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Garth Moore
Content Strategy

Simplicity: Digital messaging re: COVID-19

Health systems, government offices, school websites, and restaurants, and almost everyone needs to message about the Coronavirus online, e.g., using their websites, videos, social media channels, and email marketing to reach their audiences. Some industries have a straightforward message to post (e.g., “We’re closed until further notice:) while others have several words for a variety of audiences (think the state, county, and local offices). The one thing they have in common? Their audiences need to be able to look at a message, a web page, or a video and get the news immediately.

If this is you, then this is an excellent time to optimize and improve your website and organic messaging channels (as opposed to paid marketing). Don’t cut messaging back, in fact, overcommunicate. Sadly, you have a relatively captive audience. But, keep it simple.

A few messaging basics on simplicity:

  • Active sentences, shorter paragraphs, bullets when you can. Keep it short; keep it simple. Provide details where needed, but readability is paramount to your success.
  • Your voice and tone? Factual, honest, open, compassionate, reassuring, thankful. We all already scared, angry, confused. Your audience doesn’t need that right now. Be a bit informal and use a loud voice. Here’s a great primer on voice-tone from Nielsen Norman Group.
  • Images? Yes, whenever possible? Video? Yes. From a produced piece to a simple phone video. Show the story; don’t just tell it.
  • Show a timestamp to keep your visitors informed on when you last updated the page if you are updating content frequently.
  • Keep the calendar! Yes, you’re posting updates as needed. But, as much as you can create a content calendar to keep posts organized and re-post as required.

For your website:

  • Keep your page layouts simple and accessible for all audiences.
  • Get your message on your website’s homepage, even if you link to a secondary page with all of your information.
  • Keep SEO best practices with keyworded page titles (and use H1 tags for your page titles), descriptive meta titles, and page descriptions; up to 70 characters for page titles and 160- characters for descriptions.
  • Label your image ALT tags with keywords that work (e.g., your company or org name and Coronavirus).
  • Don’t hide your most important information in PDFs, where possible, put it on a page. If your content volume is too much for a page, publish them with an excerpt on the page so that people know what’s in the PDF.
  • And, of course, Make sure your site loads quickly, works well for mobile browsers, and is secure. Not sure about these, try using seositecheckup.com to see how you can improve your site.

A few great examples of keeping it short and simple:

Social media:

  • Drive traffic to your website in your social channel bios, whether that’s your homepage or a coronavirus page on your site. You don’t need to explain everything in a post.
  • Keep character counts down, when possible: Facebook: 40 characters or less; Twitter: 70-100 characters; LinkedIn 50-100 characters
  • Have a lot of say on Twitter, thread tweets into a conversation. See these helpful thread tips.
  • Use video natively in social media, with captions.
  • Want to try live streaming? Now is the time to try it. See tips from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
  • Engage with your audience and ask for feedback. Use polls, ask for comments, and then reply to comments, especially on Twitter, when possible.

Email marketing:

  • Now is an excellent time to keep up with steady cadence with your email marketing program. Tell your audience in advance of any changes with more frequent messages and offer ways to select/opt-out for a less regular schedule.
  • Keep emails short, with a call to action to engage on your website.
  • Find a person at your organization as the email sender. Put a name/voice to your messages with your audiences.
  • Make sure your email marketing automation is up to par as you sign on new subscribers. Get them into your Coronavirus messaging immediately.
  • Give your subscribers who want to leave your email more options to stay in touch, like those mentioned.

We’re a few months into this crisis with more weeks, possibly months, ahead of this new normal. As this crisis hits your business, be sure to keep posting, updating, and assuring your audiences. If you’re closing, let your audience know. If you’re scaling back, let them know that, too.

Use these tips to keep up your messaging and keep engaged with your viewers. Don’t think of digital communications as “virtual,” with the world at a standstill; they are very much real.