Should you change your social media strategy during COVID-19?

Nationwide lockdowns have caused social media use to surge. With people spending more time at home, they are naturally turning to social media to relieve their boredom. How and when we use social media has dramatically changed in the last few weeks. Consequently, equine businesses social media strategy should be adapted to reflect the changing behaviour.

A large proportion of the Australian public are now working from home and are finding themselves with more free time. A combination of no-commute time, shorter lunch breaks and no colleague distraction is allowing for more downtime to be spent on social media.

When scheduling your equine business posts be mindful of when the biggest proportion of your audience will be online. Pre-COVID-19 your posts may have gained the most traction early in the mornings before work, around lunchtime, and after work. Now depending on your audience these times may have changed.

There are three ways to work out the best time to post on social media:

Businesses Facebook page insights

These can be found on your business page, under insights, then posts. Here you will see when your fans are online from the most recent one-week period. Pacific Time Zone is used to calculate the data for Page Insights, so be sure to translate times to your own time zone. Avoid scheduling your posts in major dips as you can see below, this business would avoid posting between 3am and 3pm PDT which is 8pm to 8am AEST. We calculate our timings using World Time Buddy.

Facebook Analytics

Set up Facebook Analytics for your business. Once set up, you will find your active users under ‘activity’. Here it will tell you the times when your Facebook users are most active. To change the time zone of your data go to; Settings, Display, Time Zone.

Scheduling a post

On your businesses Facebook page go to publishing tools, scheduled posts, + Create. Once you have written the post and hit schedule, Facebook will give you the option to post at a suggested time or a custom time. The suggested time is when your fans were most active in the last week.

Social distancing means that many social media users no longer have content to post about themselves. We as a user can no longer post about restaurants we have been to or places we have visited or catch-ups we have had with friends. Because of this Facebook and Instagram has seen an increased demand for interactive content from businesses. Therefore, our social media strategy must change. Think about how you can engage your audience as well as entertaining them whilst they are at home. Some ideas you can use:

Riding School

• Record your best tips and tricks and upload them to Facebook
• Go live on Facebook where your riders can ask you questions directly
• Film ‘a day in the life of a riding teacher in isolation’ on your Instagram story.
• Record your workout of the week or live stream it.

Equine Ecommerce Store

• Run a Facebook competition. Encourage your fans to take a photo on their property using your products. The best will win a prize.
• Ask your fans to write in 25 words or less what they love about their horse, your products etc.
• Ramp up your advertising spend on social media.

If your equestrian business is struggling in this crisis and you need social media advice please contact us here.