If there’s anything Covid-19 has taught us, it’s to expect the unexpected and prepare for a crisis before it happens. As many companies have overcome the initial shock of it all, they are now looking to the future and how to protect themselves from being caught off guard again.

Whether it be a global pandemic or a more localized issue, a PR disaster could be lurking around the next corner. It’s the stuff that a social media manager’s nightmares are made of. And, contrary to common belief, this can impact every size of business; from start up to enterprise.

How a business weathers the storm at the worst of times can make the difference between a quick recovery and a slow (and very public) death by a thousand Tweets or Instagram posts. Mitigate the damage ahead of time by having a social media crisis plan in place to avoid being caught off guard next time. 

Social media is equally a public relations frontier as it is a marketing playground, and so we can rest assured that many PR crisis best practices are still relevant in today’s digital world – with a few modifications. Here are the top questions you need to answer to build an effective social media crisis plan:

1.Do you have existing social media response guidelines?

Every company should have a foundation of social media response guidelines that tackle how we respond to day-to-day questions. This can be invaluable in crafting a crisis response strategy as it allows the business to remain consistent in voice, tone and approach during the chaos.

To build your guidelines, align on your brand voice, then build a decision tree for who, how and when you would respond to customers. Finally, build a bank of FAQ assets and responses to make day-to-day online customer service quick and effective. As a PR crisis unfolds, you can update the FAQ to ensure messaging is up-to-date and in line with what people are talking about.

2.Does your business have social listening procedures and tools in place?

At its core, social listening is literally listening to what customers are saying in social media channels to help inform your messaging and business decisions. For small businesses, that might be something as simple as searching out hashtags, comments and @mentions on the crisis topic to glean important insights around sentiment and FAQ.

For a larger organization, a social listening tool could be brought in to provide powerful insights into conversation volume (how many people are posting about the topic), engagement and reach of your content. During a crisis, reporting and analyzing incoming social data is critical to identifying simmering crisis issues, managing operations during the issue, and assessing results after the fact.

For enterprise-level businesses, there are many social listening tools on the market, ranging drastically in terms of budget and functionality. To ensure your tool can be activated for a crisis, ensure that it checks the following boxes:

• Allows for monitoring of hashtags, keywords (geographically is ideal)
• Enables assigning conversations to other members of the team to warm-transfer to subject matter experts
• Provides some type of tagging functionality to categorize conversations based on subject matter, sentiment, influencer status, or other important data that will be useful for aggregate data later on
• Allows you to track conversation volume (ideally against competitors), reach, engagements, sentiment and most engaged users 

3.What is the chain of command for messaging?

One of the most common hang ups when dealing with issues is miscommunication about who approves messaging. Companies can spend precious hours – or even days – chasing their tails as they wait for sign off and alignment. Does the buck stop with your CEO or does the PR prime have final say?

Before you go down the sign-off wormhole, identify which stakeholders need to be looped into the messaging. The leaner the team, the more effective and efficient. It may help to create a sliding scale of severity from 1-5 with examples for each, then establish a RACI model:

• Responsible – in charge of stick-handling the messaging and approvals from end-to-end
• Accountable- they will die on the sword for any decisions the team has collectively made
• Consulted- feedback required, but not final say
• Informed- FYI only

4.Does the rest of your team know what their role is during a crisis?

Finalizing a crisis and issues management plan is a major win for any organization, but an even greater (and more important) feat is making sure your team is in the loop too. Socializing with your business stakeholders will be critical to the successful execution of the plan, should you ever need to activate it.

Do the front-line folks know the plan – and the specific do’s and don’ts during an issue? Has the CEO, PR prime and manager seen and signed off? Are your company’s third-party representatives looped into the plan (i.e. contractors, agencies, or sales representatives)? 

5.What’s your target (and realistic) reaction time?

What is the realistic amount of time it will take to craft and execute on your first messaging response during a crisis?

Time is of the essence when an issue is unfolding in the online space. This means we’re talking hours, not days. All it takes is a few Facebook shares to add gasoline onto already burning embers and you’ll have a sweeping wildfire on your hands.

That said, it’s important that you move forward with accurate, consistent messaging that the whole company is on board with. Remember, the tighter the plan, the faster you can begin to remedy the situation.

6.Is your Customer Service game on point?

The best defence is a good offence, as they say. When you have winning social media response approach during the good times, you will have a much easier time rebounding when things go sideways. Invest in your front-line superstars to ensure they are well-trained and have the resources they need to deliver online service excellence to your customers. Do this now, and  you’ll find a ready army of customer advocates willing to come to your defence if tumultuous times ensue.

7.Do you have the ability to pivot quickly?

