It’s been a crazy few weeks, speaking as someone who literally only 48 hours ago had to postpone her wedding (which was due to take place in only two weeks), I know all too well how disruptive, stressful and worrying these uncertain times are. This week’s blog post is not going to be a pity party however, not when there are so many people suffering a lot worse. Instead, as I try to be positive and set myself to trying to reschedule and make arrangements anew, I thought I would look to ways I could add value to others.
With this in mind, this week, I wanted to share a few tips for communications during these difficult times, and moving forward, every week, I will share a different PR and social media template to help you manage your communications.
It will be interesting to see how the future unfolds. As humans, we need community and contact to survive and thrive. During these times, as social distancing and isolation are increasingly adopted, we will become increasingly dependent on communication to feel connected and to support each other until we reach a new normal.
Obviously businesses are suffering, and the economic impact cannot be fully comprehended by anyone at this stage. With such an unknown future, we are all looking at ways to keep our revenue streams coming and adapt our business models to ensure business continuity. However our communications need to be sensitive during such times, we should not be aggressively selling, or trying to maintain business as usual – because this is not usual.
So here our top four tips:
1. Get involved in the conversation
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What are they talking about? What are they most worried about? What elements of the current situation are the biggest issue for them? Is there anything you can do or say that could help ease their anxiety? Just make sure you stick to your area of expertise, rather than propagating myths, hysteria and potential fake news, or trying to be an expert on something that you are not qualified to talk about.
2. Make day to day life easier
Is there anything that you as an individual, or your company, can offer as support to the community, whether it’s in terms of products, advice, reductions in price, freezes on fees, or simply by continuing to support other small businesses and individuals. Can you take your services online? Can you provide video or audio content with tips, advice, tutorials, and maybe give away some of the tools that you would normally charge for? Can you share other people’s content and support their efforts online? We’re all worried about income, and I’m not suggesting you go bust in an effort to save the wider community, but if we each do all we can to support others, and all of us give a little, we will contribute to a lot of change and support.
3. Reframe any promotional content or messaging
If you are one of those companies that can offer solutions to some of the issues we are currently experiencing, or someone with products or services that now have added value and potentially higher demand – the juicing companies, pharmacies, online delivery companies, cleaning services and hand sanitiser suppliers – be careful about how you raise awareness of your offerings. You don’t want to be seen as trying to take advantage of and profiting from the situation – it’s a very fine line. Yes, if your product or service could help, we need to know about it, but be careful about how you phrase your message. Talk about the benefits to us and give us added value in terms of advice, rather than simply pushing your product with a discount and a clear ‘buy from us’ message.
4. Pause and rethink scheduled content
With that in mind, think about all the communications you send out at the moment. Stop everything you had scheduled or planned and take a moment to think about how welcome it will be, what kind of a message it gives out – and whether people will actually care or not right now! Maybe you don’t want every communication to centre on the global pandemic, maybe you feel you want to try and encourage business as usual, but let’s be honest, the situation is evolving everyday, and it is very far from business as usual. Conversations are centring around the pandemic. We may not be wanting to talk about the disease itself every minute of every day, but we are talking about its impacts, from the disruption to our daily routine, to the travel restrictions, impacts on our work, effects on those we love, and the future of the economy and our livelihoods. Does your planned content contribute to that conversation, or are you helping people by motivating, inspiring, supporting, comforting or distracting people? If it doesn’t do any of those things, then put it to one side, and save it for later.
4. Be a responsible member of the community
It’s not just the physical illness that is causing anxiety, we’re all worried about about what the future holds for us and our loved ones, in terms of our health, our work and our finances. It’s understandable that we want to try and generate sales and keep our businesses going, but we have a responsibility to each other to do all we can to protect each other in times like these. I’ve seen hotels creating and sharing promotions centred around social activities, brunches, staycations. When we’re being advised to adopt social distancing and self isolation, we should be doing all we can to support these initiatives for the greater good, even if it could potentially hurt us in the immediate future.
As a PR person, and someone with experience in crisis communications, It’s been interesting to see how companies the world over are responding to the changing situation, and the way that they communicate with their clients and the wider public. These communications have ranged from generic corporate statements sent as email shots to a mass database, to completely new community support initiatives, and they continue to evolve on a daily basis.
Ultimately, we have to remember that this will eventually pass, and when it does, people will remember those companies that pulled together and supported the community, so do the right thing and give all that you can to those around you.
