another peak time? It may or may not be “safe” to resume a full social media schedule.

Keep doing this until you find your new set point.  Hint: your pace, tone and message types could all change ….and might be different for each social network.

If you follow this process, for each social channel you were managing proactively BEFORE the health crisis, you will have sufficient data to justify your decisions going forward.

Then you can look at waking up the channels.

Waking Up the Channels

Our team has frequently taken over a brand’s social media after a key event or taken on a brand’s social network after a period of dormancy.  The process described above is part of what we call “waking up the channels.” It’s different for every brand we’ve managed and the pace is wildly different for different industries – health care organizations and travel brands have different audience types and expectations.

When should you do this?

• After a crisis and ESPECIALLY, after a global crisis
• After a change in management team or focus
• After long periods of dormancy in a network or network ecosystem.

By testing before going into “normal” mode, you will get a better sense of what your audience is expecting and what they need.

Resuming a Normal Posting Schedule

Because everything has changed in the ways we do business and our online communication skills have been tested and refined during stay at home time, it’s important to take time to build your new posting schedule.

It might take longer than a couple days. It may be weeks or months before you’re at full capacity again.   

It’s important to watch for the clues that your message is resonating with your audience and that you’re giving them what they need. Focus on service information and above all, continue to be a helper in your community. Humility and gratitude will go a long way in this environment. Be extremely cautious when putting on your marketing and sales hats for your brand. 

While we all were consuming content at a staggering rate while staying at home, consumers will come out of this more discerning. And by discerning, I don’t mean the technical quality of the content. I mean discerning from the standpoint of authenticity in messaging.

We admired the ability of news media and talk show hosts to carry on from home and we were okay with cell phone quality video and their children’s homemade graphics.  Why? Because they had something important to say and they said it creatively.  Whether it was graphics made by Jimmy Fallon’s kids or Sesame Street’s ability to do a Zoom call with Elmo and friends for a Playdate, we had empathy for our shared situation. Because we were adapting too. MAYBE SOME OTHER EXAMPLES HERE.

Data to Inform Your Decisions

There are three key points to help inform your decisions on your posting schedule and content.

Engagement Level

Engagement is defined differently by each network. And we spend a lot of time analyzing engagement level with our clients for their reporting. You need to look at if the content has been seen or content views or reach.  Then you need to review if people have done something about it.  Did they click on it, comment on it, like it or share it? Write all these down on a piece of paper. Now ask these questions:

• Is anyone at all engaging with your content?
• Is it higher or lower than the great “before?”
• Compare the same numbers with a similar piece of content from last year. What do you see?

Incoming Comments

The number of incoming comments can be very enlightening when waking up your social media channels. We’ve seen it take a long time for people to come back and chat, but for other brands, the social audience is there and waiting and so happy to see you. Here are the questions to ask:

• How many comments do you have on this piece of content? Also, look at the shares and count them IF they added a covering comment above your post.
• Compare the total number to a similar piece of content from before. Is it higher or lower?

Sentiment

Sentiment is often defined as the degree of positivity or negativity toward a piece of content or a brand. It is a controversial metric, but it’s useful when you’re testing a new schedule. Look at the comments on your content test piece and rank them as positive, negative, or neutral. Likewise for the reactions on Facebook to see how many likes and loves versus sad and angry reactions. Write all these down on a piece of paper.  Ask these questions:

• What is the ratio of positive, negative and neutral on your sheet?
• Compare the same numbers with a similar piece of content from last year. What do you see?
• If it is predominantly negative, dig deeper for the cause. Is it the content type or is it the tone? Is it the timing? If it’s predominantly positive, try another similar piece of content and follow the same process.

By taking the time to test your content and then evaluating the engagement level, incoming comments and sentiments, you are using smart evaluation skills and making data-driven decisions on how to proceed with your social media channels and future scheduling.

Is there anything we haven’t covered in this series which could help you get ready to relaunch your business? We’d love to hear from you.

For many of us, we are at four plus weeks staying at home.  It’s given us a lot of time to think, or maybe too much time to think.  If you’re holding on to the old notions of how your social channels worked prior to a worldwide crisis, it might be time to start thinking of how it will change your social strategy in the future.

It’s certain you will see changes in your audience as this crisis lingers. Even more so as we slowly begin to re-open business channels.  But how do you know? What should you be looking for?

It depends on how you – or your channels — acted during the global health crisis, which I’ve already addressed in part 2 of the guide.

If you were serving the community in some way during the nation’s shutdown, you have quite possibly won new fans, ones who are already developing loyalty and pride in what you did.

If you went dark during the uncertainty, you are exactly where you were before the shutdown, or may have lost fans.

If your communication was tentative or marketing heavy or shared the wrong message, you may have lost parts of your audience and will essentially, be starting over with a smaller group. 

Assuming your audience mix will be new, your message, approach and channel preference needs to change with it.  Some people left you; some people joined you.

Start thinking about your new audience. 

Messages: your tone and type of message will need to change when your demographic changes.  Your audience may be younger or older, more urban or rural, so look at your breakout and adjust.

Approach: the pace of your messaging should be dictated by audience need.  What do they want know? Look at the demographics from your tools and compare it to last year to see what is different.

Channel preference:  Not all your channels changed equally.  Maybe Facebook is up and Instagram is down.  Or Twitter is stagnant but Pinterest has grown.  While you’re looking at your demographic changes, look at each individual channel to see what’s different from before.

Taking the time to get to know your new audience is key to your future social media success.   

Next time: Is it time to wake up your social channels?

In case you missed it:

Part 1 in our series: What Should I Be Doing On My Social Channels?  

Here’s a refresher: Not Sure Who Your Audience is? It’s Right Under Your Nose

Part 2 in a Series

No one ever expects the kind of crisis that is pervasive to every community and industry like this health care epidemic is right now. So if you’re struggling with how to cope, you are not alone. A lot of organizations are using their social media channels as their first, or maybe their only, method of communication right now.

If you are pursuing a schedule on your social channels during this crisis, MAKE IT COUNT.

Say Less, Share More

Stop promoting yourself and start helping your community. What can you do to be part of the solution? Here are some examples you may have seen in your community.  

Restaurants who cannot fully operate have moved to online ordering, contactless delivery and even “make at home” meal kits with key add-ons, like eggs and toilet paper.  

Arts organizations are sharing live concerts, behind the scenes tours and developing curriculum to be consumed from home.

Sports teams, who were among the first to take action, have propped up their service workers with pay checks; many sports celebrities are doing public service announcements and other work to help their communities.  

Nonprofits have pursued a variety of options – some are fundraising to assist in the health care space or keep vital services going while others are being creative to fulfill new challenges.

Large scale manufacturers have rapidly re-tooled their plants to make key goods and services available to frontline health care workers.  Smaller cottage industries have redirected machinery to sew masks and create face shields, which are in severe shortage.

Someone in your online community is doing these things. Instead of talking about yourself, talk about them. And what they’re doing to help us get through this crisis. Because sharing their work can help them. 

Say Less, Do More

Be a link in the chain of helpers around the world.  Everyone can do their part. Can your organization support one of these community helpers?

If you’ve already shared good works happening in your community on your social channels, what else can you do? 

Can you match these organizations with the resources they need to continue?

Can you donate money or help them raise money for what they are doing?

That is what real community is about. This is what the social networks were built to do. Connect each other and help each other. Forget selling, and start helping.

We’d love to hear your creative ideas for helping your community.

ICYMI: What Should I Be Doing on My Social Channels During a Pandemic?

Next time: Will Your Get Your Audience Back?

To read more about social strategy from Step In Communication, check out our social strategy posts.

Part 1 in a Series

As the public health crisis of 2020 began to unfold, many communicators struggled with how to manage communications in an ever-changing environment.  By the time you had something drafted and in the approval pipeline, the recommendations or guidelines changed.

