Social Media Wave; It's a Corona Tsunami

 'Abby!,  Hi  can  we  meet up  with  you? whats  your  schedule  looking  like?  are  you  available  for  the  event we are putting  together? how much do you charge?' those  were the kind of messages I was receiving before the pandemic. I was an unstoppable  train, I was on the run hosting events back  and forth, facilitating workshops and  dialogues at different organizations until  the pandemic came and caused a huge turn  over, more like a havoc! A tsunami if I could  label it that. 

I'm not sure how other people are handling  the pandemic, I also don't know much damage it caused but for me it was havoc. I had to start over, I had to rethink everthing  that I was doing. I had to reconisder the  smallest things such as how I was advertsing myself on the socials. I had to rethink which social media platforms work  for me best especially when it came to advertising myself as a brand and the work I do.

  

This meant me spending more time on the socials, engaging with other entrepreneurs and applying some of the strategies that worked for them. The hardest thing about engaging on social media is the ability to both attract current clients and potential  clients without making the other feel like  the advert isn't for them. This also means knowing the right time to post on social  media, prime time!  (peak time to be precise)  this is the time where most people  are present on social media, they are either  posting something or just going through their timeline, checking out the trending hastags and just generally keeping up with the socials. This also means one should use the relevant hastags on social media to attract more clients and also remind your current clients that you are still in business. 

During my interactions with other  entrepreneurs most of them highlighted that the pandemic was actually preparing us for  the digital world that is coming. I mean if you think about it everything you do now is digital. This pandemic actually gave us a chance to prepare ourselves digitally, we now have a few businesses that have social  media pages where as before the pandemic  they didn't have one. Yes! the pandemic  gave us a rude awakening because we all weren't ready for this but we still managed  to change things around we are learning day by day on how to improve our social media presences. 

 

We also have small businesses that weren't  getting any attraction at all (their clientele was at it's lowest) but now the amount of  clients they receive is amazing. Prodigal  Son (follow on the socials  @ProdigalsonSA)  is  a marketing and advertising company that helps other small businesses to find their feet digitally by creating social media  accounts for  them and managing those  accounts for a certain period of time. 

As much as I hate the pandemic, as much  as  I'm  angry  because  the  pandemic  brought  a  huge  disruption  in my career,  it  also  helped  me  balance  myself  digitally.  I  know  understand  social  media better and  I now can confidently advertise myself  better. I mean I even started sharing videos to help  other upcoming entrepreneurs  on  how  to  improve  on  some  of  the  areas  they  think  needs  improving. Seek  help  for  your  social  media  accounts,  seek  assistance  and  improve  your  social  media  presences  after all  we  are  in  the  digital  world  and  we  need  to  start  adapting  to  it.