We already lived in a digital-first world. Now with quarantining, social distancing, self-isolating and shelter-in-placing, we’re operating in an almost exclusively digital society. As companies, industries and entire communities transition to remote life, the takeaway for businesses in the food and ag space is clear: optimizing your website and leveraging digital best practices are essential to staying relevant.

Take a minute to evaluate each digital platform you’re currently present on, including:

• Website
• Social media
• Business listings
• Paid digital advertising

How are each of these working for your business? Are they all sending the right message to current and potential customers given the new communications climate? Make a list of areas you can improve and optimize your presence, messaging and tone in the context of the new normal.

Consistency is always key in successful branding and communications. But in crisis situations, positively positioning your brand with understandably pre-occupied audiences is so challenging. A clear, congruous message across all platforms becomes even more imperative. If your audit identified areas that should be more aligned, now is the time to adjust the communications furthest from your primary branding message.

Do you have a strong Facebook presence but haven’t yet explored Instagram? Are emerging platforms like TikTok right for your brand? Now is a great time to expand your reach online. But don’t overextend yourself—it’s important to first evaluate if you have the time and resources to fully commit to optimizing a new social channel. And be sure to research the strengths and user demographics of potential new channels to ensure they fit your brand and goals.

To make sure your company’s best self is represented as you explore a new social platform, create a content calendar and content buckets to help guide consistent tone and messaging as well as to help you plan ahead and maximize content for repurposing.

There are lots of things you can do to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) on your website. Here are the basics:

• Improve your site’s developmental health. Eliminate crawl issues, fix page errors, obtain an SSL certificate, create meta titles and descriptions and insert image alt tags.
• Optimize your content for search. Break long pages of text out into individual pages, giving specific products or themes their own page. Do these pages provide a solution to searchers coming from Google?
• Make it user-friendly. A clear menu structure helps users navigate without difficulty. Use internal links and clear calls to action to help users easily find what they’re looking for.

Now that you’ve put in the work to improve your overall digital presence, put it in front of your target audience with paid support. The easiest way is through search engine marketing (SEM) and social advertising. These two methods allow you to choose your budget, make changes along the way and stop whenever you need to.