Communications in a Coronavirus Age
There are many ways businesses have handled the crisis radically changing how our world works. What we’ve learned from helping our clients over the past few months is that there are creative communications solutions, and COVID-19 obstacles can actually be leveraged as opportunities. How?
You Can Leverage These Unusual Times By…
1. Rising to the Challenge
Communication during coronavirus is challenging for many businesses, and particularly so for retirement communities. Christian Living Communities (CLC) rose to the challenge. Since COVID-19 broke out, they have quickly and transparently communicated about the situation with staff, residents, family members and the general public. We have helped them tell positive stories highlighting how:
- Their communities are still creatively and safely celebrating the lives of residents – 108-year-old Gertie Abkes’ birthday story went viral nationally, covered by more than 230 TV, online and newspaper outlets and viewed by more than 25 million people.
- Their teams protected and successfully supported residents who had coronavirus.
- CLC used creative communications to get more personal protective equipment.
- Team members continue to explore new ways for tech to help residents grow and connect.
2. Boosting Your Online Presence
For many businesses, your website is now your front door and office. It’s important to have a strong and professional online presence. Does your website look like it’s still 2001? Have you started using eNewsletters and social media to tell your story? Our team helps with everything digital. We recently refreshed and re-launched a new site for Upper Trinity Regional Water District (UTRWD) with new content, design and better navigation.
3. Recplacing In-person Events
How do you share the successful completion of a project when COVID-19 cancels all in-person events? Take the story straight to the media.
Our clients Colorado Springs Utilities and Aurora Water successfully completed the Homestake Arkansas River Diversion (ARD) project earlier this summer. The ARD was a collaborative effort to reconnect a section of the Arkansas River, between Granite and Buena Vista, making this stretch navigable to rafters for the first time in 55 years.
COVID-19 cancelled the large ribbon cutting planned to mark the project’s completion. While the topic was still newsworthy, Sigler recommended announcing this key milestone directly to the media to boost public awareness. Reporters were able to visit the site while safely socially distancing.
The result? 13 stories on the three largest TV stations in Colorado (including 9News), Colorado Public Radio, Bloomberg News and local newspapers.
4. Exploring Virtual Options
Most projects rely on public meetings to share information and collect input from key stakeholders. That process can continue online, and in some ways it’s been even more successful to do public meetings virtually. For instance, we are seeing better attendance for online meetings than many in-person ones. We have organized online public meetings during COVID-19 for a client building a water pipeline and another seeking a county permit. Here are some of the benefits we’ve discovered: The online format…
- Provides the opportunity to advertise meetings through digital ads.
- Makes participation as easy as possible, increasing attendance.
- Offers attendees the option to view the meeting live or by watching the recording later.
- Allows your team to address questions/concerns individually & immediately.
- Identifies participants ahead of time and provides an easy way to follow up with them afterwards.
- Makes it easy to record and share your meeting.