One of the common denominators about Covid-19 is that regardless of size, businesses are having to pivot at lightning speed. Whether it’s a mom and pop shop struggling to remain open for business or a multi-national corporation shifting its workforce to remote technology; the struggles are different, but united in their need for agility. Companies that have a lean and agile approach and see challenges as an opportunity are weathering the storm and standing out from the pack. A pivot is only as good as the communications that support it, so ensuring that you can get the word out to your customers through social media and marketing tools is critical.

Here are two recent examples good pivots and supporting social media communications during Covid 19:

EXAMPLES

Guinness Pivots On Saint Patrick’s Day

What happened:

Just days before St. Patrick’s Day, Covid-19 began to grip the Western world. Ireland cancelled celebrations and Guinness, which has been an integral part of St Patrick’s Day celebrations for generations, had to make a giant shift into the unknown.

How they dealt with it:

Rather than go silent, they pivoted—quickly and drastically. On March 13, the company launched a “We are all human” campaign, which promised $500,000 to communities in need during this difficult time through their Guinness Gives Back Fund. They paid tribute to their resilience over the company’s 260-year history and infused a sense of calm during the impending storm. 

We know that St. Patrick’s Day feels different this year, so however you choose to celebrate, stay safe and be good to one another. Guinness is committing $500,000 through our Guinness Gives Back Fund to help communities where we live, work & celebrate. #Guinness pic.twitter.com/EZpYpzAGE0

— Guinness US (@GuinnessUS) March 13, 2020

 

Later.com shifts their content strategy to address Covid-19

What happened: Instagram scheduling and management platform, Later.com is well regarded in the social media industry for their thought leadership; not only on the Instagram platform, but also in digital marketing overall. The company plans their content weeks out, but with the impending crisis of Covid-19 affecting every sector and global market, they had to scrap all planned content and shift focus rapidly.

How they dealt with it: Later.com viewed this as an opportunity to shepherd marketers through this storm. The content team held a brainstorm to adjust their focus, anticipating the needs of their customers and creating content that would address growing concerns around how to continue marketing on Instagram during the emerging crisis. They provided an arsenal of content to give current and prospective clients ideas about how to move forward in this challenging business landscape. Also, most importantly, they met customers where they were at: working from home during quarantine.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Right now, our only job is helping you.

A post shared by Later: Social Media Scheduler (@latermedia) on Mar 18, 2020 at 10:09am PDT

These are just some of the many examples of how pivoting, rapid ideation and customer insights drove an evolved communications approach. Looking to protect your business from a social media firestorm? Connect with us! 

 As I reflect back on my decade of working in this space, I have seen the fads, the innovations, and the flops. What initially began as a means of connection and communication has evolved into a powerful marketing and advertising tool that has been embraced wholeheartedly by the masses – not to mention brands, influencers and media.

Have a read through my 6 tips for navigating the social media universe today, tomorrow and into the future.

Don’t go chasing algorithms. Trust me on this one. They change so frequently, it’s becoming nearly impossible to keep up, let alone game the system. While we can have a surface-level understanding of the intent behind algorithm changes, the truth is that the sophistication of algorithms is beyond human comprehension. Strategies that work today may not work tomorrow, as machine learning analyzes thousands of data points and optimizes against them. Instead, focus on producing insight-driven content that resonates. Know your audience, understand their interests, behaviours and pain-points and you will be far more successful than if you were to spend your time dissecting how algorithms work.

Remember MySpace, Foursquare, Ello, Peach, or Google Plus? Their rise to stardom seems so long ago now. Change is the only thing guaranteed in the social media space. Social networks have risen and fallen, just like the ancient civilizations of our past. Every social network prides itself on continuous innovation, though new and flashy features have flourished and failed over the years. Always allocate at least 10% of your resourcing to innovation and testing. However, being flexible and agile is key. It won’t serve you to be rigid with your strategy, so don’t chase your tail. Fail quickly and move on.

If you can do just one thing, spend your efforts on creating quality content, versus quantity. The social media audience of today is fickle and discerning. You are competing against thousands of other brands and content creators who are vying for shortened attention spans. Put yourself in the position of others and ask yourself the honest question: “Would I share this?”  Spend time on your creative and really think it through. There are plenty of turnkey, budget friendly tools available to help you up your production game.

Please, whatever you do, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. All it takes is an ousted tech CEO, a drop in shares for one of the big giants, or a disastrous data breach, to leave a Silicon Valley business hanging by a thread. Remember the list of social channels above? At one time they seemed like steadfast investments, but have now become irrelevant. While Facebook is currently THE best place to reach a broad range of customers, it may not always be the case. Keep your options open and be prepared to shift your approach or you could be left in the dust.

