How To Take Advantage of Working Remote During Coronavirus
In an unprecedented season in most of our lifetimes, many companies are finding themselves suddenly home or an entire team working from home too. What does this mean for businesses?
There are so many things we all put off in our businesses. Marketing often becomes a big one, and I see this in both myself, clients, and especially prospective clients. We all have good intentions, but sometimes the daily fires get the most attention. Now, if you’re finding you have more time on your hands, take advantage of this season. Be ready for when we’re all back to the daily pace. Don’t squander this time you may have.
If you’re suddenly finding your team is also home working, but may not be used to working from home. Maybe their tasks are usually more ‘hands on’ and working from home is simply a different kind of work for them. Consider how you might be able to get them on board with some of these things for your business. These next few weeks can be a huge opportunity for so many teams IF you are willing to embrace it.
Marketing Strategies During This Season of Quarantine & Social Distancing
- Update your website: When was the last time you combed through it. Websites should be updated regularly with new text, new images, new links. No, you don’t have to redesign the whole thing, but you can make sure your site is reflecting your company’s current goals.
- Email newsletters: Email newsletters can be done largely in advance, and even queued up if they are ready to go out. Map out your strategy of talking points or topics for the next few months and start building out the elements for these newsletters now so that later on, you can do a final look-through and send.
- Clean out the inbox: This is a big one for me, because I know I have emails in my inbox that require some action on my part for my own business. I’ve kept them in my inbox so that I don’t archive and forget about them entirely. Now is a great time to take care of these things and make sure my inbox is back under control or even better than normal!
- Audit your social media profiles: Go do a quick look through your profiles to see if they are all looking good. Are you consistent across your business’ profiles? Do they reflect your current business goals? Do you need to refresh any of the written or visual content someone sees when they go to these profiles?
- Record videos: Video marketing is no secret in today’s marketing. It’s a crucial piece. Most people don’t do it because they run out of time. Whether you’re planning your marketing strategy, or recording them now, take the coming weeks to get serious about video for your marketing.
- Take Photos: A friend showed me some photos she made for her leadership book club where she features top leadership books to her clients. She set up a basic set on her counter with some fresh accessories. Whether you’re doing photos like this, or you’re needing some new headshots, now could be a good time to plan out (and even take) some of these photos that you can use in your marketing.
- Create social media posts: So many people use the excuse that they just are too busy to keep up with their social media. Now is a great time to map out what kinds of posts you need for your business, create a plan, and start executing. Maybe you need help keeping up with it long-term, or maybe you need help creating the strategy. Don’t be afraid to get the help you need now so that you’re ready to rock and roll.
- Educate: One of the best things you can do when you find yourself with a few extra hours here and there is to jump into education. This is great for your teams too. Take this time to learn that skill you’ve been meaning to research for a while. Udemy, your public library, Lynda, and other online learning platforms have thousands of classes you can take. You can also learn how to build a WordPress website in a weekend or how to improve your LinkedIn strategy with my own classes.
- Map out systems and processes: If you need to bring on more team members but you don’t know where to start. Start by mapping out your processes. Write out job descriptions. Document the instructions and steps so that you can hire better in the future and onboard staff in a simple way.
- Clean up your CRM: Do you put off getting your contacts and communication streamlined? Take your extra moments to do the work to set up your CRM and get those stacks of business cards off your desk!
- Organize your taxes: Bookkeeping or organizing for taxes might be the last thing you want to do, but being that it’s spring when this is hitting, you probably have all of this stuff fresh on your mind. Take notes of what you need to do next year so that you have a checklist. Then, go through and organize what you have so far in this year so that you are one step closer to success for business taxes for the current year.
With so many events and outings cancelled or postponed, I’m finding myself with more time. Rarely are we given the gift of time. Let’s not squander this opportunity for ourselves and for our businesses. Large pockets of the world are on quarantine or social distancing, but our marketing doesn’t have to be.
P.S. While we do marketing all day long for our clients, we are just as guilty of putting off some of these things for our own brand. I’m excited about having some spare moments to level up myself.