Reaching moms through social during COVID-19

Bottom line: if you’re not part of the solution in her news feed, you’re just adding to the problem.

I recently read in Parents Magazine about a pre-COVID Meredith-partnered Harris Poll, where 63 percent of women reported feeling that they’ve worked an entire day after handling all of their family’s needs in the morning — well before even arriving in their office. An entire day in the morning alone, so imagine what that is in a time of COVID-19 when moms are now home all day, working full time and doing homeschooling!

How can brands reach moms during this time when they need support, solutions and a good laugh? Social media provides a platform for brands to do one or all of these things for moms as long as they are true to their brand voice and strategic about the content they create. The phrase “meet your audience where they live” takes on a whole new meaning in our new normal.

Moms are turning to social media for solutions. Can your brand offer tips to make her life easier and can your brand do so in a quick video? Personally, the constant requests for sandwiches and snacks are going to send me over the edge. A mom I know recently shared the concept of a “daily snack box” — she packs it full of pudding cups, granola bars, fruit, etc., in the morning for her kids, and when it’s empty, that’s it, no more snacks that day. I thought this was a brilliant concept. Quaker Oats, are you hearing this? This tactic would do well with a paid social strategy behind it and could be an entire series of mom solutions in 15 seconds or less.

Moms also need support and a good chuckle to get through this. Memes are a great way to offer moms encouragement and some humorous relief. There are many online tools that you can use like Bannersnack and Canva to help you create your own memes. These allow you to design and align with your brand look and voice in social. You can even use meme makers like mememaker.org to keep it very simple and easy.

One of GKV’s social media tenets is about brands acting like a person rather than a product, and that is truer now than ever before. Moms need brands with sensibilities that match their own, and social media content needs to be more helpful, more humorous and more real than ever before to break through.