Please don’t go silent on your customers!!

Right now the world is looking very different from how we thought when we came into 2020. I think it feels very much like we have turned up on a tinder date and realised we were cat-fished and the person sitting in front of us is absolutely nothing like their profile pic! Not a good feeling at all. 🙅

We are all looking for the quick bathroom escape from 2020, but unfortunately, we have found ourselves in a restaurant that’s bathroom is closed for cleaning and now we are forced to sit through the worst date of our life with no chance of escape. Yes, 2020, there are no redeeming qualities, you are going to go down in history as our worst date ever!

Once we get home we want to quickly retreat to the comfort of our room with some Connoisseur ice cream and Netflix and not come out for a very long time. But please don’t do this to your followers on social media!!

In all seriousness, I know that so many businesses in Tasmania are hurting… It is heartbreaking to see passionate business owners having to close their doors. I am tragically missing nights out with the girlfriends at our favourite restaurants, working in my fav cafes where the creatively runs best and they know my coffee order, shopping for mothers day by browsing through the boutique stores and buying clothes from local stores I really don’t need, but have to have because you can never have too many knits in Tassie! It has not even been a month and yet we are all craving our favourite businesses and desperately missing them already in the same way we are missing seeing our best friends on the regular!

So now more than ever as consumers we are craving connection and to feel a sense of normality amongst our disrupted routines and this is why I am telling you; business owner, to not stop communicating with your audience during this time! I know that it feels difficult to think about your business as it most likely looks like a shadow of its normal vibrant self, but how you use this time over the next few months on your social media will hugely impact how quickly your business is able to bounce back when this is all over.

I have jotted down a few reasons why you should be communicating on your social media right now:

1. People are craving connection!

Right now, people are more isolated than ever before and are looking for opportunities to connect. This is where you can be creating conversations on your social media, encouraging people to engage and participate together through your platforms. You also can be building relationships with potential customers right now without “selling” to them. It takes the pressure off the relationship as you are able to just get to know people and share with them during this time.

2. People are spending more time online.

With everyone hunkering down at home in isolation, we have seen the biggest trend in growth in time spent in mobile apps ever in this past quarter with a growth of 20% (Level Up, 28 March). There has also been a huge increase in people downloading social media apps like Facebook, Tik Tok and Whatsapp. This means that now is the perfect time for you to be getting online and reaching more people and growing your pages.

3. People are feeling overwhelmed and less trusting

With everything changing constantly in the business space it is important that you are communicating with your customers anything that changes and how they can still be supporting you during this time. If you have changed to offering delivery options, then this is something that want to be communicating regularly via your social media. This also is important as people will generally feel less trusting when purchasing from businesses they haven’t purchased from before so everything you can do to help them to trust you will help you to remove those purchasing blockers.

4. You have an opportunity to establish your expertise

Now is the time for you to be creating valuable content that will help your audience and establish yourself as the expert in your field. This isn’t about giving away all your smarts for free- that is actually impossible to do! It is about sharing some of what you have learnt with the intention of helping your audience. In turn this will create a strong bond of loyalty between your customer and your business and will help them to trust you more when they are able to purchase from you again.

So, I know that 2020 has shocked us all and we still don’t know what the rest of the year will look like. But I really encourage you to think about these points and how you can be communicating with your audience during this time. Don’t go dark on them now. They want to hear from you and you have more to say then probably what you realise.

Make sure you are following my Facebook or Instagram for more content ideas for your business as I work hard to step you through not just maintaining your social media during this time, but thriving during this time.

Download our FREE Social Media Strategy Planner by subscribing to our email list, so that you can be confident in what you are saying to your customers right now!