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Coping vs Thriving: Online Marketing During a Pandemic

 
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SHOWNOTES

There’s no roadmap for where we are today. I know we’re all wondering “what do I do now?” I am too. That’s why I recorded this episode. 

First, I wanted to tell you that you are not alone. Everyone of us is affected by world events that we can’t control. Second, I don’t have it all figured out, but I have decided on a few things that are working for me. I outlined those on today’s episode, and I hope you find it helpful.

I share the 2 guiding questions that help me make business decisions; especially those related to marketing and selling. 

“We’re in This Together” hashtags are everywhere and it’s encouraging. As hopeful as that is, I also know there will be days when uncertainty is going to show up. When it does ask for help, reach out to someone you trust. 

I’ve made a list of free resources that you and your family can use while we’re all at home and our schedules are out the window. 

I encourage you to continue to serve your audience. Keep showing up. Be sensitive, be real and let people know you care. 

RESOURCES

DOWNLOAD THE RESOURCE LIST BELOW

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EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE

EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOR WORKERS

BOOKS, AUDIOBOOKS, GRAPHIC NOVELS, MAGAZINES

  • Overdrive Most libraries have accounts here that allow you to check out eBooks, eAudiobooks, digital comics, manga, newspapers, magazines and stream movies and television shows for free. Most libraries also have ways for you to sign up for a digital card so you can create an account online.

  • Standardebooks.org has free e-books for download that are high-quality. - 

  • https://openlibrary.org for tons of book options.

  • You can now download over 300,000 books from the NYPL for free

  • some libraries offer other services, like Hoopla, Flipster...; check your local library’s website (need a library card number usually) 

  • Project Gutenberg is a digital library of books that have all entered the public domain, meaning many classics such as Shakespeare, Moby Dick, and A Tale of Two Cities are available for free as ebooks. -

  • Your favorite authors host story time online #OperationStorytime

STREAMING FOR MOVIES, DOCUMENTARIES, AND TELEVISION

  • If you have internet access you can watch all local television channels for free with this not-for-profit service: https://www.locast.org/ This free streaming service is available for the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. 

OTHER MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT

HOBBIES, LEARNING, TOOLS, TIME PASSERS, AND EXERCISE

  • Duolingo is a free app that teaches you other languages!

  • Affinity, an art studio alternative to Adobe, is offering a free 90 day trial

  • The YMCA is offering free online classes and include some of the Y’s most popular group exercise classes like Boot Camp, Barre, Yoga and low impact programs for seniors

  • JSTOR is allowing free access to its articles even if you aren't a university student right now

  • Down dog yoga is offering free classes on their app!

  • Planet Fitness is hosting daily workout routines on their YouTube channel. Live stream starts tonight at 7pm EST.

  • Peloton, an exercise app, is offering a free 90 days

  • Minimoog, a digital synthesizer app, is now free.

  • Adult coloring book pages for printout

  • KORG is a music-making app that normally costs $20, but is free until March 31st

  • 450 Ivy League online courses for adults

  • Yale’s most popular course is free The Science of Well-being

  • Zencastr is a website that helps you start your own podcast. Right now it is offering free services due to the virus.

  • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is offering free lessons

  • Creativebug offers free hobby classes through many libraries. Check to see if your library has an account with them!

  • Google Hangouts Meet

  • https://www.zooniverse.org/ Participate in various historical transcription projects to help scientists & researchers. Some projects available in their app. Everything from transcribing Civil War records to looking at photos from nature cams and marking if and which animal actually set it off. 

VIRTUAL TOURS AND LIVE WEBCAMS

The Georgia Aquarium Has Live Cams So You Can Go Under The Sea At Home

Other resources: 

Front Row CEO

Front Row VIP

TRANSCRIPT

00:03 (Gary Vee)Hey guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.

00:14 Hey there, Jen here and in this episode I thought we might talk about coping versus thriving during these crazy times, especially as it relates to running a business. Now when this first started getting real, when the lockdowns started happening and schools started closing, I was getting emails almost instantly from a lot of people in the online business community. Nothing that really struck me as good or bad necessarily, but my point is they were quickly out there. They were on it, but I wasn't ready to say anything at all to be honest. This hit me pretty hard as I'm sure it did. You and I just needed time to really sit with it for a little while and think about number one, how was I going to move forward in my own business as it relates to selling and marketing and messaging, and then also wanted to think how was I going to advise other people to move forward in their businesses.

Read more...

