Reach For The Sunlight

Dear Reader,

How are you doing as you continue to shelter-in-place?

Even if you’re physically healthy, how is your mental health?

This COVID period adds stress and time to even the simplest activities, like food shopping.

So let’s reach for the sunlight.

The sunlight streams in through my windows bursting with light as I write this.

Last week, my husband and I added neighborhood walks to our daily routine.

Being outside made me feel alive even though half my face was covered by my homemade mask.

The streets of New York City were empty and quiet. The air felt cleaner than usual and the buildings along Fifth Avenue looked cleaner.

Instead of dressing their windows to attract shoppers, many shuttered businesses hastily hid them behind wooden boards or plain opaque paper. Due to the limited number of passerbys they’ve attracted very little graffiti.

Unlike humans, nature didn’t get the quarantine message. 

So flowers push through the brown dirt to show their full beauty in iron-bound squares at the base of trees and more freely in parks.

Getting out while safely practicing social distancing made me feel happier.

So what small thing can you do to give yourself a safety valve to feel better?

Even better, observing these plants, I realize that while I have no control over how long we’ll have to shelter-in-place, I can make the most of this period to become happier and more accepting.

Please join me to use this period to find new meaning in your life.

To put this in perspective, examine Bronnie Ware’s Regrets Of The Dying. As a caregiver for people in the last months of their lives Bronnie developed special relationships with her patients, and they confided in her out of a need to make their final peace with life.

Learn from the 5 main regrets of the dying to become more content with yourself:

• I wish that I had lived a life that was true to me, not what others expected of me.
• I wish that I hadn’t worked so hard. 
• I wish that I had the courage to express my feelings. 
• I wish that I had stayed in touch with my friends. 
• I wish that I had let myself be happy.

In a sense this period of coronavirus is like the netherworld you experience when someone you love is dying. It’s filled with uncertainty and anxiety.

These grim details are very real for those who are seriously ill or dying from coronavirus as well as for the health workers treating them. 

But the rest of us also are experiencing very real losses. They’re just packaged differently. They include handling childcare with no external support, homeschooling with limited resources, challenging work conditions (including lack or loss  of work), caring for aging parents, and/or being physically alone.

So ask yourself, what is truly important to you? 
And look deep inside you to find the answers that matter the most to you. 

While stressful, anxiety-provoking and binge-inducing, this virus gives you an opportunity to hit “Reset” on your life. So use the constraints of your current situation to create the life you want post-COVID-19.

While we’re all  sheltering-in-place together, each of us experiences this period differently and must make our own accommodations tailored to our specific constraints.

The good news for you and your marketing:
Constraints force you to be more creative. (BTW: For regular servings of creative inspiration, subscribe to Allen Gannett’s newsletter.)

 

Want to succeed?
Then give yourself permission to be bad when you first try anything new.

Even experts with big budget support need time to figure out the new normal. 

For an example that you can apply to your marketing, examine how last night television hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel had to adapt to working from home without a live audience.

Despite years of experience creating professional quality consistent content and preparing for remote teams and broadcast, these hosts still had to adapt to their less equipped home studios.

Stephen Colbert’s first at home broadcast had bumps since he was accustomed to reading the live audience and getting cues from his on-air team. (And you will too!)

So where did he turn for help?
His long time friend, John Oliver, who, as host Last Week Tonight, was in a similar situation. 

With practice Stephen Colbert developed his broadcast from home groove.

And, even better, along with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, he hosted Global Citizen’s One World Together Home an amazing array of celebrities. 

This unusual piece of co-created content was simulcast by the 3 broadcast networks to entertain audiences while raising awareness and money to fight COVID-19.

 

Before you tell me that you’re a marketer with a small staff or no staff, take a page from my friends Ann Handley and Marcus Sheridan who have created a twice weekly streaming video #InThisTogether on LinkedIn. 

Often known as “The Pool Guy”, Marcus is the original scrappy marketer. He taught himself inbound marketing to save his in-ground pool business during the housing crash of 2008. In the process, Marcus developed the “They Ask, You Answer” approach.

While Ann brings the house to their feet every time she speaks, she openly admits in their first LinkedIn video that she is a deer-in-the-headlights. But over the past month, Ann has upped her video game.

Check out their complete set of videos:
https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=%23InThisTogether%20ann%20%2B%20marcus

BTW, please share with me how you’ve transformed your marketing during this period. I’d love to spotlight it. #Truth!

 

So what can you do to improve your marketing during this holding phase?

If you have a business that’s in a holding pattern now, as many businesses are, use this period to plan for the post-COVID rebound. (BTW, My friend and all around smartie, Andy Crestodina has 26 tips to help you.)

Use these 3 actionable marketing tips to help you accomplish this:

• Examine your business’s current resources and determine how you’ll allocate them to keep your business going and retain employees.
• Assess messaging across your business for consistency and relevancy during this period. Beyond your marketing, PR and advertising, examine all communications including those integrated into other processes. such as purchase emails and bills. Also work with senior management to ensure they come across as relevant and human.
• Double down on deepening customer relationships. Ask how you can help and skip sales and marketing push. Where appropriate get senior executives involved in these conversations. It makes your customers feel that they matter to your business.

 

Shoutout to new readers: Ali, Angel, Eugene, Imran, Mason, Laura, Olalekan, Mohsen, Nick, Nugwa, Brian, Rotimi, Simone, Venkatesh, Vanessa, Pascal, Ginny, Peter, Chloe and Hskjfsd.

Welcome and thank you for joining our community.

I hope that you and those your care about stay healthy both physically and mentally.

Happy Marketing,
Heidi

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Use this period to test out new ways to extend the reach and life of each piece of content.

To help you, here are 50+ tactics you can follow.

 

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During this COVID period, do you find it difficult to communicate with people whose minds you need to change? 

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Jonah’s REDUCE framework will not only help you to improve your communications while you shelter-in-place but also help you craft better marketing messages going forward.

 

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This in-depth article contains a broad range of related tactics you may not usually think about.

In addition to getting organized, it will help you to make sure your devices remain secure