With our suddenly enforced social isolation, social media has become our window to the larger world. But Social Media is more than sharing a meal with mum through the screen. It’s also a tool we can use to communicate with our customers about rapidly changing adjustments we make in our businesses.

Now, more than ever, Instagram matters.

Top Three Ways to Use Instagram during a Pandemic

1.  Communicate – Whatever you do or sell, your top priority is to communicate with your customers and clients.  If you are an independent garden center, you need to communicate changing rules, like reduced business hours, or whether or not you have curbside pickup and delivery.  This works the same if you are a landscaper complying with your state rules, or even a designer announcing new ways you are connecting with your clients.

Use the Instagram Grid to post a simple image.  DO NOT try to get all of the information onto one tiny square – Use a graphics program like Canva to design a simple message like: YOUR BUSINESS NAME + ANNOUNCEMENTS or take a photo of you cupping your hands around your mouth.  Then overlay the date, or “New”.  Use the caption to outline your new details.  

2. Show, not Tell – You may need to offer some new products or procedures.  If you are a garden center, adapt to the surge in victory gardening and offer “preplanned veggie packs”.  After all, YOU are the one who knows what grows best in your climate.  Make offerings for 4, or 40, or 400 square feet so people who have containers can be just as successful as those with hobby farms.  

If you are a Landscaper or Designer, offer virtual design sessions, or reassure your clients that you are only doing essential maintenance activities that maintain the health of their valuable landscapes while complying with state rules.  Reassure them that you are being extra careful with cleanup and social distancing, and ask them to maintain the same standards … that they don’t chat you up while you are working, but you are happy to talk to them prior to each visit over the phone to focus on their needs first.  

You can use Instagram Stories to showcase the new Product Packs you offer (don’t forget the soil!), or your smiling delivery crew, or your people sanitizing their equipment.  Everyone loves a peek behind the scenes, and this allows you to leverage the social media tools best.

3. Connect – Remember that people are lonely, confused, and worried right now.  This is an ideal time to stay the course, and show people what you do and how your business operates.  They want to be connected, reassured, and entertained.  

Use Instagram Live to connect with your clients and offer virtual garden tours of your own backyard.  You can talk about the design decisions you make at home and ask them to go Live with you to ask their own questions.  You can walk the aisles of your garden center with a client on the split-screen and pick out container plants to order, showing the viewers special features of plants you are selecting. This makes everything interactive and fun, and reassures people that you know your stuff.  

4. Teach –  OK, this is a bonus tip – If you have a two-person team (or a tripod) have someone hold the camera for you and create a How To video.

Give people projects to do at home … perhaps using supplies that they can order online or by phone, and either do curbside pickup or delivery.  Save this video to IGTV or YouTube. Make a 15-30 second teaser for your Instagram stories and encourage them to watch more. You can even hold a “contest” for the best completed project that they can showcase on their Instagram stories with your hashtag.

Remember, stay the course, have fun, and connect.  We’re all in this together.