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Five Steps to Starting Your Nonprofit’s Storytelling Campaign

A few months ago, someone asked me about how to start a storytelling campaign for her nonprofit. She wanted to spread the word about how the nonprofit helps young people who are blind and have developmental disabilities. She teaches gardening and horticulture and helps her students to run a business and deal with a few clients. I gave her a basic strategy for a storytelling campaign that used different social media channels, as well as a website and blog.

Other nonprofits that want to tell their story can do more than just launching a newsletter or being active on Twitter. If you see your ongoing communication as one long story — think of it as a long-running TV series

This is a strategy any nonprofit could use to tell the stories about their efforts and the communities they serve. The goal is to help potential donors and volunteers get to know the people they’re helping. If you can put a face and name to your work, people are more likely to give.

This is one of the reasons nearly all fundraising letters have you “meet” one of their recipients. Someone who needs your help, and who has been helped by that organization. And you can help more people just like this one just by donating $10 per month.

1. What stories do you want to tell?

Before starting a storytelling campaign, you need to figure out what story you actually want to tell. A story can have a few parts to it, so you can have more than one focus.

In fact, you could think of your story as a TV show, where there is usually an A story, a B story, and a C story. The A story gets the most attention and time, the B story gets the second most, and the C story gets the least. In a 22-minute sitcom, the A story may get 9 – 11 minutes of storytime, the B story gets 6 – 8 minutes, and the C story gets 3 – 5 minutes.

So your A story could be how you help people through a meal delivery service, your B story could be your mobile health clinic, and your C story could be your future plan to open an apartment building with in-house medical facilities.

That means your meal delivery service gets the most “air time,” the mobile health clinic gets the second most, and the apartment building gets the least. That doesn’t mean you don’t talk about the B and C stories, or that they’re always second and third on the list of your blog articles and videos. Rather, it means they get to be the sole focus of your attention once in a while.

2. Identify your channels

Now you need to know where you want to promote your story. And you do that by figuring out where your target audience is. Essentially, you want to “fish where the fish are.”

If you do a lot of events where people are likely to share photos of themselves, then you want to be on Instagram. If you don’t have a huge visual component to your storytelling, then you can skip Instagram. If your audience is older, you should focus more on Facebook and skip Snapchat.

But you can also double up in a few places. Since Facebook owns Instagram, you can automate your posting between both networks. If you post things to Instagram, you can set it up so those things automatically post to Facebook. You can even use an automation service like IFTTT (If This, Then That) or Zapier to automatically push photos to Twitter.

Just don’t go nuts. Limit the number of social channels you join, rather than joining as many as you can. You may have heard a lot about Clubhouse, Fireside, Snapchat, and every other new tool people are buzzing about, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthy of your attention.

Instead, pick the ones that are well-established and show some signs of longevity. I normally recommend Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and a blog for most nonprofits. You could also use LinkedIn, but I typically advise against it unless your nonprofit deals with work — teaching reading and life skills, helping people develop skills to find a job, educational institutions, etc.

You’ll also want a weekly or monthly newsletter — your newsletter is where you’ll collect the email addresses of your donors, volunteers, and supporters. This list is your lifeblood because these are the people who keep you in business and help you support your mission.

3. Your channels will affect your content.

What do you have the capabilities and time to produce? What does your audience want? Do you have a lot of people who watch and share videos? Or do they prefer reading long-form content? You can figure that out just by asking them with a survey.

Once you know what they would prefer, start giving it to them. Maybe it’s a weekly 700-word blog article, maybe it’s daily photos of your birds of prey, or a weekly podcast interviewing other people in your nonprofit’s mission.

At the very least, I do recommend photos and blog articles. The blog helps with search engine optimization and your search rankings, but this is where most of your storytelling is going to happen. Your blog is where you get to explore the nitty-gritty of your work, explain your positions on policy decisions, analyze how new laws and regulations affect you. It can also provide you content for a newsletter.

