The global COVID-19 crisis has significantly changed the dynamics of marketing and content creation, highlighting the importance of user-generated content.
In many cases it has provided the opportunity for marketers to re-evaluate content strategies and adapt to remote content creation.
The following are 5 lessons learned doing content marketing during COVID-19 that can continue to inform your strategies moving forward.
1. Flexibility is a must
The usual strategies may not work as expected, which means you now have a great opportunity to switch up how you create content.
Engaging your audience is more important than ever. We know that people are at home more often and bored, so give them something to engage with.
Online experiences and events are all great ideas for engaging with your audience. Also, visual content garners more engagement, as customers remember 65% of written content that includes visuals versus 10% of posts that only include text.
“Written content is undoubtedly useful but today visual materials such as infographics or videos are outperforming for content repurposing and they will continue to be one of the most frequently used content marketing strategies for 2020,” said Rameez Ghayas Usmani, Digital Marketing Executive for PureVPN.
2. Content isn’t only about sales
In addition to sales content, focus even more on your audience and avoid greed, one of the major “sins” of content marketing.
This is an excellent time to foster trust with your target audience. 62% of people in a study identified quality content as a factor in their loyalty to a brand.
Work on building trust with your audience and they’ll be much more willing to spend money on your product or service.
3. Empathy is key
Understand how your audience is doing, what they care about so that you can connect on an authentic level. In doing this, you build a connection with your customers because they’ll feel that you get them. If they believe in what you’re doing, you’ll get their support in spreading your message (i.e. your content).
With many changes in the market, now is when empathy matters. Customers everywhere are feeling the stress. Find ways to be helpful via your content and amplify the voices of your customers and community.
Take Patagonia for example: when they reopened the brand’s back to business message didn’t focus on announcing new seasonal clothing favorites or sales. Instead, they opened up with a thoughtful message, then went on to appreciate public servants, healthcare professionals, and others who are helping their communities.
4. Community matters
Find the content that resonates most with your community. If your business is helping or has helped those in need, let your audience know. Make a big deal about customer success stories and provide emotional content while highlighting positive news.
Collecting and sharing community led creative content that takes into account what the world is going through at the moment and relating it to your business objectives is an excellent approach to end content stagnation. For instance, budgeting, DIY, working from home, and homeschooling have been salient topics. Then there’s always a good dance challenge and other fun content on platforms like TikTok.
In plain words, look out for your community.
5. Balance is Important
With so much worldwide focus on COVID-19, an overload of pandemic content can be overwhelming. Develop content topics outside of solely focusing on the pandemic, making sure the content itself is informative and engaging.
The idea here is to be helpful while remaining connected. Your audience needs to know that your business is staying relevant.
Understand what your readers expect from you now and deliver it. Your adaptations may not be related to topics alone but could be related to tone. Readers may want a more compassionate tone or content type.
It’s more important than ever that you focus on finding out what your audience wants and engaging them with informative, relevant, and engaging content.
Crafting quality content takes time, so don’t just churn out as usual. Embrace your audience’s concerns, relate with your community, and show that you’re willing to adjust your trajectory to support them.
We’re here to help with your content strategy. Schedule a demo to speak with our experts.
Prafull Sharma is the Founder of content marketing agency LeadsPanda.com and author of the One-Page Content Marketing Blueprint. He shares tips to 2x your content marketing results on the LeadsPanda blog. Connect with him on twitter @prafullsha.
