Tag Archives: pandemic

Am I getting more content writing assignments post-Covid?

By “post-Covid” I’m not saying that Covid is over. In fact, here in India, we are expecting the third wave to hit somewhere in August-September, 2021.

But, during the past year, we have learned a lot. The situation is not as scary as it was a few months ago. Hence, the expression “post-Covid”.

Many have gotten vaccinated.

So, has my business increased?

My business HAS increased, but I’m not sure whether it is due to Covid or due to my own effort.

When the Covid started in the US – my major amount of money was coming from there – two of my main clients drastically cut down their operations.

They didn’t let go of me, but the amount of money they paid me was now less than one-third of what they were paying me before the pandemic.

Previously when I could manage without promoting my work, now, no longer was the case. I needed to make up by generating more work.

I don’t want to sound opportunistic, but I took it as a blessing in disguise. This gave me some time to concentrate on growing my business rather than continuously working for them.

I started updating my blog almost every day. This improved my search engine rankings.

I became active on LinkedIn – queries began to come from there.

So, my business increased because my promotion increased. In the past year, I’ve more than doubled my search engine traffic.

Has the Covid outbreak had no effect on my business?

I wouldn’t say that. I’m getting more work from India, which is a big change.

Clients from India are, even if reluctantly, agreeing to pay more.

Many sound more knowledgeable about the need to publish quality content.

In that sense, yes, business has improved.

How to use content to market your business during Covid-19

Using content for marketing during Covid-19

Using content for marketing during Covid-19.

Marketing budgets are being slashed all over the world. This Forrester research says that marketing budgets all over the world have definitely declined due to the Covid-19 outbreak, but they are expected to start going up by the end of 2020 and may recover by 2021.

But it depends on which side the unpredictable camel of the outbreak sits. Nothing is for sure right now. Many countries don’t even know what their current position vis-à-vis the outbreak is.

According to the above research, the CMO’s are taking the money out of out-of-home advertisements and moving the budgets to digital marketing for obvious reasons.

Despite the lunatics denying the severity of Covid-19, lesser number of people are moving out and are spending time working from home and consequently, being in front of the screen for longer durations.

Another thing many marketers are stressing is that, you shouldn’t stop marketing. A McGraw-Hill research of the 1981 and 82 recession found that businesses that marketed aggressively during the recession had 256% higher sales than those that did not.

But how do you market yourself if your business is making less money than before?

The answer is content marketing.

You spend less money than you spent on traditional advertisements, and it is far more effective. Especially now, when digital marketing is more effective than traditional marketing.

You can either publish original content or you can re-purpose your existing content, or you can do a mix of both.

The point is, now is the right time to let your customers and clients know that you are still in the game (you haven’t been destroyed by the Covid-19 outbreak) and you are still actively promoting yourself.

The dust is settling. In the early months of the year people were caught off-guard. Emotions were running high. People were scared and concerned. They were caught unaware.

Although the virus is widespread and a big part of the population is infected (in New Delhi right now 33% of the population is reported to have been infected by the virus), people are less worried. A lot has to do with the ignorance about the effects of the virus, but many businesses are getting back to their feet.

https://twitter.com/AmritHallan/status/1285550801151119361

During this time, it is nice if you set a healthy example and use content marketing and digital marketing to promote yourself. Here are a few things you can do with your content:

Repurpose existing content

If you feel you have already got lots of content on your website or blog but you need to add new content, you can consider repurposing your existing content.

You may like to read: How to re-purpose old content?

Repurposing your content means generating new formats of content out of your existing content pieces.

For example, if you have a detailed blog post on how to do content marketing on mobile phones, perhaps you can create a slideshow or a video. You can also create a PDF e-book that people can download.

Refocus on your email marketing

Email marketing is a big part of content marketing, in fact, the most effective aspect of it. When you send emails to your prospects, your message appears right in their inbox.

You may like to read 15 ultimate content writing hacks for successful email marketing.

Of course, before you can send them emails, you need to win their trust so that they regularly open your emails.

Winning the trust of your email recipients is a different ballgame and requires a dedicated post, but for the time being, you need to understand that since most of the people are confined to their homes, they are more receptive to receiving valuable information through emails.

This Campaign Monitor study has revealed that more people are opening their emails than before. From February to March, businesses reported a 16% change in the open rate of emails.

