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The importance of quality content during the Coronavirus outbreak

importance of quality content during the coronavirus outbreak

Quality content has always been about being informative and helpful.

Whether you are writing content for your website or blog, or you are publishing videos and images, your content must be relevant and purposeful.

Quality content is supposed to solve problems, and what could be the greater problem of our times than the Coronavirus outbreak.

The Coronavirus outbreak is turning out to be one of the greatest human and economic tragedies of our times.

Millions are falling victim to it. Thousands are dying on daily basis.

By early April 2020, 16 million people are known to have lost their jobs just in the US.

The overall economic growth worldwide is projected to be -3%.

Two major fears during the Coronavirus outbreak are:

How safe me and my family are and what can I do to keep my loved ones safe?
How do I take care of my livelihood, my business or my employment?

Businesses are reorienting themselves with great speed. Old privileges of being lost. New opportunities are being found.

Outbreaks like the Coronavirus aren’t new to the world.

In one way or another, our world has constantly been besieged by different catastrophes.

The world has seen great wars, colonialism and imperialism, large-scale slavery, atomic explosions, epidemics and famines, environmental disasters, and crusades and jihads.

As a global civilization, we have survived. As individuals, some do, some don’t.

The better informed, the better educated, are in a better situation to cope with a calamitous situation compared to those who are too smug or too busy panicking and complaining about the state of affairs.

Nothing informs and educates better than content, especially in the times of the Internet.

As a business, how can you inform and educate your customers and clients?
If you have an online presence, if you have some degree of traffic on your website or blog, you already have a platform.

Don’t worry about how many people come to your website. Even if you can help a couple of people by publishing informative web pages and blog posts, you will be making a positive impact.

What about a newsletter?

Everyone can use timely information.

In normal days, you use a newsletter to promote your products or services or to engage your subscribers on an ongoing basis.

You can achieve the same even during the Coronavirus outbreak. People already know what business you are in, so you don’t need to mention that.

Whenever you come across something useful, something you feel that your subscribers can benefit from, you can publish it in your newsletter.

New trends are emerging. New patterns are being found. Curves are being flattened.

Thousands of scientists are toiling in their labs to discover the vaccine. There are stories of human triumph all around.

You can publish such information on your website along with how it is going to impact your audience.

Keep publishing helpful content on your website, blog and newsletter.
Remain in touch with people, irrespective of whether they intend to do business with you. Just as you help someone, someone will help you. This is how one civilization after another has survived.

What marketing rules to follow during a crisis like the Covid-19 outbreak?

Increase your focus on your current customers and clients

Every business struggles to get new customers and clients.

I myself am constantly worried about, and working hard at, getting new assignments from new clients.

But I’m getting a constant supply of work from my existing clients.

Although, it isn’t as much as the usual business that I get, still, a big amount of my work these days is coming from clients who have either used my content writing services previously, or are currently using them.

Keep in touch with your existing customers and clients.

Inform them and send them information that can keep them safe and secure.

Do something that can improve their lives or even cheer them up.

Hard times doesn’t mean you don’t spend on marketing

The meaning of marketing changes in hard times but it doesn’t stop.

There are multiple reasons why you must go on marketing your business.

The article rightly says

When recessions hit, marketing is often among the first budget cuts. Doing so could potentially cause long-term damage to the brand and allow smaller or weaker competitors to steal market share. There are countless studies going back more than a decade showing that brands maintaining or increasing advertising during a recession gain market share over time.

What does marketing mean in contemporary times, even if you take the Covid-19 outbreak out of the picture?

It means constantly engaging with prospective and current customers and clients.

If you abandon marketing during hard times, your prospective and current customers and clients may think that you are here only to sell and when the prospect of selling vanishes, you vanish too.

Adopt new technologies and new tools and platforms

You may feel that I’m pitching my services, if you haven’t started publishing quality content on your website, this is the right time to do so.

The world of business and marketing is constantly evolving.

15-20 years ago, people depended on conventional advertising on TV, radio and newspapers.

Over the past few years, people have been sifting there focus on content marketing – let people come to your website instead of loading them into visiting your website.

Similarly, you should explore different avenues to promote your business without overtly pushing your products and services in front of people, especially when there are more concerned about their safety and livelihood.

Since hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to work from home, I have observed that many cloud-based services are promoting their business aggressively because they know that these people are going to need the new cloud-based tools to work and collaborate.

Use the time to build your brand through quality content writing and publishing

This is my own pitching, but it is quite applicable.

Just imagine how much you are saving by not having to work in an office.

You can use some of your savings to build your content presence and consequently, expand your brand presence on the Internet.

You can work on your SEO and see how you can generate more search engine traffic.

You may like to read 10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

Open a spreadsheet and start making a list of all the keywords and search terms you haven’t yet covered in your content.

Then, you can either hire a content writer and start publishing your blog posts and webpages on your website, or you can do it yourself.

Be a pillar of strength to your customers and clients

You have been running a business.

You have been leading a workforce.

You have been implementing new business ideas.

You know how to turn challenges into opportunities.

Share your wisdom and experience with your customers and clients and help them in this hour of need.

Can you grow your business during the coronavirus pandemic?

Enhance your content marketing effort

The good thing about content marketing is that content can be produced and published digitally. You don’t have to invest in raw material. All the tools that you need to publish useful content are already there with you.

You want to publish videos? You can use your mobile phone.

You want to publish podcasts? Even these can be done using your mobile phone or a standard microphone attached to your computer or laptop.

Want to publish blog posts? You can write them yourself or you can hire a content writer or a blog writer.

Content marketing helps you in normal days and it also helps you in these testing times.

Businesses haven’t disappeared. They are just recuperating, or they are functioning in a different manner. You have to reach out to them and content marketing is the best way to do so.

Work at improving your SEO

In the regular hubbub of doing business content marketing and SEO often take a backseat. This is a good time to focus on improving your search engine rankings and increase your search visibility.

The benefits of SEO come from many factors. As mentioned above, your search visibility improves. You get more targeted traffic. Your conversion rate improves. You get more back links because a greater number of people can find your content. You get more content to share through your newsletter.

There are various tools available that can help you figure out what sort of content you should publish to improve your SEO.

Invest in social media marketing

Facebook has nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users. At the time of the Covid-19 crisis, more people are logging on to Facebook to keep up with their loved ones and even to interact with their colleagues.

The same goes with other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Millions of your customers might be there. If you have never advertised on social media and social networking platforms, perhaps, now is the right time.

Be regular with email marketing

Email marketing needs to be a bit different during a pandemic. Ideally it should be different always, in the sense that instead of continuously pushing your products and services in front of people, you must add value to their inboxes.

Keep in touch with your subscribers. Send them good information about how they can keep themselves safe. If you feel that a bit of information can help them work better during their confinement, share it with them. The key is, provide value. They are going to remember you for that.

Aside from these actions, I would also suggest you spend more time on LinkedIn if you’re providing B2B services, like I do. Almost all my content writing and online copywriting clients come from the B2B segment.