Combating information-sharing challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic
Now more than ever, companies with unique workplace environments need to connect with other businesses dealing with comparable safety dilemmas. Conferences, tech shows, business lunches, and all the standard pre-COVID networking options are on hold.
If you develop an exciting way to adapt your business to COVID-19, how do you let other people know? The new challenge is finding creative ways to meet people and share information.
Pitch the press
Because opportunities for face-to-face interactions are limited, the press is playing a greater role in distributing information between companies. Smaller outlets geared to specific industries are conducting interviews and panels to explore how companies have adapted to COVID-19. For example, Built In has put out a series of “Responding to COVID-19” articles featuring interviews with groups of tech companies around the country discussing how the pandemic has affected them and how they have tried to get ahead of the curve.
Prep marketing materials
Reach out to your marketing team to discuss a strategy for sharing your COVID-19 response with the press. What outlets target your industry specifically and might be interested in your business’s experience? Could you catch their attention with a well-timed press release announcing policy changes?
Think outside (or inside) the box
We’re all in front of our computers right now. And although there’s no way to replace in-person engagement, there are some new platforms being developed that can simulate it.
For example, at Uncork-it, we have partnered with Gather, a new virtual event platform that allows participants to control an avatar and explore a customized virtual space. As your avatar approaches someone else’s, a video chat window opens automatically for you to see and hear them. As you move away, it closes, replicating the natural way we socialize in space at events like trade shows.
The pandemic isolates businesses and professionals. To reverse that trend, now is the time to pursue creative, intentional virtual marketing like this with online events structured to foster serendipitous connections and networking. Someone out there might have the answer to your unique COVID-related dilemmas, or you might have the answer to theirs. You need to seek out that exchange to share information, show leadership, and develop new business contacts that will see you through the pandemic.