And if you have the time and capabilities, consider a podcast or video series about your nonprofit’s greater mission. For example, if your nonprofit is about rehabilitating injured birds of prey, start an educational video or podcast series that teaches people about birds of prey, the different kinds of birds there are, and how they live.

4. How will you tell your stories?

We’ve done the easy part, now is the hard part. How do we tell your stories? Do you tell an individual’s story? Do you tell the group’s story? Your organization’s origin and success story?

Start with what amount to case studies and testimonials. Take one person who is involved with your organization, talk about their experience before they got involved, what they learned, and how it’s helped them afterward.

For example, your story would look like this: John had a problem. He was 100 pounds overweight, constantly tired, and was at risk of diabetes. He had tried different diets, but nothing had worked, and he was worried he was going to have serious illnesses in a couple years. So John started an exercise program at Major Payne’s Get Fit Boot Camp. In 9 months, John had lost 100 pounds, had plenty of energy, and reduced his risk for diabetes by 82%. He even grew back all his hair, married a supermodel, and won the lottery.

Basically, you can build an entire campaign on stories like this. You know what you need to write and tell, and you can place each of them into your A, B, and C stories.

And you can break them up so that for every three A stories you write, you write two B stories and one C story.

You can produce a video or shoot some pictures, write a blog article, share it on your chosen social channels — share it more than once in a week; three or four times per week is perfectly acceptable — and produce those stories once or twice a week.

5. What is your storytelling campaign’s throughline?

Throughline is another TV term. It’s the underlying theme of a movie or TV show. It’s not the story, but it’s the motivation behind the story.

For example, the throughline of the Captain America movies is “Cap hates bullies.” So everything we see him do is based on his intense dislike of bullies.

Your throughline is related to the purpose of your organization. It could be education, it could be housing, it could be creating awareness of a particular disease or societal problem.

If your purpose is education, your stories will show how you’re educating your target audience, such as adult literacy, helping at-risk youth, or animal rescue. Your stories won’t be about teaching, mentoring, or saving, but that will always run through your stories.

For example, you won’t do a video on “this is how we saved this dog” or even “The 12 steps we take to save dogs.” But you’ll write about a dog that you saved, cleaned, and adopted out to a loving family.

So your stories should include your throughline. Even if you were doing a “meet our staff” story, you would want to focus on how they help fulfill your purpose and mission.

Starting a storytelling campaign can be a little difficult, but if you just start with the basics — pick a couple channels, decide what story to tell, and follow your throughline — you’ll quickly figure out what to do and how to do it.

Don’t worry if creating stories is hard or you’re not very good at first. You’ll learn a lot, you’ll get better, and pretty soon you’ll be whipping out those stories, editing those videos, and writing those blog articles like they’re second nature. As long as you build a good storytelling campaign framework, you can easily see what works and what doesn’t work, and you’ll have a formula to follow with every new story you write.

Photo credit: Tumisu (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)
Photo credit: StockSnap (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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The Secret of B2B and B2C Copywriting

I’m going to tell you a secret about copywriting.

It’s a secret that the copywriters don’t want you to know. It’s a secret the marketers and the people who hire copywriters haven’t figured out. It’s a secret the business owners and managers don’t even know exists. That secret is this:

There is no difference between B2B copywriting and B2C copywriting.

None at all. It’s complete bullshit. They’re exactly the same, because they use the same thing in both camps:

  • Words.
  • Emotions.
  • The ability to use one to tap into the other.

Oh, and a decent grasp of the English language.

If you understand and can use those things, you can write for both B2B and B2C clients. Even on the same day.

Your Target Audiences Are People

One of the irritating things about content marketers, besides their insatiable greed for data and analytics, is that they forget their users/visitors/hits/views are all people.

Their users are people. Their visitors are people. The page views? Made by people.

And people have thoughts, emotions, and complex inner lives. They want things and they’re afraid of other things. And they’re reading your copy because they either want something or they’re afraid of losing something else.

