Ranging from important corporate and governmental announcements, to news and user information sharing, social media has been a huge part of our lives for more than a decade. Like it or hate it, social media platforms are simultaneously a time sink, a large entertainment network, a news and opinion dissemination tool and a lot more. Find below some of our thoughts and facts about it.

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Social Media Management in the Age of Coronavirus

Social Media Management in the Age of Coronavirus

Can you guess what the most blocked keyword in the world currently is? Unsurprisingly, it’s coronavirus. COVID-19 is upending life as we know it, making the new normal anything but. Everyone, brands included, is adapting to a world that’s less familiar and comfortable. Already challenging, brand management is now like dancing on a tightrope.

As unlikely as it seems, there’s a unique opportunity underlying the awfulness of today’s pandemic. Now is the time to pause, reevaluate strategies and plans, and react nimbly to the transformed communications landscape.

With social distancing in place around much of the globe, social media’s use is skyrocketing, with 66 percent of users projecting increased time spent on social platforms. With breakneck coronavirus-induced shifts in everyone’s day-to-day reality, forging meaningful connections that have a lasting impact means reimagining strategies and tactics for the time being, if not the long-term. Though that sounds challenging, it is doable. But, how and where do you get started? These recommendations will help you to realign for the current environment.

 

  • Don’t go dark…but don’t be spammy. According to a recent Ogilvy and Mather report, now is not the time to go dark. Social media is a powerful avenue for maintaining contact while social distancing. Customers want comforting, reassuring, and transparent communications explaining how brands are responding to the crisis. Conversely, overwhelming audiences with numerous social media messages can cause fatigue, so be judicious about your social media volumes.
  • Address new pain points. COVID-19 is altering how we live, learn, and work. This top-to-bottom reshuffling is creating unprecedented challenges. Addressing these new pain points requires really listening to your audience, pivoting to produce innovative solutions alleviating their problems, then spreading the word (carefully!) via social media. Providing value is key, so make those social media posts count.
  • Watch your tone. Be a Ford, not an Adidas. Don’t go dark, but do be vigilant about what you say, and how you say it. Nothing can damage brand equity with audiences like a tone-deaf response to a crisis, as Adidas found out. Right now, it’s not all about you; it’s about them. Stop any pre-scheduled social media posts until you’ve thoroughly evaluated how they’ll be perceived. Communications should match the gravitas of the situation, so be empathetic, sensitive, and uplifting.
  • Transparency and consistency matter. When feeling vulnerable, people want reassurance from familiar touchpoints. Your social media messaging should be transparent, concise, and delivered regularly. Be upfront about how your brand is responding to COVID-19, including impacts on customers and employees alike. If you don’t have an answer to a question, it’s okay to say so. Just be clear and consistent in your response.

 

Now more than ever, brands must establish enduring connections with audiences. With diligence and careful consideration, your social media communications can build bridges that will remain long after the current crisis fades. So, use this opportunity to pause well. For more insights, visit the Interprose Voice blog.

“Social Media Management in the Age of Coronavirus” by Melissa Drozdowski, Social Media Director, Interprose.

Interprose PR is an official member of the GlobalCom PR Network.

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How Social Distancing is Changing Social Media

How Social Distancing is Changing Social Media

Over recent months, we have seen dramatic changes in people’s lives and routines around the world. With many of us self-isolating and staying home to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, our collective attention has turned to online social platforms unlike ever before, in an effort to keep us connected and entertained. Innovation in content creation coupled with creative features being rolled out on platforms themselves is contributing to this shift in the way in which social media is being used. Here are a couple of things we’ve noticed:

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8 Tips for Your LinkedIn Profile

8 Tips for Your LinkedIn Profile

The career network is currently very popular – and not just in North America but also internationally. That´s why it is even more important to have a well-maintained profile that arouses interest. We give tips that anyone can realize.

LinkedIn puts a face on companies. We get to know the people behind positions such as managing director, developer or product manager, we can follow their careers and network with them. From their CVs, posts, comments, photos or videos, we also learn about some personal details of our LinkedIn contacts. So, LinkedIn is not just a career network, but a social career portal. With over 600 million members in more than 200 countries, it is the unbeaten number one business platform worldwide. As an international network, LinkedIn’s main advantage is that we can connect with colleagues, customers and business partners around the globe at any time of day or night, across all time zones. In a working world that is becoming increasingly global, this is a great added value.

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Why Don’t Companies in Vietnam Use Social Media in a Crisis?

This is the third part of a series on crisis communication on social media in Vietnam by GCPR member EloQ Communications. We previously wrote about why companies who operate in Vietnam should use social media more for crisis communication. Now we’ll explore some reasons why companies here often choose not to, and why most of those are mistaken.

