The
global outbreak of COVID-19 maybe a once during century occurrence, and
therefore the toll it's taken on national economies is undeniably unique. COVID-19
has had an instant and far-reaching impact on the way the world of work,
school, and public service operations. After months of lockdown, restrictions were
starting to be relieved, but the coronavirus will continue to have a continuing
impact on life beyond our homes going forward. It has become richly clear that
remote working, social distancing, and a rethink of how offices and public
spaces are being used and run will redefine what is "normal" for a
long time to come.
The question is, what
should the new communication style pivot towards—and how are you able to
evaluate its effectiveness?
Consider a “stay the
course” approach
There is the view to the
thought that everything must change due to the pandemic. Don’t forget that
maybe the best thing would be to stay the course and keep doing exactly what
you’ve always done, with a few warnings that we’ll get to in a moment.
The coronavirus uproar
has affected most of the earth’s population to some extent, but there are a few
that haven’t been touched by the level of fear that most others have felt. And
what do people crave during times of fear? They look to hang onto what they
already familiar with.
If you’ve spent
considerable time and energy creating real relationships through established
marketing strategies, pivoting to a replacement messaging strategy at the
instant your readers are wanting to stick with comfortable normalcy could be
the worst idea you'll have. The last thing customers and clients need to see
are the organizations and brands they’ve grown to trust suddenly become an
unknown quantity.
Don’t think about doing
anything too different. Just stay in touch, while minding these suggestions:
· Keep
your messaging schedule consistent. If you’ve always sent out weekly
communication, persist with it.
· This
is not the time for humor. you need to take care that it can’t be interpreted
as making light of a disease that has killed over 300,000 worldwide so far. It
probably won’t end well.
· It’s
also not the time to be a Salesperson either. Try to be sincere, compassionate,
interesting, and uplifting. This will assist you to create trust together with
your customers.
If “business as usual”
isn’t appropriate
There are many
organizations that probably shouldn’t continue a business-as-usual approach
even given the constraints we just discussed. Maybe their typical communication
style is hip, flip, or just too edgy to pass enlist these times. What do you do
then?
·
Transparency:
There’s no sense in pretending it’s business as was common when everyone knows
it isn’t. Acknowledge that we’re living in an “interesting” and challenging
time of history. Let your messages communicate the truth of how Covid-19 has
impacted your business and therefore the steps you’re taking to affect the
challenges in order that your business survives.
·
Targeted feel-good stories:
As we’ve mentioned, adversity makes people want to read uplifting stories of
humans triumphing over adverse conditions. Life within the age of Covid-19 is
not any different, but keep these stories focused on virus-related feel-good
content. That poignant story of the fireman saving the cat from a tree won’t
have nearly the maximum amount of impact because the same fireman delivering
the cat to the homebound individual who hasn’t been outside during a month for
fear of contracting the disease. That’s what good targeting does. It’s an
equivalent story, just with a more precise angle.
When to return to normal
communications
At what point is it okay
to release that long-held breath and return to something resembling normal
message content and processes? Okay, that’s sort of a trick question. The
concept of normal is always changing.
Treat today as normal for
today. Tomorrow it might be something different. There likely will come a time
once you can begin to build up communications to a better level but which will
be within the context of a society that has changed permanently.
If nothing else, the
coronavirus pandemic has probably delivered to light for several businesses the
truth that they didn't spend enough time planning for crisis communications
both internally and externally. If your organization falls into this category, now
you have something new to think about.
While it’s almost certain
that you can’t foresee every bump in the road ahead, it’s good practice to
throw hypotheticals out to the team and see how they respond. Create a scenario
and, wargame style, make it as realistic as you can.
Create a politician
crisis communication strategy document and increase it as you go. What kind of
content play to a particular crowd? Pandemic planning should probably get a
chapter of its own now but you'll bet there's something else unexpected
lying-in wait just round the bend.
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