Social media marketing services have been essential to most businesses for many years. But during the coronavirus pandemic, as social distancing remains necessary, it has literally become a matter of financial survival for some people.

In a previous post, we discussed the different kinds of social media marketing services that businesses might look for during these conditions. But those recommendations generally assumed that the business in question can remain solvent on its own for the near future. For them, it may be sufficient to shift their marketing toward services they can offer during the pandemic, or to use the time to build client connections and name recognition.

If your livelihood depends on day-to-day cash flow, however, you’re probably dealing with challenges that are much more difficult to overcome. You may even be forced to drastically reorient your business, or even adopt a new, short-term livelihood in hopes of bringing in enough income to restart later on.

What might these scenarios look like? Well, you can probably find numerous examples in the recent news. Some of them may even be a source of inspiration. Businesses that typically offer in-person services like art instruction, personal training, and styling are finding ways to approximate those services online.

Instruction may not have the same impact online, or generate the same revenue. But it’s better than nothing and it keeps both the customer and the entrepreneur in touch with the things they enjoy doing under normal circumstances.

Of course, that sense of continuity is harder to achieve if you can’t think of a way to move any of your operations online. In that case, maybe the best thing you can do is weather the storm and hope for better days to come. But better days will seem farther off if you have to start over from scratch, when you could have used social media marketing services to keep in touch with customers and keep your existing business in a good position to pick back up again.

Whatever you have to do to make it through the crisis, marketing will probably still be important. Short-term return on investment will decline, but your brand’s visibility will be all the more important when you’re competing for precious business in a re-emerging economy.

If the pandemic has forced you to change your business operations, then it’s important for you to reach out to your existing customers with an explanation. And if you’ve had to temporarily halt operations altogether, then social media marketing services provide you with a means of retaining those customers and reassuring them that you’ll be back in business as soon as possible.

Consumers want as much stability as they can muster from this situation. Business owners obviously want the same thing. Social media marketing services can connect each group with sources of that stability, in the form of familiar services or familiar customers. Even if ordinary transactions have been pushed far into the future, it’s helpful to know that both participants in that transaction will be there for each other when the crisis is over.

This gets to the very heart of what makes social media marketing services so valuable. Apart from just building brand awareness and running promotions, commercial accounts on social media can foster meaningful connections with a dedicated audience. They can be a source of real, human connections rather than just business relationships. That’s something we all need right now, and it’s something we’ll need even more in the months ahead.