Every customer counts. Having a social response strategy will help you ensure that every customer comment (whether good or bad) is addressed. Of course, there are the trolls who stop at nothing to try and discredit and harm a company. However, the majority of customers just want to be heard. Approaching social media response with humanity, humility and even a little humour can do wonders for building your brand reputation.

Storytelling approaches are as diverse as the companies that employ them. But, education and emotion-driven stories should be the tenets of every social media strategy. It’s been said many times that content is king. But context and insight are equally as important. Teaching people something they didn’t know – or stirring up an emotional connection with your audience is the trick to holding their attention – and building loyalty over time.

Every day, I’m inspired, humbled – and even a little astounded – by the speed at which social media is changing. There’s no question that online communication has brought out both the good and evil of the human race. But, I’m still hopeful that connecting our global community through the power of technology and storytelling brings people together in new and unexpected ways. Ideas are exchanged with every Livestream, every Tweet, and every inspiring image. And even if a small fraction of those ideas bubble to the surface to make the world a better place, then that’s just fine by me.  

Do you have a social media challenge for us to solve? Get in touch and let’s chat! 

Today’s customers are expecting hyper-personalized, contextual messages from brands.

Small businesses with an e-commerce website can accomplish just that by implementing a solid Facebook advertising strategy and a few key best practices at the onset.

Facebook Advertising has come a very long way over the last three years in particular. Its robust targeting capabilities easily rival Google’s advertising offerings – and in some cases trumps Google altogether. With extremely detailed data on each user (including interests, behaviours, life milestones, purchase intent, browsing behaviour and more), Facebook is an extremely powerful advertising tool when used to its fullest potential.

Read on to learn the key best practices for getting started with ecommerce advertising on Facebook:

Set Up Business Manager

It’s surprising how many businesses miss this very important step when setting up their business page. Facebook’s Business Manager is a tool that enables Facebook Page owners to manage their page and ad accounts from one centralized place in a more secure fashion. It also allows page owners create a team ecosystem with various levels of admin access across the page and ad account. This is especially important if you’re working with external consultants and employees. That way, when someone leaves the company or moves on from working with you, their access can be easily revoked from your Business Manager. If you haven’t setup your account yet, visit business.facebook.com to get started.  Check out this article for a full Business Manager overview.

Install Facebook Conversion Pixel On Your Website

This is table stakes when it come to the Facebook advertising game. If you haven’t yet installed a Facebook Pixel on your website, you’re missing out on important conversion data and limiting the opportunity to retarget people who have visited your online property. Once the special line of code is added to your website, the Facebook Pixel effectively works by placing a cookie on the Facebook profile of anyone who has visited your site in the last 180 days. Now, with a growing list of pixeled site visitors, you can design retargeting campaigns targeted to their browsing behaviour on your site. Customers who see products or messaging that are catered to their stage in the customer journey are more likely to purchase.

In addition to retargeting, the Pixel allows advertisers to optimize campaigns based on ecommerce goals, such as Add to Cart and Purchase. Campaigns optimized this way will target people who are most likely to complete these actions; making the advertising even more powerful and effective. The detailed conversion data – in particular the Cost Per Acquisition data –  will help for optimization of campaigns.

Learn more about installing a Facebook Pixel.

Create Product Catalogues

Facebook enables e-commerce clients to upload their products into its back-end so customers can receive dynamic, personalized advertising based on what they have browsed on the site. Product catalogue file formatting must be in designated formats of CSV, TSV, RSS XML, Atom XML. They can be uploaded one-off manually or automated through a feed that can be customized by your web developer or IT person.

Leveraging real-time product information to create dynamic ads and multi-product ads is an incredibly powerful tool for advertisers, creating a laser focused targeting approach and cutting down on manual ad creation. Learn more about Product Catalogs.

Upload Customer Database and Create Lookalike Audiences

Facebook’s custom Audiences capabilities are perhaps one of the most powerful tools available to marketers. Businesses can upload a CSV file of mobile phone numbers and email addresses of existing customers, enabling Facebook to match these data points to its own users. The data is hashed to protect customers, but enables advertisers to target the matched user profiles. Marketers can craft messaging and offers targeted just to customers, exclude customers from receiving offers and information that is not relevant to them, and also find new lookalike audiences who have Facebook profiles of existing customers.

Facebook has an API integration with MailChimp, but only allows targeting down to the list. Custom Audiences are predominantly manually uploaded by the advertiser. Read more about how to use Custom Audiences by visiting Facebook’s help centre.

Provide Customer Lifetime Value Data

One of the really exciting opportunities for businesses is to find high-value customers by providing Facebook with more details about your customers. The Lifetime Value Audiences can be sliced into a variety of data points, including: number of purchases in a set amount of time, average revenue per sale, length of customer relationship with the business, average spend over time.  Using the Custom Audiences technology, Facebook uses the lifetime value data to find more customers who are likely to spend more and become long-term customers. See how you can supply Facebook with Lifetime Value data.

By implementing some of these key steps, understanding your ecommerce targets, and leveraging Facebook’s robust offerings, you’ll soon see your online business soar!

Are you looking to drive traffic and conversions for your online shop? Get in touch and let’s chat!  

You might have the sexiest content ever created by humankind, but without a distribution plan, it’s going to slip into the black hole of the Internet, never to be seen or heard from again. Set your content marketing up for success by taking a step back, and think through the execution.

For starters, a social media distribution plan is comprised of these areas. Each has a ripple effect on the other:  

• Objectives
• Targeting
• Timing
• Channel selection
• Amplification budget
• Quality of creative
• Real-time analysis  and optimization
• Community engagement

Putting a plan on a page will ensure you’ve thought through these crucial elements.

Most of these areas are fairly self-explanatory, but let’s take a minute to talk about budgets. You might be wondering if budget is even necessary. The answer is a resounding “yes”.  For most businesses, organic reach is so low on social media that it’s almost not worth investing in developing content unless you’re going to invest in amplifying it.

How much you invest is really up to your annual media budgets, the importance of the campaign in your overall messaging strategy, and also how much you invested in building your creative.

Ultimately, digital marketing channels will spend as much or as little as you want to throw at them. You will, however, need to adjust your measurement scorecard so that it’s realistic based on the budget.

Next, ask yourself the following questions:

What Do You Want the Audience to Think, Feel and Do?

Never lose sight of your audience. We want to do everything in our power to ensure they taking the action we want. Every aspect of the creative, from post copy to photography and video thumbnails matters. The more clarity we have with our vision, the easier it is to pull the right levers to help the audience feel all the feels.

What Is The Content Objective?

It seems simple, but you’d be surprised how few people stop and have a think about this. Are we driving website traffic, social media conversation, advocacy or reach? The answers matter, as they will help shape, not only how you package the content, but how you optimize the media. Know what your objectives are before you launch and it will save you countless hours of rework.

Is My Creative Optimized For Objectives and Audience?

Creative matters, but how you package it up matters more. There are so many special features and ad units available – particularly on social media channels like Facebook. Post formats are designed to encourage different actions, so do your research and make sure you choose a format that will drive the action you’re looking for.

All too often, we get so wrapped up in the blood, sweat and tears of our projects that we sometimes lose objectivity. And, most importantly we lose sight of the end-user. Take a step back and create one more checkpoint – a simple question that may give you fresh perspective. You may not like the answer, but at least it will prompt you to look into what features about the campaign or creative are posing a barrier.

Nothing is finite in digital marketing and so the ability to be nimble and adaptive is key. Take time upfront to think through your distribution plan, but be prepared to tweak it as you go. The best time to build a distribution plan was yesterday. But, the next best time is today.

Want to learn more about content marketing? Read our recent blog post about building a content strategy. 

At long last, Substrate Studios is born! Years of dreaming, and six months of planning have come to fruition. So, how did we get here and who are we?

We are a husband-wife graphic design and marketing strategy team, proudly based in Squamish, BC.

We founded Substrate Studios because we have a passion for helping businesses grow and we want to see the entrepreneurs and companies in our town – and other small towns – prosper to create thriving local economies. We believe that consistent visual identity and smart marketing are the tools every business needs to achieve success – and we can help.

Amber Turnau brings more than 10 years of marketing experience to the table, having worked on the marketing teams for Whistler Blackcomb, TELUS and – through her agency life – numerous other clients in a variety of industries. She’s been immersed in the world of digital – particularly social media marketing – and has a strong background in content marketing, online advertising, and analytics. 

Neil Foster is a maker and a creator. He’s an artist, illustrator, graphic designer, and screen printer – who also co-owned a BMX and skate apparel company in his home town of Plymouth, UK. Neil looks at design through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, bringing his passion for clever visual storytelling that evokes emotion and reflection. He is versatile – both in his ability to use a variety of different artistic mediums – and the wide spectrum of clients he’s able to service.

We are yin and yang: wildly creative and adventurous, yet pragmatic, thoughtful and strategic. By bringing the left and right brains together under one roof, we’re able to solve business problems from a 360-degree perspective.

Together, we create, we build and we explore. And, we look forward to doing great work with you.

Have a marketing or design challenge for us? Get in touch!