The only thing that didn’t stop even during the nation-wide lockdown in 2020 was Digital Media. In fact, the world succeeded in controlling the wide spread of Covid-19 and ensuring business continuity amidst the pandemic; only because of digital media awareness campaigns and social media marketing. The Covid-19 pandemic brought an unprecedented standstill in global economies; it also highlighted the importance of chalking out a Business Continuity Plan.

What Is A Business Continuity Plan?

A business continuity plan is an outline of operations that you will perform to assess various risks and unplanned / unexpected disruptions in service that could affect your business. This plan is going to enable you to continue operating even in the most adverse of situations. Therefore, the name given to it is “Business Continuity Plan.”

Today, a business continuity plan gets affected  to a large extent by social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. These platforms are some of the most highly used methods of dispersing useful information during a crisis such as the Coronavirus pandemic proving that social media is not just a giddy waste of time anymore!

1. Monitor Emerging Threats To Your Business Continuity With Social Media

If you have a business continuity plan in place, using social media at the right time can help you tremendously. Your target market and users are constantly active on social media platforms and with their posts, comments and likes they continue to make their presence felt. You can easily identify the problems and threats they are facing and address them before the crisis hits. Clearly, social media lets you remain on top of your game.

2. Deviating From Traditional Business Continuity Management – Social Media For Customized Solutions

Because these platforms are almost omnipresent, highly useful and very effective, they serve as a channel for your users to vent out their frustration and woes. This makes discovering their pain-points easy for an enterprise. This is why businesses are readily combining their BCPs with the most popular social media channels to leverage the advantages of these networks to different levels. This has helped them create customized solutions as a part of their BCP.

3. Interacting and Engaging with your audience through Social Media

Social media provides your business a unique opportunity to engage directly with the consumers. This marketing trend has been coined as ‘prosumer culture’ whereby the consumer proactively engages with the producer/brand and contributes to brand creation, promotion, and marketing through participatory communication in all spheres of consumptionscape. The prosumer culture has come to the forefront owing to ever-increasing usage of artificial intelligence and machine learning on digital media. Consistent content creation on social media platforms have empowered the consumer to take up the role of prosumers. Business organizations can address the issues of their consumers and create unmatched brand loyalty by engaging with them on social media within good time. Personalized responses and solutions that do away with consumers’ problems and add value to their lives strengthen the brand association of consumers. These tailored responses are going to make your customers/audiences feel heard and looked after, portraying your brand as an entity that takes care of their consumers even in the most difficult times such as the pandemic situation we face at the moment.

Punjab government and industry leveraged the power of social media smartly and effectively during the pandemic and lockdown. Major grocery stores and brands of Punjab tied up with Swiggy and Zomato to home-deliver essentials and other consumables through their App. The Government of Punjab even introduced the service of placing order of essential goods and groceries through the state government’s informative app, COVA App. The vendors were able to list themselves on the COVA app to provide delivery services. The App also allowed them to get an e-pass to continue with their services.

Recognizing the importance of digital platforms and social media marketing has to be one positive fallout of this global pandemic.

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