People are stirred by the same emotions whether they’re at work or at home, trying to decide whether to buy your SaaS software or large-screen TV. They’re motivated with the same methods, follow the same sales funnel, and can be persuaded with the same formulas. They respond to good stories, persuasive arguments, and important ideas, whether they’re at work or at home.

No one is a completely different person between work and home. Oh sure, they don’t do the same things. They may have a work personality and a home personality, but fundamentally, they’re the same people. High-energy Type A people are always high-energy Type A people. Laid-back Type B introverts are always laid-back Type B introverts.

And that means a copywriter who is adept at telling stories or is able to simplify complex information can do that for a B2B buyer or a B2C buyer, even when those buyers are the same individual.

Whether your customer is trying to decide whether to buy a gas or charcoal grill or trying to decide which cloud-computing service to use, they’re going to use the same critical thinking and decision-making skills to solve the problem.

That means your copy needs to be concise, coherent, and complete. It needs to be well-written and informative. It needs to fire up their emotions.

Good copywriters can do that for B2B copy, trying to convince a purchasing agent or a department head to make a decision on their particular product or service. They can turn around and do that for B2C copy, trying to convince a consumer to make a decision for that product or service.

To the copywriter, there’s no difference in how they do their job, how the copy is structured, and which kinds of copywriting formulas they use.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

There’s Not Much Difference Between Industries Either

Years ago, I used to work in the poultry industry — we sold poultry feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers and poultry companies.

Over the years, several of the growers told me, “Poultry farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

At the same time, our company sold hog feeding equipment and watering equipment to farmers.

Over those same years, several of those farmers told me, “Pork farmers are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

A few years later, I worked for a software company that sold software to state governments.

The people I called on told me, “Government purchasing agents are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and we do things our own way.”

Over the last 12 years, I’ve written for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and every size of company in between. I’ve written for techies, marketers, fintech developers, small business owners, lawyers, and software companies, and you’ll never guess what they all — ALL! — have said to me:

“__________ are like no other consumers. We’re frugal and do things our own way.”

At no point did anyone ever say to me, “We’re just like everyone else and we’re damn stupid with our money.” If they had, that one would be the different one, the only one not like all the others.

“But every industry is different by its very nature!”

Well, of course, every industry is different, Financial technology is nothing like hog farming. Women’s skincare is nothing like cloud computing. And marketing software is nothing like construction equipment. I know, because I’ve written for all these industries.

(But I was successful in all of them, despite being a newbie at one point.)

Industry knowledge is important to a writer because it makes their job easier. But it does not make them better. I’ve known veteran industry writers who regularly produce some of the most mediocre, boring garbage, and I’ve seen people who just earned their creative writing MFAs writing write circles around the veterans.

I’ve also seen the reverse to be true.

Industry knowledge does not make the writer, writing skills do. The ability to use language to tap into a person’s emotion and compel them to buy? That’s the real skill.

You can teach industry knowledge. The writer can interview a subject matter expert and craft a compelling story in 10 minutes. But the industry expert can’t learn heart and style — at least not in a 10-minute conversation.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a good copywriter, focus less on their industry expertise. All that means is they know the industry terminology, but anyone can figure that out with a quick Google search.

Instead, hire a copywriter who knows how to write so they can make your blog articles and webpages interesting, compelling, and fun to read. Hire fiction writers, poets, screenwriters, journalists, and storytellers. Get the people who know how to make boring things interesting and how to make complex ideas easy to understand.

If you’re focused on the length of time a person has spent in an industry, you’re looking at the wrong thing.

Because everyone’s industry is just like all the others, and your customers are just like everyone else’s. The good writer knows that, and they know that tapping into a buyer’s buying motivation is the key to success.

Photo credit: Voltamax (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Should I Create Multiple Twitter Accounts?

A personal branding question I’m regularly asked by authors, artists, and other creative types is whether someone should have multiple Twitter accounts. In fact, someone posted that very question to an audio theater Facebook group I belong to:

Looking for opinions regarding Twitter: Is it better to have separate accounts for each show you’re creating, or just one main company account that posts on behalf of all shows? I’ve seen it both ways so I was interested in seeing which way people like more.

