A Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s hope 2021 proves to be a better year than its predecessor. With vaccines rolling out, there is a ray of light at the end of what has been a very long tunnel.
Without a doubt 2020 was a challenging year as the world, as we know it, changed completely. I remember drafting a blog at the end of March last year outlining some working from home tips; little did I realise that we would still be working remotely in January this year – and likely to be continuing to do so until at least February, if not March. And now that we have all worked from home for so long, rather than the exception, it has become the norm and it is highly unlikely that the workplace will return to its previous state.
A year that left many dumbstruck
Likewise, 2020 was a year that left many speechless, which is somewhat ironic because there were so many seismic events during the year that Oxford Dictionaries had to expand its traditional “word of the year” to encompass several “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. These words were chosen to reflect 2020’s “ethos, mood, or preoccupations” and for the first time included: Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, circuit-breaker, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough, Black Lives Matter and moonshot. Unsurprisingly, use of the word “pandemic” increased by more than 57,000% in 2020 and I’m sure that when we look back on “Words of the Year” for 2021 “vaccines” will figure pretty highly.
As I mentioned earlier, what will evolve in 2021 is a more hybrid approach to the workplace with folks determining what works best for their own personal set up and certainly online and remote will continue to be king. I am sure that people will still go to the office to collaborate, but when solo working, rather than sitting at a desk with headphones on, they’ll probably opt to work from home.
Building a new business pipeline
Additionally, with different countries facing a variety of restrictions, lockdowns and timescales for vaccines, face to face meetings, events and many of the traditional tactics for building new business are still going to be hard. At the end of the day, you can’t call someone at home unless you know their mobile number and the chances are folks will only share that with a trusted source. So, the big dilemma is how do you reach those individuals, how do you reinforce your brand presence and build your new business pipeline?
This is where we have seen clients really ramping up their social media programmes with C8. We have undertaken activities such as managing their brand channels, executive ghosting, employee advocacy and social listening. Twitter chats and LinkedIn Live events have also been extremely popular.
The power of good content
Content has also been critical to fuel the social and digital activity and we have been inundated with requests in 2020 to write blogs, thought leadership articles, articles specifically for SEO, case studies – you name it. Outside of this, we have never had so many requests for independent market research projects to either substantiate a theme or topic or to understand the trends in the market better.
I am sure all these activities will continue to be popular in 2021 and perhaps the way we build relationships and opportunities will continue to be online. It will be interesting to see how the world evolves and what ‘normal’ ends up looking like.
But rest assured, whatever guise this takes, we are here to help, and anyone interested in understanding more about the social and digital activities that we are undertaking for our clients is very welcome to contact me on 07894 339645 or email paula@c8consulting.co.uk.