The Unmotivated Guide To Social Media Marketing During Quarantine
In this weird time, there are a plethora of articles encouraging you to be productive (read a book — no, WRITE a book!) and at least as many giving you permission to be unproductive (mental health is more important than productivity!) What if you’re unmotivated, and feeling unproductive, but still want to keep your business afloat? Or your business is closed but you want to keep up your social media presence? In this case I recommend a minimalist social media marketing strategy. The first key to successfully minimalist social media marketing is — bear with me — not spending a lot of time on social media.
It’s very easy right now to obsessively or aimlessly scroll through social media. And truly, social media has a very special place in this modern space: it can both provide information to us, teach us, and connect us. However, most people just hop on to social media, spend way too much time thinking about whether or not to post, and if so, what image and caption and should I use hashtags? Maintaining a minimalist, less stressful social media strategy is easiest if you don’t worry too much about what other people are posting, and don’t spend hours trawling quarantine hashtags. (Want to get a dose of honesty? You can find out how long you spend on each app in the settings on your smartphone.) To be clear, if spending lots of time on social media is getting you through this, then go for it! I suggest reducing time simply as a check-in, since it’s easy to spend inordinate amounts of time on social media.
Once you’ve pulled back on your scrolling, think about your goals. Would you like to sell more products in your online store? Get new customers for your online class? Bring more people to your curbside lunch pick up? Raise money for a local mutual aid collective? This will help inform your minimalist strategy.
If your goal is to maintain a simple online presence while your business is closed:
Update your Instagram bio to say that you are closed.
If customers can support you by purchasing a gift car or prepaying for services, include that link as your Instagram bio link, and tell them what they are clicking on.
Post a thank-you post, explaining that you are closed, and how customers can support you right now.
Post 1–2x per month. If you don’t have original content, you can do throwbacks, behind the scenes, show people what you’re focusing on, or highlight great organizations in your area that are working hard right now.
If your goal is to increase sales:
Update your Instagram bio with your current hours or ordering process
Post 1x per week, reminding people how to order, what makes your product special, and how your product is especially useful during this time.
If you struggle with content, share an image of yourself or your team, your staff’s pets, your new home office setup or new cleaning procedures, quick videos saying hi and thank you to customers, and re-introducing yourself and your origin story. As a stop gap, you can post relevant photos from a free stock photo site like Unsplash.
One of the best types of content to create trust with your customers is content that supports other businesses. Share about your suppliers, collaborators or businesses that inspire you. Donate a portion of your sales for a specific week or month to a great local organization (or direct giving, if you’re able.)
If your goal is to gain new follower or customers:
Make sure your Instagram and Facebook profile photos are crisp and clean, and that your Facebook header banner is evocative and gives the customer good information about your business
Spend 15–30 minutes weekly or monthly engaging with potential customers, through local-focused hashtags, ideal customer research, or calls to action.
Post 1–2x per week, toggling between introductions, sharing info about your day and sharing information about your product. Use the content ideas from the section above to fill out your feed.
Share some of your “feed” content in your stories. Add additional content to stories, little “hello” videos, home office tours, silly pet videos, or share other people’s posts to your stories (using the little paper airplane button.)
If your goal is to get more local people to shop (by phone or online) for delivery or curbside pickup:
Lean into local hashtags and really engage with people who are interested in similar or complementary products/services.
Explore location pins (search a business name and click the upside down teardrop instead of the username.) You can see any public posts of who tagged themselves at the location. The idea is not to do this at your competitor’s business, but at a complementary business. For example, if you own a coffee shop, you can do location research on a local floral shop, gift shop, or a popular park.
Prioritize posts that improve wayfinding. Wayfinding is an urban design term that refers to how easy it is to find a place. I use this term for social media to mean, how easy is it for customers to find what they need, whether it’s your website, “shop now” button, curbside pickup spot, etc. Share content that brings people in: your shop/office, building exterior, parking/curbside situation, local landmarks, even other local businesses (this has the added bonus of reminding people that you’re in the same neighborhood as this business, and supports that business at the same time.)
Tag other local businesses in a story that you think they might want to share, e.g. how people can purchase meals for first responders or a fundraiser you are doing. Tagging someone in your Story allows them to add it to their Stories (which share your image with their customers, creating additional exposure.)
Go Live or film short videos of your neighborhood stores and sights.
No matter what your goal is during this challenging time, social media marketing can be accomplished in less than an hour per week. If you are struggling with content, take a few minutes to select photos you can use for the next few weeks and save them to a special folder, so you know exactly where they are. If you’re a visual person, write out a draft calendar of what you’ll post over the next 6–10 weeks (e.g. Week 1: Monday Intro, Thursday product detail; Week 2, Tuesday neighborhood view, Friday fundraiser; etc.) If you survive by your calendar, actually add a 15 minute slot on the days you want to post. Start the entry with “Post to Instagram” or “Post to Facebook” and then include a possible content idea. If someone else has been handling your social media for you, or you haven’t been very active, you’ll need to get comfortable filming yourself, taking selfies, editing images, and writing captions. Do your posts need to be perfect? Not at all. Perfection is not the goal here–connecting with customers, getting views on your website, building trust with customers: these are the goals. Don’t be afraid to show your quirky side! In fact, it’s one of the best things you can do on social media to create trust and nurture a following. Bottom line — only you know how much bandwidth you have for social media marketing. If you only have a little, make it count by taking minimalist, strategic online actions. If there were ever a time to try a new approach — it’s now.
This article was previously published on Medium.com in April 2020, shortly after the US went into ‘stay at home’ mode.