As we approach the three-month mark of Sydney’s lockdown, physical gatherings, restaurants, browsing stores & studio workouts, all feel like distant memories. We are spending more & more time indoors, separated from our friends, families, clients & customers, compelled to stay within a 5km radius of our homes. During these challenging times, the importance of connection & community cannot be overstated.
As we navigate through these unpredictable times, maintaining regular (virtual) human contact is key. The same way we’ve swapped hugs for facetime in our personal lives, we need to be creative & resourceful in terms of how we maintain connection & sense of community with our clients, customers & audience from a business perspective, too.
One of the main benefits of social media is that it requires nothing more than a smartphone. Despite the physical restrictions that lockdowns impose, there’s no reason why a business cannot grow its online presence. In fact, many have. What’s missing from the world right now is connection, & social media offers the opportunity to connect on a global scale.
To increase engagement, stay virtually connected & build a following on social media, there’s a few strategies we recommend:
- ‘This or That’ Stories
People love participating in a ‘This or That’ through Instagram stories. If you’re a café owner, you might share a photo of two meals, asking your audience to choose whether they’d pick avo toast or an acai bowl, for example. This creates active engagement, rather than allowing your audience to skip through your stories in a disengaged manner.
- Instagram Lives
Instagram Lives are a great way to connect virtually with your local community or customers (virtually), as well as providing insightful content for your audience. Let’s look at our client, Dr Aimee Brown, as an example. Aimee connected with local health coach & Influencer, Carla Thomas, through an Instagram Live to talk about all things holistic health & wellbeing. This strengthened Aimee & Carla’s relationship, provided brand exposure to a new & like-minded audience, & gave valuable information to her audience which can then be shared as in-feed content.
- Share video content/Reels
We all know video content is king when it comes to Instagram. Posting Reels that showcase the BTS of your business, or even sharing some unfiltered lockdown chaos, helps to build authentic relationships with your audience & makes your business seem more relatable. You can check out a Reel we created for our client, Fem21, here.
- Giveaways
Who doesn’t love free stuff? Partnering with local or like-minded businesses & brands to give back to your community is a fantastic way to build hype & excitement about your service & product offering. It’s also a great way to increase your social following which in turn, may lead to new clients or customers. We recently hosted a 'Health Trends' giveaway, bringing together the most epic up & coming brands in the health, wellness & better-for-you space, which helped us to establish new brand relationships & allowed us to give back to our loyal community.
It is important to remember that the lack of physical closeness we feel is temporary & rather than suppressing our feelings, it is so much healthier to move through them & as much as we can, embrace the opportunity to learn, grow, evolve & pivot.
If you’re a brand or business looking to increase your online connection with clients & customers, please get in touch with us at Hannah@StraightUpPR.com.au. Let’s get e-social!
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