Well, to start with, you may have seen it both ways, but those “more than one account” people are probably wrong. I’ve seen people run red lights, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should do it.

I’ve seen people create Twitter accounts for movies, TV shows, books, plays, and any other creative venture you could name. People get excited about a project, and they want to build some buzz around it, so they create social media accounts around that one project.

That’s not the best way to go about things, because those projects typically have a short life, which means the Twitter accounts do, too. Then, the creators are off onto another creative venture, creating yet another social media account.

So let me just say this: Create a single account for yourself or your creative group as the brand. Focus all your energy into building that account.

Think of your favorite actor. Don’t you follow them through their variety of performances? Wouldn’t it be a pain in the ass if you had to re-find them for each character they played? Every time a show or movie ends, you have to wait to find out what their next role is, follow them, and soak in all the goodness, until that role ends. And then you repeat the process.

Think of how painful that would be if your favorite musician launched a new Twitter account every time they recorded a new album.

Can you imagine how much of a time waster it would be if your favorite painter created a Twitter account for every new painting they did? Bob Ross would have created 403 Twitter accounts just for his show paintings, although the actual number may be closer to 30,000.

It’s About Your Personal Brand

You’re better off focusing your energy and efforts on building your personal brand, or your troupe’s brand because that’s the thing people are interested in. Just like you have your favorite performer that you follow from project to project, people will follow you along your creative journey as well. They don’t start and stop with each project, they’re with you every step of the way.

Spend your time building an audience for your group, getting people emotionally invested in that account, and coming to rely on it for news and information about what you’re doing. Have conversations with people with that account, so people are more likely to like and trust it.

Imagine putting all that time and energy into a project account, only to have to repeat the effort several months later. And then doing it again a year after that.

You would have to repeat the brand-building exercise over and over, trying to re-convince your audience from the last show to join you on the new account, and then re-re-convincing them on the one after that. And the next one. And the next one.

By having an account that spans for years, you can even give your new fans a look at your old history as they look back to see what else you have done. As your account grows and ages, people can take a retrospective look at your catalog of work, which they can’t do if you only have a Twitter account that lasts for a year or two.

Photo credit: Mariamichelle (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Develop Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses

Several years ago (in the pre-social media days), I was the director of sales and marketing for a software company. My job was to promote our software and to make sure that people, organizations, and state governments bought it.

I was in charge of trade shows, the website, brochures, press releases, and so on, not to mention selling the product all over the United States, as well as other parts of the world. I was making sales calls, traveling, designing, and doing things the sole marketing person in a company does. These were my strengths, and they were the reason I was hired.

Which is why my boss said I should develop my customer support skills.

“Why would I do that?” I asked. “I don’t do customer support.”

“I just think it’s important that you strengthen your customer support skills, since you don’t do it very often.” He added, “I may even have you start learning some coding.”

“So will the customer support team learn how to work trade shows and create brochures?”

“No, why would they do that?” he said, completely seriously.

His rationale was that, since I didn’t have strong customer support skills and I didn’t know how to code, I needed to learn or improve these skills.

I asked him if it wouldn’t be smarter for me to just focus on getting better at marketing or graphic design, and he said he didn’t think that was as important. I needed to be well-rounded and well-versed in everything the company did. (I was also the only one in the entire company that he thought needed to be this well-rounded.)

Your Strengths Make You Money, Not Your Weaknesses

I see a lot of companies make this mistake, whether large or small. They think they and their employees should be jacks- and jills-of-all-trades. Everyone should be a generalist. Everyone should know how to do everything. As a result, no one is great anything, they’re all just mediocre at a lot of things.

(It’s no surprise that these companies are not leaders in their industry.)

The pressure to be a generalist is especially high for entrepreneurs. We often have to do everything because there is no one else.

That pressure wastes more time and kills more businesses because we spend all our time doing the things we’re not good at, which takes us away from our strengths, which is how we make our money.

