Communications Strategies for the Permanent Covid Era

I hate to be a downer, but what if things never return to normal? Here we are more than a year and a half into coronavirus COVID 19, and things in many places are getting worse. I'm coming to you today from my office near my home in Palm Beach County, Florida. Florida has never seen higher rates of infection and daily deaths. As right now. Bizarre as it is to some, there are more deaths in just the state of Florida from coronavirus than Americans who died in the entire Vietnam War on the battlefield. 40,000 on the battlefield. Over the entire course of the Vietnam War, 42,000 have died in Florida because of COVID 19. In just the Palm beach county where I live, more people have died from coronavirus than died in the entire Afghanistan War. For 20 years of Americans who died, 2000 versus almost 3000. Sadly, the basic communications goal of letting people know you should in fact get vaccinations, you should wear a mask, has not worked. And that means we may see another wave of lockdowns. Regardless, things may never return back to exactly the way they were. So what does that mean for you and me? It means it's time to really have a strategy, if you don't already have one, on how you can cope in a world where there's a lot less face to face interaction. In my own business, it means doing everything, and I mean absolutely everything, in a digital first format. Instead of doing trainings in person, it's done through Zoom. Instead of public workshops, it is creating online courses. Instead of assuming people are just like me because they live in my town and speak my language, it means I have many of my courses now translated into dozens of languages all over the world. Now, I haven't learned how to speak dozens of languages by using the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning. I have many of my online courses translated. So I don't have all the answers. But I'm urging you for your business, for your career success. You have to operate under the assumptions that things are not going back to the way they were. They can be better than ever for you and your field, your career, your profession. But if you haven't made the adjustments, you better get with it. If you're not doing webinars, if you're not creating videos, if you're not conducting your professional services through things like Zoom, you better learn. It's not too late, but the clock is ticking. I'm T.J. walker. I want nothing but the best for your health and your long term career. Good luck.