01:06 I mean, it's not like I think anybody expects me to have the answers, but I have received a lot of emails asking me for opinions and uh, my coaching clients had been struggling and turning to me for advice about how they should move forward. And then of course, there's a lot of people who I work with and who are in my community who have completely lost their businesses almost overnight. Their clients' accounts had been canceled because of the nature of their businesses and they need to completely pivot and find something and find something quickly because we're all basically limited to just doing business online right now unless we are, businesses are considered to be an essential service. So that means that there's a lot of people rushing to the internet to try to figure out how they can move their businesses online. Needless to say, as someone who teaches people how to create online businesses, my phone has been ringing.

01:59 So initially I decided that the best thing I could do would be to continue moving forward to keep things as normal as possible. So I've been doing my Amazon Alexa flash briefings every morning, my twice weekly newsletter, my podcasts, my regular activities inside of my Facebook communities and we kept our schedule and momentum in the live course that I've been in the middle of for the last eight weeks called front row CEO. But I have felt unsettled and anxious and worried like I know so many other people have felt, but I did make a couple of changes like I made sure to turn off my recur post RSS feed, which is like meet Edgar or HootSweet. It's basically a content automation system that sends out content around the clock to various platforms. And I turned that off right away, which is something I always do whenever there's any sort of weird thing going on in the nation or in the world because you don't want content going there that makes you look like you're clueless or insensitive that you don't understand the magnitude of the moment.

03:05 It really makes you look tone deaf basically when you're spitting out content about something super frivolous. And meanwhile the economy is falling down and crashing all around us. So I've also made sure to acknowledge everything that's going on as I continue through my regularly scheduled programming, like the flash briefing or any live streams that I might do or any social media postings. I've made it a point to acknowledge the moment even in some small way. And then I decided, so I guess my big statement would be I decided that the best example that I can set would be one of continuing to work on my business and to help others work on theirs. I can't tell you how many clients are panicked right now because their husbands or wives or partners have lost their quote unquote real jobs and now it's the online business that's keeping the family afloat.

03:57 So in that sense, I feel like the best way that I could serve my audience is to continue to help them by giving them smart business strategies to grow their businesses, to reach their ideal clients, to create offers that will sell and to make moves that are going to bring in some results quickly. And I had a conversation with the members of my private membership group, the front row VIP last Tuesday about this very subject and I said that pandemic or no pandemic, whenever I need or I'm planning to make an offer to my audience, I always ask myself two questions and the, and these are the questions, is what I'm creating? Is this offer helpful? Is it going to help someone? And then the second question is, is it a fair price? And if I can say yes, if I can answer yes to those questions, then I know I'm on the right track, then I don't have to second guess myself that I can confidently present this offer to the world.

04:58 I think the worst thing that we could do is to stop trying or to use this pandemic as an excuse to stop building our businesses. Now I'm not running around using language like this is a great opportunity or take advantage of this awesome opportunity because I don't think any of us want to look like opportunists who are trying to take advantage of a catastrophe to get an edge or whatever. But what I am saying is that it's just as bad to do the opposite. Meaning if you shut everything down and you turn on your Netflix and you give up, well that would really, really be a shame. Now, if you've been following me for any length of time, you know that I am a person who absolutely loves routine. I love systems, I love productivity and I had been a person over the last couple of years or let me just say over the last couple of years I think I have become a person who is optimized myself pretty well in life.

05:51 I've been as optimizes, I've ever been in that. I get up early and do yoga, I write him up, I write my morning pages, I eat healthiest stop drinking like four years ago and this pandemic has definitely thrown me off my game. I have been waking up later. I haven't been doing my yoga. I'm only taking occasional walks and I am not eating clean. My systems have been totally disruptive and I mean that's just what's going to happen when your entire family is suddenly home all day long and all, you know, all day and all night. And on top of that you've got the worry and the stress. But I also made the decision that I was going to be kind to myself and I wasn't going to beat myself up for sleeping later or for eating a piece of cherry pie. Okay. Let's be honest, the whole cherry pie.

06:38 But somehow having that conversation with myself that I would cut myself some Slack has really helped ease some of my bad feelings. And you know how Mr. Rogers said that when he was little, his mom would tell him to look for the helpers during times of crisis. I think it was Mr. Rogers. Well, I think Mr. Rogers mom was onto something or whoever's mom that was, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to look for the helpers and the leaders and the people who have messages that make me feel good, that lift me up and that inspire me. And I know that you're looking for that too. So let me go through some of the resources that I've been taking advantage of that helped me cope, not only cope, actually that helped me thrive during these weirdo times that we are in. I'm sure you've seen a lot of these awesome free resources that are out there. 07:27 Some of these are are for fun and entertainment and some of them are for business. And I have created a whole list of these. So you could just, you can text the word CORONAFREEBIES to 44222. Or you can look in the show notes page. I'll have this list listed there as well. So you can now download over 300,000 books from the New York public library for free. And some libraries offer other services like hoopla and Flipster and lynda.com. Just check your library's website. Um, usually you need a library card for this. I use Linda all the time on our local library. And then there's all sorts of streaming for movies and documentaries and television. So if your library library offers it, you can get a treasure trove of documentaries through canopy.com. That's with a K, K a N. O P. Y.

