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A global pandemic with the name of Covid-19 is upon us - ‘nough said. You have to hear the constant updates from the news, your friends and colleagues, and many more outlets that are now discussing it. That’s not what we’re about to do. We’re here to provide you with some exclusive data straight from the ThoughtLeaders’ platform to help your digital marketing team succeed while everyone is working from home.
Let’s bring our focus to the marketing challenges we face under today’s threat. As a big player in the digital marketing space, ThoughtLeaders has seen first hand how this climate affects marketing teams across all verticals. What we’ve seen so far is less organic traffic for most businesses, recent marketing shifts for our B2B clients due to event cancellations, and a harsh transition all around for companies switching to remote work.
Remote work has been an especially difficult challenge for businesses around the world and across all industries. Socially isolated, cooped up in our cave-like makeshift home offices, it can seem impossible to maintain productivity and collaborate enough to successfully execute our digital marketing strategies in a time of such uncertainty.
To find a solution to this challenge, as always we went straight to the data for answers. Here’s an overview of what we discovered.
Data taken from ThoughtLeaders on March 23, 2020
ThoughtLeaders’ data presents us with an opportunity: if executed correctly, brands can focus their attention on the #WFH, working from home, trends and take advantage of the constant discussion surrounding it.
The format breakdown and trend charts (seen above) shows the volume of content mentioning keywords “remote work” and “work from home”. We are able to see the breakdown of the thought leader formats, their audience reach, number of mentions, and number of impressions.
Terms to know:
Using ThoughtLeaders’ data we are able to sift through all the relevant thought leaders discussing this topic plus find the brands being highlighted. This can help your marketing team pinpoint not only the trend but also validate the publication and its audience to pursue. This approach can lead to successful lead gen and brand awareness campaigns.
In the chart above we are able to get a better sense of what kind of formats take advantage of #WFH trending content. Newsletters and podcasts are clearly exploiting this topic, but for some reason, there are not a lot of YouTube channels doing so. One possible rationale as to why YouTube influencers are a little late to the party could be because YouTube has only recently allowed the Coronavirus topics to be monetized. Coronavirus was once labeled as a sensitive subject according to the YouTube team and did not allow influencers to drive revenue from ads. Once the situation escalated YouTube decided to drop the demonetization as of March 11th.
We expect to see an increase in YouTube channel content surrounding the trend in the weeks to come.
Our favorite daily newsletters are covering the COVID-19 news for us with some sunshine to brighten our social distancing days. Morning Brew’s newsletter, for example, has a weekly planner for what to do when bored during quarantine. They suggest a quick morning workout, watching some viral videos, and more.
Here’s just a taste of it:
Morning Brew newsletter from March 23, 2020
Another daily newsletter, The Hustle, provides us with fun-themed GIFs but also is taking a more serious tone by asking readers to share how they are coping and giving tips on how to support small businesses during this time. They also don’t mind poking a little fun at the quarantine situation in their humorous short segment on shower thoughts: “Just because we didn’t shower once this week doesn’t mean we don’t have any Shower Thoughts. Enjoy.”
Interestingly, in both of these newsletters we are seeing brands like WHOOP, CuriosityStream, and DocuSign being featured.
There are over 170 podcasts discussing the #WFH trend as of March 23,2020. Normally we see a few classic styles that podcast shows adhere to during their regular broadcasts: interview style, storytelling, and the solo podcast. Seeming to contradict tradition, when the hosts are discussing the infamous Coronavirus we see more Q&A and panel style discussions where hosts from all genres are sharing tips and advice to their beloved audiences. The podcasts discussing “remote work” and #WFH are in categories ranging from sports broadcasting, lifestyle, and business to personal finance, tech, and even gaming. It seems everyone in the podcast game wants to be part of the conversation.
Check out one of our favorite Coronavirus discussions from Joe Rogen’s podcast here. Joe gives a hybrid style consisting of the classic interview style with a Q&A discussion.
Of course, you have your classic streaming companies succeeding during this time, but you also have a fair share of business solutions like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other communication and business software.
Although some may say Quibi isn’t part of the conversation yet, we believe they are worth a mention. They are a new short-form streaming service due to launch in April 2020. They have a huge investor backing with over $1 billion in funding from giants like Disney, NBC, and Sony. We discussed more on the type of content they have been featured in thus far in our article, “Why is no one talking about Quibi?”. It’s nothing compared to the volume of content we see Netflix or Disney has been featured on - yet - but this could be the perfect time to launch as more and more individuals are headed into quarantine and have more free time to spend watching quick bites.
Below is an infographic displaying how brands are being talked about in the remote work trend.
As we mentioned before, ThoughtLeaders’ data presents all digital marketing teams with an exciting opportunity. If executed correctly, brands can really leverage the incredible amount of discussion and activity surrounding #WFH and remote work to deepen brand engagement and optimize their investments. Using our data, you are able to find the most relevant thought leaders discussing this #WFH trend, plus find out if your competitors are already being highlighted within this space. If you’re interested in doing something productive from your couch and want to find out more about this trend, check out our demo here!
