For content creators and marketers alike, these times have been filled with complete uncertainty, but you should be keeping up with content during COVID-19. There are many aspects of a content strategy that would allow for the seamless inclusion of such a hot-button topic, like a pandemic, or a natural disaster, and the importance of being cautious when communicating during it. You must have the respective assets and plan in place, to stay visible. Social media as a main business venture must be the leading role in what may help keep your brand alive, and brand awareness going strong.
It’s crucial to plan, continue posting, humanize your brands, and it’s very important to keep in mind why people follow you or your business.
Let’s get into some details surrounding keeping up with content during COVID-19 and how you can utilize this to your advantage!

Importance Of Having A Strategy
Having a digital or social media content strategy during an event like COVID-19 is very important for the longevity of your business and also on the brand-building side. You want to ensure that while you are utilizing social media, its an act of genuine need to communicate with your followers, and customers. Most businesses small or large cannot afford to stop marketing, and the majority have already cut unnecessary business expenses during this time so they can support their teams who may be remote working, or on unemployment benefits or CERB (in Ontario) and continue utilizing other revenue streams like social media.
It’s important to continue posting on social media, to share with your followers that you care, you are human too, that you’re also going through this as a content creator, business or brand, and that you can provide some type of value in this given situation. Being present on social can also help with supporting employees, workers, and customer retention during this time.
Tone & Verbiage
When thinking about or creating your content and content strategy, the most important part is to humanize your brand. Your followers and customers want to see how you’re doing, they want to hear updates from you, especially if you’re a business or brand they continually support. Think about ways to incorporate yourself into the posts/stories, IGTV uploads, or IG Live. What are you doing in your spare time, how are you doing with extra time at home, how are you planning for your business venture when this is all over? Focus your tone on the community, and being in this together.
When thinking about the verbiage of what posts you are going to schedule ahead of time, or post organically, you may showcase thoughts, quotes, or entries on how you and your business or brand are helping the communities that you’re apart of. How are you helping your employees that may be affected by this, and how can you also help your customers, that may rely on your business for their everyday needs? Giving back is important too, and we’ve seen companies donate, start fundraisers, create pop-up projects within their business like creating new products they’re not usually producing, all to support our healthcare and frontline workers, and more!
How To Create New Content During COVID-19
Continue posting your content, but be cautious about what you’re sharing and how others may perceive that. You may want to save certain concepts for a later date or share content that is more adapted to what’s going on right now. Ideas surrounding content could be adapting to depict more at-home life, loungewear, self-care, mental and physical health, daily activities, #ThrowbackThursday, #FlashBackFriday’s, your workout routine, what you’re doing to keep busy and keep the business alive, among many other options!
Your content during this time should be 60% brand building, meaning discussions, thoughts and topics surrounding your brand and garnering more brand awareness and engagement within the community you’ve created, and 40% should be focused on Sales and Activations (only if applicable). If you’re not currently open for business or haven’t been utilizing other revenue streams like Instagram Shopping, E-Commerce website, or online sales funnels, then you can focus all of your content efforts on brand building.

How To Keep Up Conversations On Social
Keep conversations and engagement going on your social media by turning your platform into a valuable resource for your followers. Take note of what people are talking about, what posts are generating a buzz, what’s the latest topic of discussion for the week, what are questions that people are asking others or yourself as a business. Monitoring and social listening are some of the best tools that you have right now on social media, and these will help foster communication opportunities and give you leverage to expand the conversations further and more valuably.

Providing Value With Content
You may want to start offering digital consulting, running webinars to divulge knowledge, offering different services that can be done virtually, selling a product that can be sent through email like an e-book, or offer services that can be purchased to use in person, once this is all over. Find ways to adapt your business to continue serving customers in another way, for example, if you’re a restaurant you may want to start delivery or curbside pickup service. Continue to limit your 1-on-1 interactions in person, but make up for it with 1-on-1 conversations online. Seize this opportunity and continue to build relationships.
To Post or Not To Post
Post. Make sure that with all of this information, you can adapt it to your wants and needs, which are crucial to help keep your business functioning. Remember to stay current, empathetic, relevant, and engaged on social media, especially when your brick and mortar location or locations are not open, or legally are not allowed to be open with customers inside. Please reach out to us if you’re having issues with adapting your content strategies during these unprecedented times, we can work together to find the best options for your business.
If you’d like to learn more about what we do here at The Influence Agency, feel free to contact us today! Did you find this article helpful? Please let us know, we’d love to hear from you!