These days, the old adage “the only constant is change” is truer than ever. Between CDC updates, state-by-state and city-by-city stay at home orders, and just general best practices in dealing with and slowing the spread of the Coronavirus, information is updated very frequently. As such, the way businesses run, the services they offer, and the hours they’re open can also change in a moment’s notice. Communicating these changes to clients and potential clients is direly important if a business is to survive. Here are our tips for communicating changes during the pandemic.
Google, Facebook, and Yelp all allow a business to be marked as temporarily closed. USE THIS FUNCTION. One thing I’ve learned is that the general public does not pay attention to daily news briefings, and they typically hear what they want to hear. They will fight you on whether or not you’re actually allowed to open because of what they believe they heard. If stay-at-home orders keep your business from opening, please don’t trust that your clientele knows this. The “temporarily closed” function allows you to communicate your closure without having to claim you’re permanently closed (and starting from scratch when you’re allowed to reopen) AND from having to log in every day to set special hours.
Google and Yelp also have a section for special COVID-19-related messaging from businesses. This would be a perfect place to post any new policies that customers need to follow or your strategies for enforcing social distancing.
Facebook offers a choice of of “open with service changes” under your business page’s About section. If you choose this, a message shows on your page and any time your page is tagged saying, “Open with Service Changes – Call for Updates”.
Of course, any updates to your services, hours, etc should be posted to your website as well. The more prominent you can make the announcements there, the better. We feel it should also go without saying that stand-alone posts should go on all of your social media, as well. We know these are basics that probably everyone knows. But in times like these, making sure the checklist is 100% complete becomes crucial; essential items get missed too easily under stress. (That happens to everyone else, too, right?!?!?!?)
If you need help getting your message out, give us a shout! Let’s see if we’re a good fit, and if so, let’s hit the ground running!
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay