April 2020 - Big Bold Thinkers

Engage to be Engaging

Posted on April 28, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Welcome to the third article in our series, “The New Digital Marketing.” Over seven weeks, I’m going to lead you through the steps of developing your own online marketing strategy from start to finish. Whether you’re a traditional brick and mortar business getting online for the first time – or have had your digital ducks in a row for years… the world has changed and we are adapting. Let’s do it together. This week I want to look at ways we can “Engage to be Engaging.”

If you’re just joining us, don’t miss the first two pieces in this series:

Week 1: Realign and Get Online

Week 2: Virtual Meetings and Conferences

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If content is king, engagement is queen–and we all know the future is female. The best part of digital marketing is the opportunity to build a virtual community around your brand, and what a gift that is when we can’t be together in person.

By now, in preparation for our new normal, hopefully you’ve done a thorough realignment and pivoted your messaging. You’ve also spent time developing an online avenue for meetings and events. So now we get to go after the heart of it. Successfully marketing to an audience that we can’t physically be in front of takes more than great copy and media. We have to get our tribe talking about us and with us. Here’s how:

Plan and measure. Before you start developing content, decide what engagement means to you. The term is used loosely in marketing to describe a variety of things – from clicks and likes to comments and shares. And beyond that, leads and conversions of those leads to sales. More on that later. For now though, be sure that you know what kind of interaction you want and how you’ll measure its effectiveness.
Blog. Become your brand’s voice and establish yourself as the expert in your field with an engaging blog. Use social listening to understand the pain points of your audience and offer them relief with professional advice that they can act on. Once your blog post is live on your site – share it far and wide. Engage with your audience by asking open-ended questions about the article topic and then respond in the comments when they answer.
Leverage the power of the group. Build your own and join the ones that are already popular with your audience on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Join as both yourself and your company so that you can volley comments from both sides. Now that we are physically separated, online groups are exploding in popularity and, more importantly, immersive engagement. Be a conversation starter. Show your expertise by commenting on the posts of others. This is not a place for a sales pitch, so be human. When people start to see you shine they’ll want to work with you.
Grab attention with digital media. Like any online content, the image that you pair with your copy is paramount. Have a video? Even better. Can you shoot a live video? Do it. The images we use to tell our stories are the initial draw. They’re the carrot at the end of your stick. Make them count.
Invite engagement. While this may sound obvious–the best way to get people to participate in a discussion or conversation is to invite them. Ask questions. Take polls. Make them laugh or stir emotions. Tell stories and ask your audience to comment with similar experiences, struggles or successes. This is where your humanity is your greatest asset–be real and authentic and your audience will respond.

You’re ready to jump in and get people talking. Build your audience into a powerhouse of interaction and engagement. Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk.

Remember, we are on this journey together.

The next step in our journey is digital strategic planning and its place in your new marketing plan. See you next week with an article on how to “Strategize for the New Normal.” Comment below with your thoughts on these ideas and share your successes.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Virtual Meeting and Conferences

Posted on April 23, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Welcome to the second article in our series, “The New Digital Marketing.” Over seven weeks I’m going to lead you through the steps of developing your own online marketing strategy from start to finish. Whether you’re a traditional brick and mortar business getting online for the first time – or have had your digital ducks in a row for years… the world has changed and we are adapting. Let’s do it together. Today we are digging into, “Virtual Meetings and Conferences.”

If you’re just joining us, don’t miss the first piece in this series:

Week 1: Realign and Get Online

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Remember Maslow and his brilliantly simple pyramid illustrating the hierarchy of human needs? Coming in third, only after our physiological and safety requirements, is our need for social love and belonging. We weren’t meant to be solitary beings. Humans thrive and find magic in connection and collaboration. We discover strength, solidarity and meaning through social interaction.

It’s no wonder we began to gather – and eventually to bring together our social and professional needs in the form of meetings, conferences and tradeshows. These serve to connect us on many levels as professionals, but there’s more to it than that. This is where we meet our tribe. We find a place where we belong and people with whom we relate. This need to connect to other humans is a powerful behavioral motivator. So, we meet.

Then, the world changed…

So, we are on this new digital marketing journey together. By now, you’ve got your team meeting setup to realign and get online. The next step is to determine new ways of satisfying this human need to connect at a time when live, in-person meeting is difficult or impossible.

Be brave and bold – your ability to innovate will let you shine like a light in the darkness.

Here’s how:

Meetings. Online meetings aren’t new, but as often happens in a crisis, we are all moving rapidly towards using technology and taking leaps that we’ve been putting off. Checkout our Online Meeting 101 article for the basics plus some important ideas for innovation.
Conferences. Here’s a secret – a conference is just a formal meeting, or a series of them. We use conferences to connect larger groups of like-minded individuals over an extended time period–and yes, they are still going to happen in the digital universe. We just need to get creative. Here’s how.
Tradeshows. Collaboration with our industry peers is crucial for every business. We need to share common struggles and innovative solutions with each other. Tradeshows are a chance to meet the players and experience their brand activations in action. It can still happen online and we can help.
Events and activations. The most powerful way I’ve found to build brand awareness is through direct interaction with our customers. This category may require the most creative thought. Our natural inclination is to just put our heads down and wait, but that’s not going to start building your sales funnels for the new normal. So, Here are some ideas to overcome this unique challenge.

So, don’t cancel that event – reinvent it. Gather your people together and be the first to try that new thing. Technology offers incredible solutions to meet our human social needs. Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk. Remember, we are on this journey together.

The next step in our journey is digital strategic engagement and its place in your new normal. See you next week with an article on how to “Engage to be Engaging.” Comment below with your thoughts on these ideas and share your successes.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Digital Events and Activations

Posted on April 23, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Not just a cool marketing buzz-word, brand activations are the most powerful way I’ve found to build awareness through direct interaction with our customers. In the new marketing world, this category may require the most creative thought. Our natural inclination is to put our heads down and wait, but that’s not going to start building your sales funnels for the new normal.

So, how do we engage directly with our customers when we can’t be together? Enter the virtual magic:

Purchasing decisions are highly influenced by what our peers are doing. Leverage social media interactions to get your followers to spread the word for you. Tap into our psychological desire to belong, by promoting an opportunity for subscribers to share their “Your Brand Here Moment.” Invite them to take a selfie with your product or of themselves (or their cat, or kid) while experiencing your service. Position the roots of this promotion within the social platform you want to target, so if it’s on Facebook – only sell this item there for a limited time. Create a unique hashtag to unite all the buzz into one powerful voice. Create an entire customer experience from start to finish that engages, taps into real feelings and simply has to be shared.
Use empathy to provide a specific solution directed at your unique audience. Remember that all marketing is identification of a pain-point and then relief of it. So take an empathetic look at your target audience, and find a digital solution to their pain. Use social listening to stay on top of what’s trending and offer solutions to match. For example, as I write this today, we are in the throes of a pandemic which has forced our events and activations online. I know from social listening that my audience wants to know how to take these marketing pieces online and I can help them do just that. Aaah, relief.
Tap into influencers to provide online demos of your brand. Everyone loves a good unboxing video – get your product in front of the world by having the right person demonstrate its use and value while displaying it to their audience. Then share and boost this awesome video strategically to your target audience. This is a highly repeatable method of product demonstration that continues to skyrocket in popularity on social media.
Take the analog events you love and make a bold and brave jump to digital. If you were planning to launch your event at a summer tradeshow – invite your audience to experience the launch online through a hosted and interactive event. Take the best parts of the event and get creative. Send invitations and promotional products to users at home to entice them to join the event while putting your brand in their hand, literally. Inspire interaction and conversation around your launch by setting up discussion groups to promote and review what’s new. Invite industry experts to present or interact with your new launched product or service. Have fun with it.

Events and activations aren’t canceled, they’re changed. And we can pivot our approach to change too. Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk. Remember, we are on this journey together.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Virtual Conferences

Posted on April 23, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

A conference is typically a more formal affair, falling somewhere between a meeting and a tradeshow. While providing attendees an opportunity to connect, your virtual conference should also offer components of learning and community building. It’s not a tradeshow, where you have a group of buyers (attendees) and sellers (vendors/exhibitors). At the conference level everyone attends with a shared passion, vision and desire to expand their knowledge base while making personal and professional connections. So, here’s the formula for taking your conference online:

Setup:

Jump off with a platform. Just like when planning a virtual tradeshow, you’ll need a digital venue to host your conference. Most virtual tradeshow platforms will offer everything you need and then some, but you might also be able to use a more robust version of your everyday meeting software. There are several good options out there – do your research to find one that meets your needs and get signed up.
(Because needs will vary from business to business and legal requirements in your area may differ – I will refrain from recommending platforms by name here, but I’m glad to discuss your needs and help you find the right fit.)
Plan the logistics. Choose the event dates and times as well as the distribution methods of your digital promotional materials.
Invite industry experts to speak. There’s often no better lure to an event than a chance to listen to someone that can help you build your business.
Invite industry brands to sponsor. Sponsorships are a great way to share the cost of the event with other companies while offering them an opportunity to promote their business to attendees.
Invite your potential attendees directly. Before you start inviting people en masse you’ll want to line up some well known industry names as attendees or speakers to lend credibility to your event. You’ll also want to decide how many paid attendees you need to hit your breakeven.

Pre-Show Planning:

Design a digital itinerary for everyone. Detail the time and topics for each speaker, when the breakout sessions will happen and when there will be opportunities for networking and parties. Link everything, so no one has to go digging for it. We want to design everything with the user’s experience in mind.
Plan engaging content. You want to keep your audience enthralled throughout the event. So design your marketing to match the level of enthusiasm you want from your audience. Keep it sleek and professional. Of course, you can send out a pre-conference kit electronically – but I invite you to consider something different. Especially if you are planning a conference that is typically held in-person, consider spending some of that typically higher budget on a wow-factor for the online version. Send a conference welcome kit to the attendee’s door. Include invitations to the events, itinerary and a drink recipe for the BYOB happy hour you’re hosting. Include promotional products – because everyone loves conference SWAG and we aren’t going to give that up to go virtual. Get them excited with items that inspire creativity and illustrate the level of expertise they can expect from your show.
Plan next year’s conference dates. I know it’s a long way off – but you have a captive audience that you know is already interested in the subject of your conference, right there. Don’t miss the chance to market next year’s event at this one and offer a discount or a premium gift for early-bird registration.

It’s Show-Time:

Provide large-audience meeting formats for keynote and secondary speakers. These can be hosted in your usual video meeting space with some careful planning or within a virtual conference platform. You’ll also want the ability for your speaker to show a presentation as they talk and the opportunity for moderated interaction when appropriate.
Breakout sessions are the new networking event. One of the best parts of any conference is the socialization. This is where we meet our people and make connections that can lead to new opportunities and long-lasting relationships. Breakout Sessions on an online meeting platform offer a unique opportunity for a moderator to provide a topic for learning or industry specific conversation starters and then mix and match your audience into small groups to get to know each other and discuss.
Host a party at the end of the event and add virtual happy hours to the close of each day. Don’t miss the opportunity to offer that human connection in a virtual setting. Plan live music intermingled with breakout sessions for people to talk and make new connections. Get your sponsors involved – what value can they add to a social session? Have attendance prizes and encourage people to connect both personally and professionally.

Post-Show:

Follow up and survey. Send a note to attendees thanking them for attending and soliciting their thoughts on every part of the experience. Reach out personally to each sponsor to thank them and to follow up on their perception of value. Offer ways for them to reach attendees, like a list of everyone that joined the conference (with their permission, of course). Encourage them to reach out in order to maximize their investment.
Debrief. Meet with your stakeholders to discuss next year’s event. Pros, cons, what worked, what didn’t and what you’re going to do next time are all on the table for discussion. Set a date for next year’s first planning meeting – and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk. Remember, we are on this journey together.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Virtual Tradeshows

Posted on April 22, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

I love a good tradeshow. Combining marketing activation, meeting new potential clients and then converting those leads into sales is kind of my specialty. Tradeshows give us a chance to market and collaborate with our industry peers–which is really crucial for every business. We need to share common struggles and innovative solutions with each other. Tradeshows are a chance to meet the players and experience their brand activations in action.

Hosting a virtual tradeshow is an awesome thing. Here’s how you pull it off.

Setup:

Jump off with a platform. You’ll need a digital venue to host your tradeshow. There are several good ones out there – do your research to find one that meets your needs and get signed up.
(Because needs will vary from business to business and legal requirements in your area may differ – I will refrain from recommending platforms by name here, but I’m glad to discuss your needs and help you find the right fit.)
Plan the logistics. Choose the event dates and times as well as the distribution methods of your digital promotional materials.
Registration should be an experience. Rather than a necessary link in the chain, create a registration journey that fits your brand and foreshadows the event experience. Don’t neglect the UI/UX here, get them excited.
Invite industry experts to speak. There’s often no better lure to an event than a chance to listen to someone that can help you build your business.
Invite industry leaders to sponsor. Sponsorships are a great way to share the cost of the event with other companies while offering them an opportunity to promote their business to attendees.
Invite your vendors/exhibitors and attendees. Which to target first can be a circular problem, but you’ll want to line up some well known industry names to lend credibility to your event quickly. Before you begin, decide how many of each you need to hit your breakeven.

Pre-Show Planning:

Setup a plan for your vendors that is centered around the important leads they need and offers a plan to capture prospect data for followup. You need to help drive traffic to their booths. This is a chance for you to offer something innovative, like an interactive directory, scheduled live demos on the show floor or paid advertising opportunities. Exhibitors could even send a promotional item to attendees before the event to pique their interest. Happy vendors will come back year after year – and the key to their success is lead generation.
Guide your exhibitors in setting up their virtual booth space in a way that reflects their brand and offers a marketing activation experience for their potential customers. Since virtual tradeshows will be new to some of your vendors – help them make the most of their experience. The UI/UX here is of the utmost importance. What do they want their first impression to be for a potential lead?
Design an itinerary for everyone. Detail the times that the virtual show floor will be open, when the speakers will be presenting, when the breakout sessions will happen and when there will be opportunities for networking and parties. Link everything, so no one has to go digging for it. Again, we want to design everything with the user’s experience in mind.
Plan engaging content. You want to keep your audience enthralled throughout the event. So design your marketing to match the level of enthusiasm you want from your audience. Keep it sleek and professional. Of course, you can send out a pre-show kit electronically – but I invite you to consider something different. Maybe you send a show welcome kit to the attendee’s door. Include invitations to the events, itinerary and a drink recipe for the BYOB happy hour you’re hosting. Include promotional products – because everyone loves tradeshow SWAG and we aren’t going to give that up for a virtual show. Get them excited with items that inspire creativity and illustrate the level of expertise they can expect from your show.
Plan next year’s event dates. I know it’s a long way off – but you have a captive audience that you know is already interested in your show, right there. Don’t miss the chance to market next year’s event at this one and offer a discount or a premium gift for early-bird registration.

It’s Show-Time:

Provide an opportunity for exhibitors to chat with attendees on the virtual show floor–both voice chat and texting should be available. It’s also good practice to have a group chat for the booth as well as the ability to break-out into a one-on-one or several-on-one conversation for more in-depth discussions.
Provide large-scale meeting formats for keynote and secondary speakers. These can be hosted in your usual video meeting space or within the virtual tradeshow platform. You’ll also want the ability for your speaker to show a presentation as they talk and the opportunity for moderated interaction when appropriate.
Breakout sessions are the new networking event. One of the best parts of any tradeshow is the socialization. This is where we meet our people and make connections that can lead to new opportunities and long-lasting relationships. Breakout Sessions on an online meeting platform offer a unique opportunity for a moderator to provide a topic for learning or industry specific conversation starters and then mix and match your audience into small groups to get to know each other and discuss.
Host a party at the end of the event and add virtual happy hours to the close of each day. Don’t miss the opportunity to offer that human connection in a virtual setting. Plan live music intermingled with breakout sessions for people to talk and make new connections. Get your vendors involved – what value can they add to a social session? Have attendance prizes and encourage people to connect both personally and professionally.

Post-Show:

The ultimate success of a tradeshow will be measured by the leads to sales conversions for your exhibitors. So, anything you can do to help facilitate that process is in your best interest for future events.
Provide lists of attendees to vendors for follow up (with their permission, of course). Design some cool digital materials that your vendors can use to send followup notes to their hot new leads from the show. Offer solutions to your vendors to help them drive conversion of those leads into sales.
Follow up, survey and debrief. Send a note to exhibitors and attendees alike thanking them for attending and soliciting their thoughts on every part of the experience. Then meet with your stakeholders to discuss next year’s event. Pros, cons, what worked, what didn’t and what you’re going to do next time are all on the table for discussion. Set a date for next year’s first planning meeting – and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Don’t cancel that event, reinvent it. Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk. Remember, we are on this journey together.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Virtual Meeting 101

Posted on April 22, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Online meetings aren’t new, but we are all moving rapidly towards using technology and taking leaps that we’ve been putting off in order to be successful in this new normal. So, maybe this is a refresher for you – or maybe you’ll learn some new tricks. Let’s dive in.

Your needs here are basic – internet, webcam and audio for each of your audience members and a secure video conferencing platform to do it on. Most online meetings can now be attended from a computer, phone or tablet from almost anywhere that one can get online.

(Because your needs and the regulations where you live will vary, I’m going to refrain from making suggestions on platforms by name – but I’m glad to have a conversation about pros and cons anytime.)

We have an opportunity to innovate in how we approach our meetings in the new normal:

1. Be real. If only one positive comes out of the situation we find ourselves in today – let it be that we embrace the real us. To be human is to be vulnerable. Get on that video call and show your face. The real you – without a recent haircut, manicure or dye job. Skip the makeup if you want… skip the pants if you want. You are enough. You be you, and let others in your tribe know that they can be themselves too.

2. Break the ice. If virtual meetings are a newish thing for you and your team, consider throwing in a team building or icebreaker exercise. This could be as simple as having everyone stand up, stretch as one and clear their minds to focus on the task at hand. Or, as kitchy as a summer-camp icebreaker game. Try using the polling feature on your meeting platform to ask an icebreaker question with three possible answers and share the results with the team. This simple exercise can demonstrate that we are going through some of the same challenges and experiencing some of the same emotions. Choose an activity that will be mildly entertaining while highlighting humanity and strengthening the bond of the group. We’re all in this together, so be sure you connect as people before you dig into the work.

3. Be organized. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to add a virtual collaboration and task-management platform to your team’s software arsenal. More on this in a future post, but I can’t stress enough that you need to get your marketing deliverables in a live space that you can all communicate in. Don’t suffer through chain emails or forwarded work product ever again. These antiquated solutions are bad enough when we are all in the same office building, and nearly impossible to be productive with in an all-virtual space.

4. Be considerate. Be sure to communicate the anticipated length of your meeting ahead of time. Working from home means different things for each of us. Some are juggling kids, loved ones or caring for the ill, so be respectful of everyone’s time by planning ahead. You’ll need a digital agenda that can be found on your above mentioned collaboration platform prior to the meeting. Invite others to the task to add agenda items or resolve items that don’t need to be included in the meeting. Set a timeline for the meeting and stick to it, scheduling additional conversations for items that need more time.

5. Be branded. Brand awareness is paramount when we are dealing with each other in a digital paradigm. Take advantage of ways to showcase your brand online. Adding a branded background to your video calls is a simple way to break up the monotony of online meetings. Depending on the virtual meeting platform you choose, there are also opportunities to brand your business throughout the process of setting up, inviting and registering your audience for your meeting.

Meetings are a powerful piece of our cultural connections. Don’t shy away from them now. Push yourself to gather online. Take your brand boldly into the new normal. Keep pushing for real, authentic interaction with your tribe and keep your brand top-of-mind. If you need more ideas or a plan to get started, let’s talk. Remember, we are on this journey together.

Wishing you light and love. ~Hema

Realign and Get Online

Posted on April 15, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

Welcome to the first article in our series, “The New Digital Marketing.” Over seven weeks I’m going to lead you through the steps of developing your own online marketing strategy from start to finish. Whether you’re a traditional brick and mortar business getting online for the first time – or have had your digital ducks in a row for years… the world has changed and we are adapting. Let’s do it together, starting where every business needs to start right this minute, “Realign and Get Online.”

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Humans love a good journey. A narrative that has a start, middle and planned finish. It soothes us, gives us purpose-driven meaning and assures us that we are doing the right thing.

Before you took your brand to market – you met with your stakeholders and aligned yourselves, right? You came together in a collaborative meeting of the minds to ensure that you were all focused on the same goals, united in the planned execution of deliverables and agreed upon, measurable KPIs. This is your brand’s journey.

Then, the last month happened…

So, I invite you to join me on a new journey. We are going to reboot, restart and realign. Your marketing journey has a new route (maybe even a new destination) and you and your stakeholders need to realign and pivot. Your new journey’s path is digital and you’ve got to get everyone onboard and online to get to your destination. Here’s how:

1.Meet. Get a virtual meeting scheduled for a week from now. Include department heads or stakeholders from every group, not just sales and marketing. Do you have an online meeting platform? If not, now’s the time. You are going to be using it a lot. Like, really – a lot.

2.Engage. Give your team a heads up that you are going to realign your marketing goals with a digital focus and ask for contributions from each member based on their areas of expertise and engagement. Don’t dictate to them, connect and engage them in the process. Their ownership of the outcomes are directly related to their involvement in the planning.

3.Plan. Be ready to discuss where you were headed in your journey and which parts of that map need to be adjusted and brought into the new normal. Send out brainstorming topics ahead of time to encourage big-picture and both long and short-term thinking, planning and goal setting.

During your realignment meeting:

1.Strategize. Set new or updated goals. Identify and adjust target markets. Think carefully about how you will connect with them online. Use empathy to determine what their pain points are and how you can relieve them right now. What about in a month? Six months? Bring them humanity and added value, not a sales pitch.

2.Organize. Set yourself up for digital success. Think about what needs to happen on your website and social media to reach your target audience and make your goals happen. Plan to revamp and relaunch a more robust website. Be sure you are hitting all of your demographics by diversifying your social media platforms. Add digital conferencing and an online collaboration tool for your team. Develop analytics baselines from this point to determine forward progress.

3.Develop Executables and measurable KPIs. Don’t leave without an outline for a one month digital marketing plan. Organize your social media and blog calendars by topics that reflect your goals and target audiences – and then distribute content collaboration to the appropriate team members so that everyone has executable tasks and deadlines. Determine KPIs that will mean success in meeting your goals.

4.Evaluate. Assign ownership of analytics and reporting. Once a month your team needs an executive summary of progress and potential. Outline areas of success and those that need improvement. Determine now who will make decisions about minute change in direction when you are in-between collaborative meetings.

Then, be ready to realign and pivot again. And again after that. The world is changing fast right now, and you may need to repeat this process in order to realign with changing events, priorities and opportunities. Plan the next meeting now. Depending on your strategy and workload, you may want to meet weekly or even daily as you begin to travel this new path.

Join us in the coming weeks as we accompany you on this new journey. We will continue to develop each of the points above and will delve into innovation and ideas for your new digital presence. Let’s travel this uncharted territory as a team. We’ll explore how to bring your events and conferences online while still engaging your audience. We will work on strategies for developing engaging content and virtual experiences. We will examine new ways for you to expand your digital presence and heighten your customer’s experience with your brand.

You can do this. We can help.

Wishing you love and light.

Building Community in an Isolated World

Posted on April 8, 2020August 26, 2021 by Alice Momo

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
-Helen Keller

Collectively, we’ve experienced the loss of community over these past few weeks. Both on a grand global and profoundly personal scale, we’ve been disconnected.

And with any form of loss, humans need time and space to process grief. Yet, it is in how we overcome and rise from the loss that defines us.

Mourning Our Loses, Recreating Our Future

As passionate visionaries, we at Big Bold Thinkers believe every situation opens up a world of possibilities. These strange times hold great potential—despite the uncertainty ahead.

The challenge for businesses today is to recreate community, connection and collaboration in a socially distant world. Our current reality is that events, retreats, shows and conferences can’t happen for the foreseeable future.

However, this new terrain shouldn’t prevent us from connecting and supporting one another. We live in a big, beautiful world where we have the opportunity to create magic every day.

So where do we go from here? How can mindful marketing solutions include elements of community support and collaboration in a socially isolated world?

Here are just a few ideas to consider.

Plan a Virtual Event

Rather than altogether cancel an upcoming event or conference, switch to a digital platform. Create engaging digital content around your event’s theme to share with your audience.

You may need to condense your four-day gathering down to one or two days and include downloadable guides and materials. Maybe you mail out promotional products that you would’ve handed out during your event, or create live break-out sessions.

Switching to an online event must still provide value to your audience. Fortunately, with today’s technology, that’s possible—even while everyone is responsibly practicing social-distancing.

Start a Facebook Group

Facebook is an excellent tool for creating a community, and now is an excellent time to learn how to use it to connect with your audience.

What type of value-added content could you create and push out around your industry that will engage and inspire people at this time? Use Facebook Live to develop real-time discussions.

This is a great way to make your brand more personable as you share your story.

Open Virtual Spaces to Connect

We may not be able to meet in person, but we have ways of interacting online. As people look for new ways to gather, finding ways to connect in real-time virtually is essential.

Using Zoom and other innovative platforms to connect, you can create a space to discuss anything and everything with people you know as well as make new connections with those you don’t.

At BBT, we invite you to join us for coffee in our Zoom room from 10a to 1p on Thursdays. We hope to connect visionaries, like yourself, looking to create a positive impact on our ever-changing world.

We hope to meet you there!

The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating community in our modern world. Being “all in this together” means working with our neighbors to be catalysts for positive change for all.

As we continually innovate digital communication strategies to meet the changing landscapes around us, we are always open to new ideas—especially when it comes to creating connections and inspiring collaboration!

Own those inventive solutions because now is the time to bring your big, bold ideas to the table.

Wishing all our readers love and light.