Changing Social Media in Our COVID-19 World

May, 2020

Social media agility means rolling with the times.

In our current COVID-19 world, social media marketing is leading the charge in crisis communication, product discoveries, and brand integrity. If a business is running paid social media ads, the strategy and metrics are going to look different than they did in our innocent, pre-pandemic days. We don’t know how long these shifts will last, but here’s the deal right now:

1. Industry

Grocery delivery, online gaming, SaaS - these are all industries that are seeing huge growth in their verticles. On the opposite spectrum, spas, salons, boutiques are mostly still right now, some even permanently closing.

2. Strategy

Simplify. As our lives have gotten more complex when it comes to travel and grocery shopping, a lot of us are experiencing a slowdown. The Great Pause, as we’ve heard it referred to, has in many ways simplified our daily routines. Unless your target audience are essential workers, people aren’t commuting, are homeschooling, have more time on their hands, and are scrolling through social media at rates we’ve never seen before. Your ad strategy can be slimmed down to the essentialness of your social media marketing.

3. Test
What worked for your paid social media ads in February, isn’t going to fly in May. While you may have a general understanding of how COVID-19 impacted your target audience, you aren’t going to know how that influences their ad engagement until you A/B test with a holdout.

4. Platform
Adapt your social media ads to your platform. Every social media platform is offering COVID-19 resources. Facebook stickers to add to images and COVID-19 Twitter account verification for reliable information from experts are examples from two platforms. Every platform has something useful to offer.

Even while states are opening up and businesses are learning to maneuver under social distancing guidelines, your social media ads will need to continue to be agile and adaptable in these times. No matter the situation, stay flexible, and keep it interesting.