The coronavirus pandemic has changed just about everything.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is your need to connect with your customers, prospects, partners, and team. And now, more than ever before, online social media marketing strategies are the best way to do that.

But you can’t just dive back into your old social media content marketing strategy. What works has changed – what people want from their social interactions is different.

In order to continue – and perhaps even surpass – your social media success in a post-pandemic world, there are some changes you should consider.

Leverage Your Social Media Content Marketing Strategy:

To Adapt Your Overall Online Social Media Marketing Strategies

Right now, it’s best to be focused on the needs of your audience and customers over the products you sell. That means giving priority to high-quality content creation to promote the message that you can add value to the lives of your customers. Now is the perfect time to generate feelings of goodwill towards your business through an effective social media content marketing strategy.

Keys to an Effective Post-Pandemic Social Media Content Marketing Strategy

There are a number key things to keep in mind when planning your post-pandemic social media content marketing strategy:

1. Reevaluate your goals: Almost all the wants and needs of your target audience have changed – the way you communicate with them should change too. That means going back to the beginning and taking a fresh look at what you want to achieve.

2. Focus on your top fans: There are times for messaging that reaches a wide audience, but this isn’t one of them. Instead, focus on your “true believers.” This group is not only smaller than your audience at large, they’re also more profitable. As the economy continues to slowly reopen, you can broaden your audience base appropriately.

3. Create an internal content marketing initiative: In an article from the Jan. 13, 2002 edition of B2B Magazine, Don Schultz pointed out that “(I)nternal marketing is more vital than external marketing. Customer-facing employees, not external marketing, drive customer acquisition and retention.”

That’s never been more true. Instead of creating more content, try to make it work better. This could be as simple as an email letting your salespeople know about your new content initiative, and different ways to use it.

Remember, your employees are always your best marketing asset – get them involved in your content creation.

Revisit Your Social Media Assumptions

You know all the experimentation and optimization you’ve done over and over to learn what social media strategies and types of content work best for you?

Unfortunately, you can put most of that aside for now.

While it’s true that throughout the pandemic social media usage was way up, people’s daily routines were, and continue to be, massively disrupted. No commute, no school for the little ones, less distinction between work and life time. It’s a mess.

As a result, there have been huge shifts in what works, and when it works.

Depending on your target audience, you might be seeing increases in engagement rates for:

• video posts.
• post with long captions.
• time of day when your engagement traditionally lags.

Whatever your data is telling you is the direction you should be moving in – share content your audience is looking for and engaging with. But you’ve got to dig deep to figure out what will bring your content marketing and social media success.

Expand Your Influencer Marketing

The current situation means influencers and influencer marketing can be more effective than ever before. It’s human nature to rely on people we trust an believe in during uncertain times, which is why a recent study showed Instagram posts that included the hashtag “#ad” showed a 75% increase in clicks back during the first 2 weeks of March, at the beginning of the pandemic.

Those behaviours will hold true as we navigate the uncertain waters of the post-pandemic recovery.

If you’ve already got an influencer marketing program ready, don’t be afraid to start it now. If you don’t have one, now is a great time to set one up.

Want to dive a bit deeper into the post-pandemic social media and content marketing possibilities? Book your free consultation with Mary-Jane, founder of Asset Digital Communications!