The dentist who spends four hours a week handling her bookkeeping and staffing requirements is missing four hours of billable time. That’s four hours’ worth of patients she’s missing out on. And if she tries to do her administrative stuff in the evenings and on the weekends, that’s just cutting into personal time, which wrecks her work-life balance, which is the whole reason she started her practice in the first place: to have a fulfilling personal life.

The bookstore owner who spends an hour or two a day handling his inventory and fulfilling ecommerce orders is losing the time spent dealing with face-to-face customers. To solve the problem, he’ll end up hiring someone to help deal with customers when he should really hire someone to fill orders and count inventory.

The consultant who spends three hours each week researching possible new clients instead of actually dealing with client work is losing 156 hours of productivity per year (3 hours x 52 weeks/year = 156 hours). That’s nearly an entire month of time wasted on not creating products or writing reports that help him get paid. In effect, he only worked for 11 months in a year.

In all of these cases, the business owner is spending time doing the things they don’t really need to be doing. Instead, they’re doing things that take time away from the things they should be doing. Their weaknesses are sapping their strengths and they’re losing money.

And instead of trying to solve that problem, they’ll find ways to improve their skills in that weak area. The dentist will invest in bookkeeping software and watch videos on how to use it. The bookstore owner will get better ecommerce software (and learn how to program it), and work to streamline the shipping process. The consultant will invest in business databases or lead gen software and spend more time writing the content needed to bring in new clients.

This is a terrible waste of time, and we need to stop it. This is where it makes sense to hire someone else to do the things we’re not good at.

The dentist can hire a bookkeeper to manage the books for 4 hours a week. The money she spends will be a lot less than the money she makes in seeing patients for 4 hours.

The bookstore owner can hire a college kid to handle the shipping and inventory. Let them streamline the process for you and figure out a way to make it more efficient, then they can teach it to the bookstore owner.

The consultant can hire a virtual assistant to do all the client research for him, even setting his sales appointments.

Don’t spend time or money trying to develop your weak skills. Hire someone whose strengths fill your weak areas so you can focus on getting better at the things that make you money. Try to become one of the best at the thing you do. Get great at your strengths, not slightly better at your weaknesses.

If you’re a writer, take writing classes or read books on writing. If you’re a graphic designer, watch design videos and practice on pet projects. If you’re a dentist, go to conferences and take continuing education classes. If you own a bookstore, focus on your customers and finding new ways to bring people into your store.

For the things you’re weak at, hire a professional to get it done. Hire the graphic designer whose work is continually growing. Hire the writer who creates great work. Work with the consultant who produces great results for their clients.

Trying to strengthen your weaknesses, especially those so completely unrelated to the thing you actually do, is a colossal waste of time and can have a negative effect on the growth of your company. Get better at what you’re good at and you can charge more and work less.

Photo credit: Stocksnap (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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A Quick and Dirty Editorial Calendar

One of the things that have always irritated me about social media marketing is the near-fetishization of the editorial calendar.

I’ve known companies that have scripted every single tweet, Facebook update, Instagram photo, and blog article for an entire year, dictating the date and time each message will go out, and color-coding it to product launches, corporate events, and phases of the moon.

And I’ll admit to more than a little schadenfreude when those year-long schedules were derailed by some corporate crisis, takeover, merger, or product cancellation.

I’ve never understood the fascination of such strict, rigorous scheduling because it’s so easily disrupted, but I like the idea of general guidelines. Just a few recommendations to keep me on the right path, not a step-by-step, turn-by-turn map of the route I have to take.

As I like to say, “Just tell me where I need to go, I’ll figure out how to get there myself.”

So here’s a way to make a quick and dirty editorial calendar.

