How to Transform Your Digital Presence in (the new) 2020

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention.

As the world makes its way through the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, a more appropriate word would be reinvention.

The global pandemic has forced businesses across the globe to make tough decisions, resulting in some quite remarkable pivots. From breweries switching from beer to hand sanitizer, to tie companies making masks, adaptation is the name of the game – and it’s pushing more and more companies into the digital space.

Striking the balance of staying competitive in this new landscape, while also engaging customers in a meaningful way, is no simple task – but we’re here to help.

We’ve put together 4 strategies you can use to reinvent your business, achieve your own digital transformation, and adapt to the 2020’s new normal.

Strategy #1: Find your audience on social media (and engage them the right way)

With a quarter of the world (or more) now locked down at home, it’ll come as no surprise that social media use has spiked.

Luckily for you as a brand, this presents something of a captive audience.

If you’ve not been posting regularly to your social media profiles, now is absolutely the best time to start. But it’s not a simple matter of set and forget – there’s a bit more nuance than that.

Here are our top tips for finding (and engaging) an audience on social media during the COVID-19 crisis:

• Be consistent in your posts. Don’t spam your audience, but be sure you’re posting on a regular basis. Once a day is a great place to start, but you can ramp up from there.
• Embrace your brand’s personality. As long as it suits your brand, don’t be afraid to be a bit playful with your tone-of-voice.
• Get hash-tagging! With such a big potential audience on social channels right now, it’s important to be seen. By adding at least 10 (relevant) hashtags to each post, you’re sure to get more bites.

Strategy #2: Ensure your website is packed with useful content

As a brand in these uncertain times, you want to be solution-oriented, because a lot of people will be looking for answers. Your products and services can help, for sure, but you can amplify this effect with high quality content posted on your blog and shared via social channels. This will help your visitors and your SEO.

It’s not just blogging, either: audiences are eager for vlogs on YouTube, podcasts, infographics – you name it.

Strategy #3: Give your e-commerce website a tune-up

With such a big pool of potential customers online every day, it’s more important than ever that your website is performing.

This goes double if you run an e-commerce store.

Attention spans are at an all-time low, but there’s still demand for retail therapy. When you’re trawling the web looking for your next favorite thing, you don’t want to be stopped in your tracks by a slow-loading website. In fact, statistics show that if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of people will click away and go elsewhere.

How sure are you that your e-commerce website and its marketing efforts are performing its best?

If you think it might need a bit of a tune-up to deliver results during the digital boom of 2020, get in touch and ask our team about our free e-commerce audit.

Strategy #4: Revisit your Google My Business listing and make sure it’s accurate

If you don’t yet have a Google My Business (GMB) listing, stop what you’re doing and go create one.

Don’t worry, we’ll wait.

If you do already have a GMB listing, there’s never been a better time to revisit it for some spring cleaning. From an SEO perspective, your GMB listing is like your business card – it’s the first thing a user sees when they enter your brand into Google.

And, just like a business card, you’ll naturally want it to work hard for you.

At a time when getting digital facetime with a potential customer is like gold-dust, it’s vital that your GMB listing is 100% accurate. So, take a few minutes to revisit the listing and make certain all of your contact details – website, address, phone number – are all up to date.

Getting this right can mean the difference between winning a customer and losing them – so it’s well worth your time.

Here for you today and tomorrow

Here at Harvey, we’ve been reinventing, too.

Our team has been working to help brands connect with consumers in meaningful ways despite the current disruption. Beyond the strategies we’ve shared here, we’ve been designing specific action plans to help brands stay agile, customer-focused and able to thrive not just now, but after things settle down, too.

Want to see how we could help your business evolve and embrace the shift to digital? Get in touch today and we’ll take the first step together.