It’s really hard to pivot so quickly. And in case you were wondering, crisis communications is not usually that fluid.  Even skilled crisis communicators have been challenged to stay on top of a virus which we seem to know nothing about. 

Your social channels might be idle already, so this piece might help you reinforce why to your leadership. 

But if you’re struggling with how to remind your audiences that you’re still alive, here are some suggestions and ideas to make that happen.

At this point, you should be evaluating three things:

Should I be posting at all?

Do we have something helpful to add?

Do we need help right now?

Are You Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

This is a tough question to answer.  If you’re a school district, health care system, public information office of a local or state government, then you are no doubt churning out information, resources and links at a more rapid rate than ever before. As well, there are numerous nonprofits who have vital services that need to continue. Recommendation: you should be posting, frequently, humbly and honestly.

But if you’re not, what are you doing? What should you talk about?

If you’re a local-based brand, you can point people to those local resources and reiterate the current “stay at home” guidelines.  You can also express a degree of emotion at how much you miss “seeing” your audience, especially if you’re a business that is closed or altered because of the guidelines.

But before you do that, ask yourself another question. 

Will your customer cringe if they hear from you now?

It’s really easy to get your messaging wrong right now.  Like everyone else, I’ve seen countless businesses that are using the public health scare as a value proposition. This is risky, especially for high ticket consumer goods and services. Many consumers are limiting their spending to draw out their paychecks or manage savings amid uncertain income. Some have already lost their income, so tread carefully on any overt marketing messages.

When Communicating is the Right Thing

Depending on your industry and brand, it might be the right thing to continue communicating with your audiences.  Examine what you were doing before and compare that to today’s environment. That comparison should help you decide.  

If you can be helpful and offer something of value to your audience while they are staying home, what is that?  We’ve already seen numerous museums and zoos doing virtual tours with surprising elements that would certainly keep people entertained.  We’ve also seen entertainers of all types doing mini concerts, musical challenges, puzzles and amazing creative content to keep us distracted.  Some of those creative challenges have also raised money for causes too.

If you can find a creative way to connect with your audience, you may find a receptive audience. Recommendation: always check your tone before posting. Your audience’s needs and capacity to absorb information is changing so rapidly that what might seem humble and service-oriented one day could be considered tone deaf the next.

Beware of Overscheduling

This is not business as usual, so set aside the usual pace and pulse of your channels.  Create mental space and distance around your channels, by looking critically at your schedule and determining what people really want to see right now.  Recommendation: use a thick red Sharpie marker (virtual or real!) to edit your schedule, providing your audience with quality content.

Later This Week: What Can You Do when your Social Schedule Is Altered by a Global Crisis?

I recently assisted two small business owners with crisis response.  While I’m still processing everything that happened for one of them, we could actually see it coming and were able to do several things on social media to prepare for critics bombarding their Facebook page (which they did for 7 straight days!)

This owner posted a response to a tragedy that happened at her place of business. We all thought this would give a bit of closure to everyone involved. Nope.

Within the hour, a very long, inflamed and inaccurate post was shared by someone who was a third party to the tragedy. We starting watching the page very closely. Soon, the mob appeared and started a cycle of heated words, accusations and (wait for it) more inaccurate information.

While the response was complicated and involved, here are the four things we did to mitigate the public outcry.

1. Enhanced monitoring on the channel for 48 hours and aggressively remove anything that was clearly profane, spam or plagiarized.  
2. Used the “three strikes” rule. Any person who posts the same message three times on the page, is banned. This is a common protest tactic and is meant to spike the Facebook algorithm.
3. Turned off the Reviews function because they cannot be removed and in crisis, people leaving a rating have rarely used the business. They are merely expressing their discontent.
4. Changed the page settings to moderated. So no one could make a post to the wall, only comment on existing posts.

So how can this help you during your next crisis? Now is a great time to check your settings and make sure you know how to turn on and off all these features if and when you need them.

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