  1. To start, create a spreadsheet on Google, Excel, or Numbers. Label the days of the week, and create enough lines for your posts for each day. The example above has three posts per day.
  2. Color code the alternating weeks by hand. Don’t use the application’s alternating rows command because it doesn’t let you group them this way. (At least I haven’t figured out how to do 2 or 3 rows at a time without screwing up the header..)
  3. Put the dates to the right of the block.
  4. Put a row below the month, and put the Topic Of The Day in each cell. If you’re going to run a daily theme, spell it out here. If you want a weekly theme, put it to the right, next to the dates column.
  5. You can also drop hashtags into each cell. In the sample calendar above, I could drop in #contentmarketing in every Monday spot, #language in every Tuesday spot, and so on. This gives you a little more flexibility to label each post and keep a running theme. For example, for one client, I post a funny little picture on Instagram at 3: 15 every afternoon. (You can see Marcel and his crazy little adventures here.)
  6. Do a Google News search for your particular keyword or hashtag. Start scanning the stories and open up each one that seems to fit what you’re looking for. Do a quick read through and then copy the headline and the URL and paste it into the cells. Helpful tip: Don’t go to news.google.com, because their selection of articles is rather limited. Instead, do a general search and then click the News button at the top of the page. Then select the Recent menu, and choose Last 7 Days. Copy that URL and paste it into a cell on your calendar. Do that for every keyword/hashtag you need. Label them, and set those cells’ formatting to clip the contents, not wrap. (It screws up the look of your calendar.)
  7. Schedule your posts no more than one week in advance. Every Monday morning, I schedule the week’s social media posts for all of my clients. This way, I’m not working too far ahead if there are any major disruptions to their news or social media flow.
  8. With each new month, just Duplicate the most recent page. Then, highlight the calendar, hit Delete, and start all over. Change the dates, drop in your hashtags, and start filling up the content again.
  9. Use a service like HootSuite, Buffer, or TweetDeck to schedule your posts. To schedule your social posts, use a service like one of the ones mentioned, or any of the other options out there. Of course, these all cost money, and some are more expensive than others. You can post to TweetDeck for free, but it only lets you post to Twitter. However, there’s a workaround: Set up a few automation tasks on IFTTT.com or Zapier.com. These tools will let you automate certain tasks, such as reposting an Instagram photo to your Twitter account, or texting you every time it’s going to rain in your area. For a couple clients, I use Zapier to repost all tweets with a certain hashtag (#LI) to LinkedIn. This saves me from spending money on HootSuite, Buffer, or other social scheduling tools.

How ever you set up your own social media and editorial calendar, find a method that’s easy for you and doesn’t require you spending many hours developing an entire schedule for the year. Set up daily and weekly themes to guide you for the kinds of messages you want to share, but keep things loose so you can pivot if the need arises.

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Stop Saying ‘In These Troubled Times’: 5 Amateur Mistakes Content Marketers Keep Making

We’ve had years of practice, thousands of articles written on the rights and wrongs, and millions of social media “experts,” but we still have content marketers and copywriters making the same stupid, amateur mistakes they’ve been warned against.

Now everyone seems to think the current pandemic shutdown somehow changes all the rules, and everything they’ve been told not to do is now fair game.

Not at all. In fact, if anything, this crisis means you have to really buckle down and quit making them.

Here are five amateur mistakes that content marketers and copywriters need to quit making right now.

1. Stop saying “In these troubled times”

Good Lord, if I see “in these trying/terrible/troubled times” once more, I’m going to Hulk-smash my laptop!

They’re are all troubled times! This is nothing special. (Okay, maybe it’s a little different.) But we’ve always had trying times. Even during the good times, we’ve had trying times. “In these trying times” could be said about any time.

Twelve years ago, during the Great Recession, I had a freelance copywriter who used “in these trying times” or “in these economically troubled times” in every single article they handed in for the next four years, even when things were on the upswing.

Every. Single. One.

Bottom line, do not refer to “these troubled times” at all ever. It’s one of the most useless and overused writing clichés in the entire world.

2. Stop sending emails about what YOU’RE doing

I’ve seen plenty of emails explaining what a particular company’s response to COVID-19 has been. Some, like my favorite coffee shop or pizza place, are explaining what steps they’re taking to protect customers, because they know that we’re affected by the things they do and don’t do.