08:20 You can watch Netflix with your fellow quarantined people with the special Chrome browser extension, which I'll share in the show notes. If you have internet access, you can watch all local television channels for free with this nonprofit service called low caste.org and uh, that, that actually is available for Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, Denver, rapid city Sioux falls, Sioux city, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Sadly, it's not available here in Cleveland. Duo lingo is a free app that teaches you other languages. So this is a great time to learn a second language, right? Affinity. It's an art studio alternative to Adobe and it's offering a free 90 day trial. Speaking of Adobe, they're offering I think like a 90 day, 90 days free, um, to the whole Adobe cloud. The Y YMCA is offering free online classes and uh, includes some of the Y's most popular group exercise classes like bootcamp bar and yoga, and a low impact programs for seniors.

09:25 So just go to the YMC website for that J store, which is J S T O R is allowing free access to its articles, even if you aren't a university student right now down dog yoga is offering free classes on their app. Planet fitness is hosting daily workout routines on their YouTube channel and Peloton. I love Peloton, I pay for it, but right now they're offering, offering it for free for 90 days in Peloton is way more than biking. And they've got, I love their outdoor running classes. You can listen to like you can, you can put on a Peloton class, go for an outdoor door run and get halfway into your run. And the person will say, now it's time to turn around. And the music is really, really good. And they've got meditation and stretching and yoga and weightlifting. Everything. Mini Moog is a digital synthesizer app, which is now free.

10:17 Um, I'm linking to some adult coloring pages. Zencaster. That's what I'm using right now to record this podcast. It's an awesome, awesome tool. Normally you have to pay for it. I think I pay like I don't like between 15 and $20 a month and it's free right now. Rock and roll hall of fame, which is in my backyard is offering free lessons and creative bug offers, free hobby classes through many libraries. So you want to check and see if your library has an account with creative bug. And then there's all sorts of cool virtual tours right now and webcams so you can tour the great wall of China. Just about every great museum on earth right now is, is offering some sort of free tour or gallery tour or class. So check out your favorite library and I'm going to list them in the show notes. 11:06 The Cincinnati zoo and botanical garden is offering this awesome home. Safari live on their Facebook page every 3:00 PM Monday through Friday. The Houston zoo and the San Diego zoo have webcams. There's a penguin cam and this really cool farm cam. There's a great camera at the Monterey Bay aquarium. There's all sorts of tours of the national parks in our country. Course. Yale's like most popular online course they've ever offered. The science of wellbeing is, was, has just opened up and I think you can still register for that. It's all about happiness. You can stream opera from the met, of course they're prerecorded, but they're live streamed. And same thing for Broadway shows through Amazon prime and a, I'm going to put a link to 450 Ivy league courses that you could take right now for free at Luma video or you've heard me talk about it a million times.

12:03 It's my all time favorite tool. It's L O M as in Mary. It's a video tool that allows you to record your screen, record yourself, a million other little features. They're offering a free version right now. Um, and then their paid version is, or their premium version is now half price. And then I don't see enough people taking advantage of this. But the final thing I want to tell you is that Google Hangouts is offering their premium enterprise level live streaming or video conferencing to anyone with a G suite account. So you could have a G suite account where you're paying like six or $10 a month, but they're going to give you access to this enterprise level video conferencing. You don't need zoom. You can have 250 people in the room at one time. You can record, you can share your screen. And the quality is really outstanding.

12:56 And I would say probably better quality than zoom right now because zoom is, um, ha has been having some like issues with their, the quality of their, of their streaming because so many people are rushing over to zoom and zoom is not free. So those are just some things that might help you, not just cope but thrive through these, through these crazy times. And then I just want to circle back around and just conclude and give you the, the main message that I hope you take away from this and that is continue to serve your audience, continue to offer. The helpful information and products and services that you've always offered and ask yourself, is this helpful? Is this, is this priced fairly? And if the answer is yes, it's okay to continue with your business. I think the key thing is that we want to be sensitive to this moment that we're all in, in our messaging, right? So we don't want to pretend that it's not happening. There's a way to acknowledge this moment that we're in and continue to do business. And in fact, I think continuing to do business, keeping things as normal as possible is the best thing that we can do for ourselves, for our businesses and for those that we serve. And remember, the list of goodies that I mentioned is going to be available on the show notes, or you can text CORONAFREEBIES to 44222See you next time.

 

jen lehner

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