COVID-19 & Your Content Strategy: How to Communicate with Customers Through the Pandemic

COVID-19 is sweeping the globe with confirmed cases increasing by the day.

Some of the biggest brands in the world, including Disney World and Apple, are closing their doors through the end of March or longer. Walmart along with many other retailers are adjusting their operating hours—and one knows for sure how COVID-19 will affect our lives for the long-term.

But whether you’re working from home or you’re hunkered down in your office at work, the fact remains that communication is a critical aspect of your business even during a pandemic.

While we wait until the panic caused by COVID-19 slows down, you might need to make some adjustments to your content strategy.

Below, you’ll find some content strategy and content writing tips you can implement almost immediately.

Write Clearly and Concisely with Web Content

This is one of the age-old content writing tips, but get to the point quickly especially when you’re writing about COVID-19. Customers are consuming content about the pandemic at a rapid rate, so making it quick and easy to read is essential. 

• Make sure your headline is clickable and easily understood
• Write sentences of variable lengths
• Use bullet points for skimming
• Use header tags — H1, H2, and H3 — to signify a shift in subtopics
• Consider adding color to your header tags
• Keep paragraphs limited to 2 or 3 sentences
• Use white space

This can work with blog writing as well as email marketing since you have more control over the design.

Keep Content Timely and Relevant

While evergreen content is always a good idea, you’ll need to update old content accordingly as the COVID-19 situation changes.

Timely and relevant content corresponds with how the pandemic is affecting:

• Any current or future changes you foresee with your business
• How your business is handling or changing procedures
• What customers can expect from you during difficult times
• Old content on your website and how you can make it more useful today

This content can be delivered via a blog post, email, social media, or even a press release if it’s a major announcement. 

Create Content for Lead Genation & Sales

With a possible recession looming, you’re likely worried about how you will keep leads and sales coming through the door.

Focus your content strategy on lead-generating content types, including:

• Web/landing pages: Using a content strategy with keyword research and SEO efforts, web pages and landing pages can become a lead generation tool. You can also add a lead magnet to that landing page to help boost sign-ups and inquiries.
• Blog posts: Blogging twice per week can yield the greatest amount of leads, according to HubSpot. However, less-frequent blogs that are very high quality and long-form can result in leads as well.
• Mini lead magnets: This includes content such as checklists, reference sheets, and 1-2 page downloadables.
• Ebooks: An Ebook compiles 4-6 pages of high-quality content in 1 downloadable PDF. This is often perceived as higher quality over a blog post since customers exchange their email address to gain access.
• White Papers: A white paper demonstrates how your product or service works on solving problems for customers.
• Case Studies: This is a direct example of how your specific product or service helped a customer. In the video below, I explain a few ideas on how to choose a topic for a case study.

You can see a live example of our case study here —

Case Study: How Busy Blogs Plus Grew a Client’s Email List Organically by 150%.

Prepare for Potential Increased Content Consumption

Internet usage is up 10% globally and internet companies are temporarily suspending data caps. 

This is naturally going to lead to the demand of increased content consumption, whether it’s the form of video, written content, or another format.

Determine if Increased Production Makes Sense for You

Increased content consumption doesn’t automatically equal an increase in production. This is what you should consider:

• Your industry: For example, those in the tourism industry will most likely pull back on content production due to travel bans. However, medical providers and health insurance agents may choose to increase their content production for education on COVID-19 and their scheduled blog posts.
• Revisiting your content strategy: Are you providing helpful and timely content? Does it make sense to change your topics or approach to your content publishing schedule?
• The need for lead generation: If you are concerned about leads, make sure you are producing fresh content at least weekly. The topics also need to align with current promotions or how your product/service helps the buyer.
• Resources: If you choose to change directions or increase content production, who will handle the tasks?

Always Include a Call-to-Action

One of the last content writing tips I can provide amidst the COVID-19 outbreak is using a call-to-action in your content. This includes social media content, blogs, newsletters, and more.

When you have a call-to-action in place, it tells the customers what they should do next. These are a few examples of how to use a call-to-action in a blog post:

• Align the CTA with a current promotion
• Weave the CTA throughout the post. It doesn’t have to only go at the bottom
• Make the CTA easy to find and enticing to click on

Most Importantly, Stay Healthy & Safe!

No matter how you plan to re-strategize or re-structure your content strategy, the most important tip of all is staying safe and healthy. We will all survive this pandemic and come out the other side even stronger than before! 

Please contact us if we can assist you with content creation or strategy.