Other companies, like software companies I haven’t heard from since 2012, are telling me the steps they’re taking to shelter in place, practice social distancing, and blah blah blah.

Seriously, Chad? You’re just a software company. No one cares.

The only reason you should send an email about your COVID-19 response is if your response directly affects your customers.

For example, if you have a web hosting company, I want to know what steps you’re taking to keep my servers up and running. If you have a rental car company, I only want to know if you’re going to be open or if I can cancel my reservations. I don’t care how closely you’re monitoring the government’s guidance. Don’t give me a 500-word piece of bullshit that doesn’t tell me anything until the last paragraph. (Read Josh Bernoff’s cutting analysis of Hert’z corporate email.)

And, clean out your email list. If you haven’t heard from certain people in more than four years, maybe you should just remove them.

3. Don’t say anything unless you have something to say

This piggybacks off point #2, but it’s a much broader message. As content marketers, we’re already used to filling up people’s inboxes and social streams. And people are 1) ignoring it and 2) tired of it.

So maybe we should instead shut up and do something useful. People are frightened, anxious, and just trying to take care of themselves and their loved ones. So no one needs more marketing clutter to get people to pay attention to us.

If you want to get people’s attention, do something useful. Offer them something to make their lives easier. Accounting software companies, teach people how to become entrepreneurs, because a lot of people are losing their jobs. Personal finance coaches, create videos, blog articles, and podcasts about how to lower our costs and trim our budgets. Restaurants can offer cooking classes or “ask me anything” sessions.

Some companies are already doing this. My gym, like a lot of gyms, are offering workout-at-home video sessions. My friend the yoga instructor is doing Monday night yoga sessions on Facebook Live. Blaze Pizza hosted a virtual pizza party with their executive chef, Brad, where people could ask him questions and get real-time answers.

But other companies are still sending me emails about booking trips, buying electronics, or buying men’s clothing.

I realize you have to find a way to stay in business, but try being useful before you start being commercial.

4. Update your old messages

For some of you, it’s business as usual. For most everyone else, they’re not buying anything. And yes, it’s hurting the economy. And yes, businesses are suffering and they need a way to stay in business. I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

What you should be doing right now is revamping your old messages and updating them to reflect the new reality we’re going to be facing for the next several weeks.

Case in point, a friend from Indiana posted that she saw a commercial from one of the local TV stations reminding people to check in with them for the local traffic report. That’s fine, except there is no traffic because Indiana is on a statewide stay-at-home order.

While the ad may be a good reminder for people once the order is lifted, it’s still a wasted opportunity. Check your upcoming messages and see if any of them have now aged out or ring a little tone deaf in light of the shutdown.

If you have scheduled your messages days and weeks in advance (which is a bad idea), hit Pause on your drip campaign until you can be sure that everything is still valid, true, and necessary. Take that opportunity to update your messages to better reflect your new approaches (see #2) and any new offers you might have.

5. Never, EVER refer to the “China virus”

We all know what this virus family is called — coronavirus — and what this particular strain is called — COVID-19. Those are the two most widely accepted terms that everyone knows and uses. The media is using them, the CDC and the World Health Organization are using them. It’s only certain government officials who are calling it the “China virus,” and it’s causing a lot of problems for Asian Americans.

They’re being threatened, verbally harassed, and in some cases, physically assaulted, all because some mouth-breathing halfwit thinks Chinese people are perpetuating the virus on our country. These are the same mouth-breathing halfwits who think you can also catch it by drinking Corona beer.

Which is made in Mexico. Which is not near China.

So if you use the term China virus, you’re just buying into the same racist dogwhistling nonsense as those other mouth-breathing halfwits. So don’t do it.

Good content marketers are always learning, always improving, always trying to do better. But there are times where we get lazy and settle into old habits and easy cliches just to get through the next assignment. But now is not the time to fall prey to that kind of thinking.

Your customers are counting on you in these troubled times.

Photo credit: Urban Artefakte (Flickr, Creative Commons)