Surviving The COVID-19 Pandemic: How to Stay Positive!

Hey friends, I know how hard it might be to hear this but in order for us all to get through this, We Must Stay Calm and Focus on the Positives. I am no professional at giving advice for pandemics, but I know what has been working for ME. So here are some of my tips for how I have been surviving this pandemic with my own small business and personal lifestyle.

Small business, If you have not already, you need to contact your clients. Before you contact your clients, you need to come up with your own pandemic plan. Are you refunding your clients completely? Are you offering additional dates for postponing? What are YOU going to offer your clients? Make sure that you come up with these things BEFORE emailing your clients. YOU are the business owner. YOU need to remain professional, yet kind at this time.

I emailed my April, May ,& June clients immediately to let them know what my protocol with the pandemic & cancellations were. In this, I stated that as long as we follow the current CDC rules, I am happy to shoot their sessions and wedding(s). This means that if CDC requires less than 50 people at a wedding, there MUST be a limit in the attendance for me to shoot, etc. In regards to cancellation, I have offered to reschedule and put their retainer fees towards a future session.

A big tip when it comes to sending out these emails is to not begin the email with “if you need to cancel?”. You need to encourage postponing at this point. You need to offer your clients additional dates that you are available for them to choose to postpone to. THIS will help you and your business. I gave my clients all of the options such as eloping instead, postponing, and then finally – cancellation. If you have not contacted your clients yet, please do. Set the scene in the email as personal, yet professional & just let your clients know that you are there for them through this whole process.

Just because this is some downtime doesn’t mean you still don’t need to be showing up. Get on your instagram & Facebook stories & post. Keep it light, professional & personal to who you are. Your clients & followers want to make sure that you are okay at this time, but stay real. I want my clients to understand where I am at & what I believe is important at this time when it comes to my business but I also want to just show my daily life & how I am coping with the pandemic & quarantine.

Something that I am personally wanting to work on is Pinterest. What time is better than right now. I want to start pinning my detailed blog posts & making sure that the titles & information that I used on my pins were full of keywords and details. For more information on Pinterest, just YouTube “how to use Pinterest as a business”, etc! Lots of FREE videos will pop up for you to look at.

Now when it comes to Instagram, is creatives can help support one another by liking and commenting on our posts. This is exactly what helps with your engagement on instagram and is what will make your posts more likely to be seen! One rule for me is: before I post I will comment on around 30 Instagram posts on my feed & then I will post my content. This will help boost engagement by allowing those people to now see my post too & hopefully they will comment on my content! Not only should you comment, but ENGAGE. Respond to instagram stories and use instagrams tools as much as you can. Instagram is such an important tool to use.

We do not know exactly when this will end, but we do know that it eventually will. I understand completely that right now you are probably not getting a lot of inquiries – I am not either. With the way things are right now, a lot of people are being hit financially. This may make them rethink their wedding plans, etc. Remember that you are not the only one not receiving inquiries right now, we are all feeling it. Take this down time to create a plan of action for when the pandemic ends so that you will receive inquiries again. Always keep the client in mind – as they are feeling everything you are feeling right now too. They may not be able to afford you next year like they were able to before the pandemic occurred. It will take us all a while to get back on our feet but until then, any business is business.

Lastly, support others. Everyone around you needs a little positivity at this time. If you can, purchase gift cards to your fave local businesses to help keep them afloat. Order out food from your local restaurants. Keep in contact with your fellow work mates. Comment on other businesses work to increase engagement. Most importantly, take care of YOU and do what is best for YOU and YOUR business at this time. WE got this! We will get through this!