This American Express blog post has shared some insights on the emerging email marketing trends during Covid-19 and what you can do to make your email marketing as effective as possible.

Accelerate your content publishing

Since more people are working from their homes, they are consuming targeted content with greater frequency than when they were going to their offices.

Also, while working in isolation, people are searching for relevant information to solve their day-to-day professional problems.

Basically, everything on the Internet is content. What you publish on your website, whether they are web pages or blog posts, is content. What you publish on social media, is content. When you send an email marketing campaign, you are broadcasting content.

To publish purposeful content during the outbreak, you first need to find out what your core audience is looking for.

For example, my clients want to improve their search engine visibility through quality content. These days, on my blog, I’m publishing lots of content that can help you improve your search engine rankings vis-à-vis the Covid-19 outbreak.

Information is another thing that people are constantly looking. They want to remain informed. Whatever business they are dealing with, they want to get the right information about whether the business can deliver or not.

You can also sail your content marketing boat on uncharted waters. If you have never published case studies, maybe now is the right time because they are a big confidence booster. If you have never published videos on your website, perhaps now is the right time.

Content marketing can help you in multiple ways during these trying times. For example, it can help you stay in front of your customers and clients. You can help them by providing them useful information and as a result, increase customer loyalty.

It was also set in motion your core content marketing strategy even after Covid is over.

7 blog writing ideas during the Coronavirus outbreak

7 blog post writing ideas during to coronavirus outbreak

7 blog post writing ideas during to coronavirus outbreak

You know that you need to blog regularly. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak and the lockdowns in its wake, everyone is either sitting home or stuck somewhere.

If you run your own business or if you have a small company, this is a good time to improve your search engine rankings by publishing quality content on your blog.

Depending on which source you decide to trust, roughly 2-4 million blog posts are published every day. 70 million posts are published every month just by WordPress users.

Even if the figure has been reduced by 50% due to the Coronavirus outbreak, 1-2 million blog posts every day is still a very big number.

As I quoted one of the HubSpot reports in a previous blog post, businesses that publish on an average 16 blog posts every month receive 3.5 times more traffic than those businesses that publish on an average 4 blog posts a month.

Hence, consistently posting fresh content on your website is particularly important. As it is, business may be down for you and on top of that if you ignore writing and publish content or blog posts on your website, it is going to make things worse.

But what to publish? People’s priorities seem to have changed. They are either very alarmed and worried about their livelihoods, or they are simply clueless and in shock.

Obviously, Covid-19 or the Coronavirus dominates every discourse these days. People want to read about the virus as much as possible. They want to read about how it is infecting, how bad it is and what are its after-effects. They also want to read about its economic impact.

They may already be going through hardships due to the outbreak.

Nonetheless, they also want to know how to do digital marketing in the times of Covid-19.

Content marketing or digital marketing begins with publishing quality blog posts. If you are running out of ideas, listed below are 7 blog top writing ideas during the Coronavirus outbreak.

1. Write about your personal experience

Blogging is about sharing your personal experience. It is usually written in the first person. You can write a blog post on how the Coronavirus outbreak is personally affecting you.

For example, one of my biggest clients has completely vanished. He was a big income source.

Although personally I don’t recommend depending on a single source of income, in the hubbub of life, you end up ignoring many aspects of your business and one of these aspects was, generating more income streams.

How is your online traffic these days? Has your traffic increased or decreased? This data can give valuable hints to other businesses.

How about your employees or business partners? How is the Coronavirus affecting them?

Many topics and subtopics can be created out of this.

2. Write about what steps you are taking to promote your business during the Covid-19 lockdown

Most of the businesses are itching to get back on their feet. In fact, many governments are more eager to ease out the lockdown than they should.

What it means is, whether you are open for business while the Coronavirus pandemic is at its peak or you plan to open after the dust settles, you need to promote your business.

If you are choosing not to promote right now, rest assured that your competitors are.

The wheels of commerce do not stop. Whether you feel like promoting your business right now or not, you must put in some effort.

Hence, if you are actively promoting your business, what measures are you taking?

Are you trying to improve your SEO? Are you filling the gaps? Are you adding quality content? Are you increasing your social media presence? Are you revitalizing your newsletter? Are you working on that e-book you have been planning to write for years?

There are scores of things you can do to promote your business during the Covid-19 lockdown. Write about them.

3. Write about what has been your work from home experience

Literally millions of people are working from home.

Frankly, aside from the fact that one must remain locked down and be very careful, I have been working from home for years. What has changed is, most of my clients are also working from their homes these days.

What is your experience? Has it affected your productivity? Are you looking forward to working from home for many more months? Or do you need the sword of the office hanging over your neck to remain productive and to deliver?

If you have just recently started working from home, what sort of environment have you created for yourself? How is it affecting your productivity and efficiency?

4. Advise your customers and clients on how to remain safe

This is one of the most pressing concerns these days: how to avoid getting infected by the Coronavirus?

This will be a slight digression from your usual postings (for example, my content is mostly about content writing and content marketing) but since you already have some traffic on your blog, you can use it to raise awareness about how to keep safe from the Coronavirus.

Everybody knows that you must wash your hands repeatedly and keep your face covered and avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes when you think you might have touched something infected.

Nonetheless, you can give some interesting twist. You can also write something on how to avoid getting infected and how to avoid infecting your loved ones if you cannot help going out and you must expose yourself due to an unavoidable reason.

5. Write about the interesting stuff you’re finding on the Internet

Everything is not gloom and doom on the Internet. People are finding plenty of time during the lockdown to create interesting stuff. For example, this family is creating chalk drawings with the help of their little daughter.

Activities during the coronavirus lockdown

People are preparing lists of books they can read during the Coronavirus lockdown. They are creating Netflix lists; music lists and all sorts of lists people can use according to their taste. You can prepare your own list and publish it on your blog.

6. Write about your fitness schedule

One of the biggest problems faced by people who are working from home is that their movement has been curtailed.

People cannot go on walks. People cannot go to the gym. Even the usual physical exercise such as walking on the pavement or using the public transport or using the stairs in the office has been brought to a grinding halt.

Nonetheless, people are using creative ways to keep themselves fit and healthy. There is a deluge of mobile apps that help you follow a well-defined fitness schedule while you are in the lockdown.

Share your fitness schedule. Even if you don’t have any, just talk about how you feel about it.

7. Write about the new things you have discovered about yourself while working under the Coronavirus lockdown

Again, I have always worked from home so when it comes to discovering oneself, I think I have made plenty of discovery.

What about you? If you have just started working from home and that too, due to the Coronavirus lockdown, what have you discovered about yourself? Are you able to work without supervision? Are you missing the meetings or the air of importance that an office gives?

Do you like house chores? Recently I was reading an article where a person says that he has discovered that he loves doing house chores which he used to find boring when he was going to office.

Someone else has written that she really enjoys reading stories to her little kids.

Another person has started compiling lists of to-do apps that can help you work in isolation while keeping track of what you have done and what remains to be done.

A big part of writing blog posts during the Coronavirus lockdown is writing about the pandemic and at the same time writing about you and your business. The topic ideas need to revolve around the current context.

The importance of quality content during the Coronavirus outbreak

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:

  1. How safe me and my family are and what can I do to keep my loved ones safe?
  2. 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.

Can you grow your business during the coronavirus pandemic?

How to grow your business during the coronavirus outbreak

How to grow your business during the coronavirus outbreak

I know, talking about growing your business during this crushing coronavirus outbreak may seem a bit inappropriate.

The reality is, we all need to make a living, at least those who can.

We are all looking into a long spell of economic downturn coupled with a humanitarian crisis that hasn’t been seen for at least a century.

Hence, all the more reason to keep at least some parts of the economy moving and maintaining the cash flow.

This Green Entrepreneur blog post lists 7 strategies that can help you grow a business, or rather, a new business during the coronavirus pandemic.

Every challenge brings a collection of opportunities with it, and so has the current coronavirus pandemic.

With most of the businesses coming to a halt, you have time to focus on content marketing and expand your presence on the Internet. It will help you reach out to the existing market, however much it exists, and it will also give you a headway when the world gets on its feet.

The above blog post lists the following things you can do to grow your business while you maintain social distancing and remain confined to your home.

Enhance your content marketing effort

You may like to read Is content writing and publishing same as content marketing?

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.

You may like to read 10 SEO content writing tips for your small business

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.

You may like to read 5 ways to make your content social media friendly

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

You may also like to read Email marketing dos and don’ts during the Covid-19 pandemic

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.