Communicating in Times of a Crisis

Katya R — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 20:18:04 +0000

We’re all flooded with all sorts of communications from all businesses right now. The stream has been coming in steady, and a couple of things immediately stand out.

From the point of view of a marketing professional, there is a lot to be learned in times of uncertainty and news changing by the hour. Small businesses managing their own digital marketing, this is for you!

Pause all marketing automations

If you haven’t already, go and pause ALL of your automations right now. This includes, but isn’t limited to, scheduled social media posts, newsletters, transactional emails intended to advertise and/or upsell, online ads (Facebook, Instagram, Google) and anything else you prepped before the COVID-19 crisis hit.

Review all of your messaging

Go through each planned piece of content one by one. Look at it through your customer’s eyes. Does it need to be communicated right now? If yes, does it acknowledge the tough situations everyone is in without coming across as opportunistic? Review your messaging carefully for sensitivity and appropriateness. Now is the time to be human (and humane).

Decide on the next steps

Depending on what content you’ve got planned, you may want to:

save the content for future use;
edit it to reflect the current situation;
create new content to reflect the new reality;
pause all marketing communication entirely. It’s totally okay to do.

If your business is in a position to adjust to the difficult conditions we are all facing right now, you’re probably already on it. Best of luck and please reach out for advice.

If you’re in a position to help others, please do so. Stay safe!

The post Communicating in Times of a Crisis appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

Who’s Watching You? 🕵️

Katya R — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 20:55:35 +0000

Today, January 28, is a global Data Privacy Day. The perfect opportunity to reflect on the recent news and the role marketing professionals have to play in the upcoming privacy battle.

Take a look at just some of the headlines:

The stream of exposés just keeps on coming. It has never felt, ahem, better to live in a technological dystopia where privacy has increasingly become an empty word.

As a consumer, you should certainly pay attention to data practices of the companies whose products you use daily, be it Amazon, Google or Facebook. It is no longer a question of if sensitive private information about yourself is being used by third-parties online. It is a question of how much. And what to do about it all.

So what now?

You can take lots of small steps to protect yourself (a blog post on just that is coming). You can quit Facebook and stop using Google products, although, in practice, that's already too much for a lot of people. This also doesn't solve the issue of the retention of the accumulated data. It is ultimately up to the companies themselves to change their practices and be better. (The lean data movement is an example of how.)

Why address this in a marketing-first blog space? Because a lot of the unhinged data collection going on today fuels the multi-million-dollar advertising and marketing industry. It has never been easier to target and reach the precise kind of consumer you want to reach online, and we as marketers are all complicit in wanting this unprecedented access without thinking twice about paying for it.

I believe we should accept some responsibility, educate ourselves and our clients, and take steps to be more conscientious about what we use and what we share. The online surveillance economy model comes at too big of a cost, and we have a part to play in dismantling it. Because, sadly, we learned to rely on it too.

The article was originally published in the January 2020 SMMHQ newsletter. Subscribe.