How to adapt your content marketing to an unexpected shift

By Rob Mills

The editorial calendar was full for the next 8 weeks, social media posts were scheduled for the coming weeks and the weekly newsletter content was confirmed for a month. Beyond this, there were lots of chats happening about other content initiatives. It’s taken a long time to get that ahead with the scheduling and alongside this, I was starting to work on creating a similar system for higher education-specific content.  Add to this the strategic work around our company objective including audience research, customer interviews and cross-departmental collaboration and things were looking good.

Then the world changed. Sounds dramatic but by now we all know what I mean by this. Overnight businesses found themselves with a team adjusting to working from home. Infrastructures were pushed to their limits, flaws in processes were exposed and the need for clear communication was never more apparent. Add to this all of the personal circumstances and impact people were experiencing and enduring and frankly, there was no such as business as usual.

As someone responsible for the content GatherContent publishes and shares, it was apparent that we too couldn’t just carry on with everything we had planned. But it was also a brand new territory. There was no content playbook for a global pandemic (I guess there is now!).

Here are five areas that helped us respond considerately during a crisis

  1. Care about your audience (and content)

  2. Listen, and keep listening

  3. Lead with value

  4. Manage expectations

  5. Be human and honest

I’ll write about each of these in a little more detail to explain how it helped us with our communications and marketing in the midst of a crisis.

Care about your audience (and content)

If you don’t care about your audience and the content you create for them then anything you do will smack of not being authentic or useful. I’ve always favoured quality over quantity and genuinely care about providing valuable content to our audience. We produce articles and resources that are meant to help people improve their processes, level-up their skills and inform their content operations.

By caring about what we produce and who we produce it for, our immediate response to a fast-changing situation was that we need to get our response right. We need to determine what people care about right now and what we can provide to serve those needs. Caring was more necessary than ever before and it was the basis for all of our decision-making and ensuring we didn’t just carry on and then wonder why people were offended or disgruntled.

Listen and keep listening

If we had carried on as per our editorial schedule and not acknowledged what was happening it would have been a tone-deaf response. We wouldn’t have been listening. That’s risky at the best of times, more so in past weeks.

I was having email conversations with peers, watching what was being said on social channels and following along with chats in Slack groups. It was a lot of information to process, but an absolutely necessary step in responding and adapting in the best manner.

There were some patterns emerging very quickly. The number of posts on remote working was reaching saturation point, random letters and emails from CEOs about their companies response to COVID-19 were not helpful (or wanted!), and certain words and phrases were starting to become triggers for people.

We’re a remote company and have been for several years. We also have a product that is made for collaboration around content. There were so many things we could have written and shared. We didn’t. Sure, we discussed them but quickly determined it wasn’t the right approach. Rather, I made a small list of vocabulary that I didn’t want to include in our content 

We were listening to what people were saying, the things they were appreciating and the things they were fed up with. We heard. That’s a joy of being a digital world, so much insight is at your fingertips, you just have to listen and act accordingly.

Rather than share how GatherContent was reacting to COVID-19 for its employees (we could provide that if asked), we led with value. Having all these examples of what people were appreciating or annoyed with (there were more examples of the latter!) also allowed me to have honest conversations with the GatherContent team. ‘I don’t think we should publish the newsletter as usual this week because [examples of what I’ve heard/seen/listened].

Leading with value

The big question for us to answer is what can we do that would be the most useful for our audience? We have two newsletters, one for those working in higher ed and one for everyone else. In both cases, we paused publishing of scheduled content, we scaled back our social media posts and we stopped live-tweeting during webinars. We didn’t want to add noise. After much debate, we decided to keep sending the weekly newsletters, but not with whatever content we had scheduled for that week.

For the higher ed audience, we wrote an article looking at the content some universities had created in response to COVID-19. The thinking here was that it would help other content professionals in that industry with what they could be providing for their students, staff and other audiences. We also shared a list of useful articles and resources, specifically for higher ed, that we had seen published by others.

For the main newsletter in week one, we shared links to three older articles from our inventory that I felt would be very useful in the circumstances. They were:

I received quite a few replies from subscribers saying that the articles were useful and they were glad we sent them. We listened, we adapted, we led with value. It seemed to have been received as we intended and hoped.

In the second week, we didn’t just think, ok we changed our approach last week so we’re back on track. The emails continued to acknowledge the circumstances and share external links or content that we felt would be particularly helpful. Remember, we cared before all this and we cared even more as the weeks unfolded.

Manage expectations

I felt it was important to try and manage the expectations of our audience, as much as could be achieved. I mentioned in one newsletter that we would start publishing new content again the following week so it didn’t just seem like we reverted to the schedule without a second thought.

I also contacted every presenter that we had webinars and masterclasses arranged with and checked they were still able/willing to present. It was important to me that when I did promote our events, I could be clear that this was with agreement from the presenters themselves. Assume nothing. If a presenter felt they didn’t have the headspace or capacity to present, we would cancel or rearrange. Empathy and consideration were needed in all directions, only then could I manage the expectations of everyone I was working with and communicating too. That includes me being able to manage the expectations of the GatherContent team too.

Be human and honest

We’re all people going through a tough time. To think otherwise would have been naive. We didn’t know where the line between acceptable and unacceptable was, but we knew it was a thin line. If we weren’t honest and human in our approach to our content, communication and marketing, it would have undone years of hard work creating a brand and reputation built on useful, helpful content from people who care.

I started the first newsletter that I sent when the pandemic started resulting in worldwide lockdowns with:

Business as usual seems to be getting redefined day by day at the moment, and I wasn't sure whether to send the newsletter this week. I decided to go ahead with the hope that it will be helpful.

And I ended it with:

Really hope these articles help with any content challenges that arise, especially those that may be unexpected or reactive.

I agonised for hours over this newsletter. I wrote it and re-wrote it over and over again throughout the day. Then I thought, I’m going to be honest and real about how I’m feeling and whether or not sending it is a good idea. It would have seemed so odd to pretend nothing was different.

The start of the second newsletter was:

Another week of trying to get-by despite everything that's happening. Personally, I'm finding some comfort in things that are still the same, and so with agreement from our presenter, this week's online masterclass is going ahead.

This is how I proceeded. I spent more time on these newsletters in these last few weeks than ever before. It was time well spent because we have been able to continue providing value to or audiences and have had lots of conversations with them about our approach, what they’re finding useful, and what information they would find helpful.

Start with good intentions, listen for what’s working

There are two main things I’d like to leave you with that have really made a difference for me, in my role, at this time. The first is that I believed that so long as we had the best intentions with all that we did, we would be ok. The second is that we haven’t stopped listening to our audience. That’s an ongoing process and one that will continue to try and ensure we provide value, communicate considerately and never forget that we are people talking to people, regardless of the channel in which we do so.

Learn more

Our UK-based digital agency member Distinction has written an excellent post on How to ensure marketing teams remain productive during COVID-19.

If you are ready to get out from behind your screen, do consider joining one of our peer groups or upcoming Boye conferences.