In part 1 of the #12Daysof2020Takeaways we walked through 6 important lessons that we learned this year. These takeaways helped our business and our clients amid the ever-changing landscape of the pandemic, and we hope they can help you as well. Let’s kick things off!
7. Blog Investment
Quarantine forced the world to slow down and pick-up hobbies old and new, particularly, many people rediscovered their love of reading during this time. Our 7th takeaway of 2020 is about the importance of investing time in a great blog for your business. Blogging helps boost SEO, offers direct communication to your audience, showcases expertise in your field, and so much more. Boosting SEO, allows communication with your audience, showcases expertise in your field, and so much more. It also allows you to expand on thoughts that are sometimes too long or complicated to fit into a simple tweet. Creating a blog doesn’t have to be complicated either, here's a simple how-to for small businesses.
8. Engaging Your Audience
This takeaway is all about new ways to engage your audience on social media. Videos are a very effective tool to tell a story or showcase a completed project, plus consumers love engaging with them. According to a 2018 HubSpot survey, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from businesses. You can also utilize user-generated content because many people would love to see their photos or videos used by their favorite brands. Lastly, a great tool is social media contests because who doesn’t love to win free things? In 2020 we were able to increase one of our client’s Facebook following by 50%, mostly through social media contests. All it takes is one post to get a potential customer exposed to your brand.
9. Programmatic Advertising
As brick-and-mortar shopping was minimized, businesses sought ways they could still digitally reach their audience without breaking the bottom line. This is where Programmatic Advertising really took flight in 2020. Programmatic advertising utilizes AI to automate ad buying so businesses can target more specific audiences. This automation is much more efficient and faster, which means higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs.
Brands big and small play on an even playing field bidding on opportunities to get their message in front of their target audience. The takeaway: you know your audience best. Deliver advertising to the places they frequent most online to make sure your brand remains top of mind.
10. Digital Presence
Throughout quarantine, digital presence has become #1 for consumers. Our 10th takeaway is about the importance and value of your customers having a good digital experience. This includes website, contact info, social media, etc. Digital presence is not something you can just sit on and hope to fix it later. Here at WaterStreet we took our own advice and updated our website and stayed more active on social media than we have ever been. In a year where in-person contact was limited and most interacting was done over the web, digital reigned supreme.
11. Be Responsive on Social
Speaking of social media, there is so much conversation happening online every single day. Are you being left out? The 11th takeaway is that it’s important to be responsive to your customers on social media. Keeping conversations open, when appropriate, keeps your customers happy and gives your brand transparency. It’s also important to know when to take conversations privately or completely offline. Interacting with your audience can also be beneficial because it allows you to get direct feedback, see their reactions, and hear their wants and needs. You can then tailor services and products to continue to keep your audience happy.
12. Match Consumer Behavior
The last takeaway is one of the most important things that we have learned in this crazy year. It’s that being adaptable is one of the most important skills you can have. When no one knows what is going to happen next month, next week, or even tomorrow it is important to have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. This will allow you to pivot as information changes.
Being adaptable also means that you should not hold off on updating your website or changing your content strategy. Because, once again, you never know what's going to happen and it's best to allow your brand to ebb and flow to match consumer behavior.
It’s fair to say we learned a lot of new information this year. We hope that you can take the information that you learned here and take it into a successful 2021.
