Our personal and professional lives have been turned upside down due to the coronavirus pandemic, leaving so many wondering how they should be running their companies in such an uncertain business environment. When it comes to your social media channels, your first reaction may be to go silent – but now it is more important than ever for data center, telecom and tech companies to utilize these platforms to communicate with customers and prospects.
Whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, companies in these industries need to leverage their social media accounts to continue the conversations with their audience and communicate vital information. This is also a time to highlight your brand values and culture, giving your customer base an opportunity to see this side of your business and feel more aligned with you as their partner now and in the future.
As you navigate through your B2B social media strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic, below are some additional points to consider:
#1 – Adjust Your Tone
During a crisis, it’s crucial that your brand projects a sensitive, relevant, authentic and compassionate tone. Now is the time to share positive and uplifting messages, not to come across too “sales-y”.
#2 – Carefully Craft Content
Your social media messaging will be different during this pandemic to be sensitive to your audience, yet should still be highly targeted to stand out in the sea of content. Monitor your platforms and the news media to determine what kind of messaging is important to your audience right now and craft your content accordingly. Be sure any new announcements have relevance to the current situation: for example, for a product or service announcement, focus on how it can help your customers cut costs during a time when budgets are tough, or how it may help them increase efficiency during a time when their staff is working remotely.
#3 – Consider LinkedIn Advertising
With social distancing requirements dictating that so many employees work from home, LinkedIn is proving to be a more important platform to connect than ever for the data center, tech and telecom space – especially for those in need of leads during a time where face-to-face meetings are not possible.
LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform among Fortune 500 companies and 91 percent of executives rate LinkedIn as their first choice for professionally-relevant content. To amplify your exposure to executives and decision-makers, LinkedIn offers a variety of advertising formats, including LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, to further your brand’s reach and garner leads on this essential platform.
#4 – Integrate Videos to Communicate Bigger Messages
If you have a bigger message to your audience that cannot be accurately communicated within the restraint of your social media platform’s character count, consider integrating video into your strategy. Videos get more attention, too: across all of the major social media platforms, video generates more engagement than any other content type. For example, tweets with video see ten times more engagement than those without; and LinkedIn users are 20 times more likely to share a video than any other type of post.
Learn More Social Media Best Practices
Prior to the pandemic, JSA had completed our annual Social Media Best Practices eBook that we release each year to the data center, telecom and tech industries. This year very quickly made a turn that we never saw coming, but this Best Practices guide still has very relevant information to not only help you grow your social media reach now during the pandemic, but also strengthen your presence when it is over.
Right now, brand professionalism, tone, authenticity, transparency and trustworthiness matter more than ever across your social media platforms. Download “7 Best Practices for Telecom Social Media in 2020” here.
Need immediate support to pivot your social media strategy during the pandemic? Please reach out to our JSA team here to brainstorm.