1. They want to distance themselves from the crisis

Oftentimes, companies believe that by staying out of the fray they can ignore the controversy and it will die down on its own. But in fact, information avoidance is the least effective method of crisis management. That’s especially true in this age of social media posts, which don’t just vanish into the ether but catch on and spread, gaining more interested followers (and bandwagon jumpers) along the way. Not only does attempting to ignore a crisis make it look like a company doesn’t care about its stakeholders, but social media users who don’t receive a response (or receive an insufficient response) are more likely to stage campaigns and boycotts against the company. Sincere, open communication is exactly what stakeholders want, and it’s what will allow them to forgive a company and move on. Read more

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5 Reasons Why Companies in Vietnam Should Use Social Media in a Crisis

This is the second part of a series on crisis communication on social media in Vietnam by GCPR member EloQ Communications.

Practicing public relations in times of stability is challenging enough, but what about when something goes wrong? That’s when crisis communication comes into play. Crisis communication as a subset of public relations is a fairly young practice in Vietnam. Just as companies and PR firms were beginning to learn out how to handle themselves in a crisis – using press conferences and official media statements – the rise of social media has left them scrambling, with some attempting to embrace social media while others stick to what they know. But making social media a central part of crisis response may be even more crucial here than many other places. Here are a few reasons why.

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Command Attention: Social Event Marketing Strategies That Actually Work, Part II

Event Marketing Fishing

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime ~ Chinese proverb

You know what they say – give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll be out on the lake every dang weekend with his fishing buddies. Oh, wait – we weren’t talking about my husband’s fishing habit? Just kidding (mostly).

All joking aside, I’m here to start teaching you how to fish.

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Oh, Snap! Why Your B2B Brand Should Be On Snapchat

This post was first published by Melissa Drozdowski on Interprose’s blog, Interprose Voice.

Several weeks ago, my family and I attended my daughter’s cheerleading championships. Upon entering the arena, a torrent of candy-colored signage promoting the company’s social media accounts and in particular, a custom Snapchat filter created just for the day’s event, greeted us.

Knowing my own daughter would surgically attach her phone to her hand if she could, I guessed the filter would prove popular among the gazillion or so teen girls flitting around the arena, as well as all the parents, family, and friends in the stands. What I didn’t realize was just how wildly popular it would be – the snaps were piling up, hundreds of stories were being updated in real-time, and views were soaring higher than a cheerleader at the top of a basket toss.

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The Tweets, They Are A’Changin…

This post was first published by Melissa Drozdowski on Interprose’s blog, Interprose Voice.

As the old saying goes, “Nothing stays the same but change.” And for Twitter users, there are some rather interesting changes afoot. As the social media juggernaut continues to struggle with the question of what it wants to be when it grows up, Twitter has decided to make some long-overdue (in my opinion, anyway) refinements. Unfortunately, not all of these forthcoming changes are as momentous as you’d think…and they could even cause some downright gnarly issues (think the Law of Unintended Consequences). Read more

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Make Your Voice Heard: A How-to Guide to LinkedIn Pulse

Linkedin logo

Do you have something to say? Did you just attend an amazing event like SXSW and want to share your key takeaways with your professional network? Or are you seeing trends in your industry that you want to talk about? The list of topics where you might want to share your two cents goes on and on. Now what are you going to do about it? Answer: sharing your experiences in a blog post.

But how, you might ask? Your company doesn’t have a blog already set up and you don’t have the time to invest in creating your own blog – plus, how would you even get people to read it?

LinkedIn Pulse is your solution. LinkedIn’s publishing platform allows you to post blogs that will then be shared with the LinkedIn community. Most professionals have already invested a lot of time and energy into their LinkedIn profile and have an established network of contacts. Therefore, posting your blog on LinkedIn Pulse is a great way to leverage the professional network you’ve already built versus starting from scratch – developing a separate blog site and trying to drive people to it. Your audience is already gathered for you on LinkedIn Pulse.

 

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The ‘Twitter-verse’ is Changing – For the Better or Worse?

This post was first published by Brandon Reid on March Communications’ blog M+PR Nonsense.

In the world of social media, it is crucial to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. In fact that is exactly what many social platforms help their users do, by providing news, information, and content in a shareable, condensed format.Twitter

Twitter specifically has come to be considered as a news source in its own right, even if the real-time news is not always completely accurate. Even so, as the social media site keeps its users up to date on the latest and greatest, Twitter is also known for constantly looking for ways to improve the platform’s functionality and user experience, by utilizing new analytic or algorithmic capabilities.

Unfortunately, Twitter users do not always see these efforts as such an improvement.

While it is fair to say that many Twitter users probably do not handle change well and have no reason to complain about a layout adjustment on a site that they use for free, it seems that recently Twitter has been making changes simply based on what they are capable of doing, rather than what is in the best interest of the platform’s functionality. Read more

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