How do brands create content when the chaos of uncertain times continues? It can be as simple as getting back to basics to stir things up.
The chaos caused by uncertainty during 2020 has been picking away at many things. Our patience, our spirits, and our drive. There has been an abundance of tips on how to maintain a positive relationship with your audience and brand during the pandemic and the loud cries that continue for justice during the Black Lives Matter movement. These two very important issues have dominated what we read, write, and watch. As they should.
It’s a delicate balance of listening and communicating with your brand’s audience regarding important issues while trying to market your brand as well. We have some tips on how you can refocus and create content to maintain momentum during chaotic times.
Create Meaningful Content
Nearing the end of summer, we are faced with a new school year, an election, and the upcoming holidays that are typically spent with friends and family. And on the horizon, when the ball drops in 2021, will we see more of the same chaos?
The only certainty is that everything is uncertain. As long as we can accept that, we can then ask these questions to steer us towards focused content:
- What is my audience interested in RIGHT NOW?
- Why is this important to them?
- What is the proper tone that fits my brand, but also relates to my audience’s feelings?
If you have a team of community managers, then be sure to check-in with them weekly (daily, if possible). They are the eyes and ears for your brand on social. What is their overall feeling of engagement on posts? It’s great to have the numbers from listening, but the human side matters just as much. Which particular post or ad garnered a lot of conversation? If they are asked the same product question multiple times on a post, what can be done to improve messaging when creating future content?
Lean on your community managers. They can gauge the audience’s feelings or tone, and you can combine these findings with the statistics via listening. Keep the momentum going by creating content that resonates with your audience. Yes, it’s important to get your product/service out there, but it’s also extremely important to listen to your audience and relate to them, especially during a chaotic year.
Think Conversation for Engagement
The team at B Squared Media lives by the ‘Think Conversation’ mantra. We believe that it’s incredibly important for brands to have a more human connection with their audience. While the tone of that varies by client, the baseline remains the same.
Creating content during a chaotic year means finding content that engages your audience and creates discussion. We understand that content and conversation across social during 2020 remain delicate. Covid-19 and social injustice are heavy topics and need to be treated as such. It’s brands that take a stand on these topics that elicit a lot of conversation – good and bad.
On another note, if your brand is in the fitness field, ask your followers what they are doing to remain active and motivated in 2020. If you’re a creative company, be sure to post projects followed by an invitation for followers to share what they are working on as well. This will spark conversation and generate a lot of UGC (user-generated content), that your brand can then share, furthering engagement.
Always remember what the B2 Crew lives by: ask open-ended questions to create conversation!
Outside Voices Keep Content Fresh
Sometimes it’s great to stick with what you know, but oftentimes, it helps to bring outside voices into the fold. Creating content during a chaotic year means bringing in guests to shake things up. Take it from Entrepreneur, audiences want variety. The form in which you bring that to them is up to you.
- Guest blog spots: Sometimes an outside (of your brand) voice is just what’s needed to spice up the variety in the content you put out. Guest writers for your brand’s blog are a no-brainer. They bring with them an entirely different viewpoint and your readers will find it refreshing.
- Instagram takeovers: The most effective takeover recently was the campaign to amplify black voices (particularly women). Fifty white celebrities handed over the reins of their Instagram accounts to black women for a day. This helped to open a dialog with larger audiences.
[Image: Instagram]
- Facebook live: Love it, or hate it, Facebook has a pandemic hit with its live events. Take it from Brother Sews, who continue to entertain their audience with weekly live events featuring their Brand Ambassador and a guest. They’ve offered free tutorials to their growing audience of experienced and beginner sewists. In addition to Brother, Planet Fitness began offering free workouts via Facebook live for their fit-fam during the height of the pandemic. Here are some great tips on how to successfully host a Facebook live event from our pals at Sprout Social.
[Image: Facebook]
In other words, guest writers, Instagram takeovers, and Facebook live videos are ideal platforms to introduce your audience to content that works with your brand, but on a larger scale. It helps to keep things fresh and invites that guest’s audience into your feed as well. Win-win!
Summing Up
It may feel like we’re running out of content in 2020. The chaos of the year has forced us to be more creative than we’ve been in the past. Yes, it’s difficult to look beyond a year of uncertainty, but it’s not impossible. Creating content during a chaotic year doesn’t have to be…chaotic. Continue to listen to your audience, think outside the box, and open your eyes up to others within the field.
We’ve got this, friends!
What are you doing to create content during chaotic times? Let us know in the comments below!
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