The world’s an awful mess. It’s a hard time being a human with all of these changes, let alone keeping up with our jobs.
It feels like we’re stuck in the famous this is fine comic, but every day brings more bad news for cities, families and indeed businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Our mascot Quirky is a quokka, an Australian marsupial that’s known as the ‘happiest animal on the planet’.
I spend much of my time speaking to people inside large and small businesses. Almost universally, it’s hard to project that kind of optimism right now.
But I want to share your stories – good and bad. Whether you run a business or work for one, our community would love to hear what's happened and how you've responded for the better.
From our team around the world to yours – please stay safe and stay inside, and thanks for being part of Sked Social.
Hugh Stephens, Founder
We’re a small business too, and we understand the pain that our customers both large and small are experiencing right now, across almost every industry. With that in mind, we have a few initiatives under way:
If you're looking to make the move to Sked Social or replacing existing tools, sometimes you need a bit more time to migrate accounts and introduce the team to a new platform.
Maybe you're looking to introduce a more advanced scheduling tool but not sure about pricing yet.
Or you're expanding your existing Sked account to consolidate into one scheduling tool for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – and need a bit of time to assist with the move given the overlap.
If you need extra time, please get in touch with us and we'll be happy to assist.
Unfortunately, a lot of businesses have had to close their doors temporarily, change business model or stop entirely as a result of this pandemic, while others have been able to pivot and shift online.
Sked Social can help you with the shift to eCommerce, or keeping your customers engaged, retained and updated over this difficult time.
If you are experiencing cashflow difficulties, we are offering discounts on your subscription during this period for select customers who want to keep using Sked but are really struggling at the moment. We're here to share the pain with you.
Customers with 25 or fewer employees who have seen a significant impact on their business as a result of this crisis should apply here for support.
There's no arbitrary dollar limit about how much support we'll provide – this isn't a game of one-upmanship against our competitors, it's something to help our community survive and thrive through a hard time.
As a simple thing available to everyone, we've noticed some are paying foreign exchange fees or poor exchange rates despite us offering subscriptions in four currencies: US dollar (USD), Australian dollar (AUD), British pounds (GBP) and Euros (EUR). Thanks to the fees some pay on transactions not in their local currency, the savings can be 20%+.
If you're not paying in the currency best for you, reach out to the team and we'd be happy to help you move currency.
Like any other small business (and admittedly many large ones as well), we have to make sure that we can meet our costs and pay our people too, so we’re prioritising this support to those most affected.
Make sure you are also across the government support available to you: here are the resources pages for the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
Make Sked do more for you at no extra cost. We are also helping all customers to make the most out of Sked during this time but might not be able to otherwise afford it, through:
Get in touch with us and have a chat about what you need, and we can see how we can help.
Sue runs a tourism business, and has had to close her operations due to travel bans.
To keep people engaged during this time, she wants to collect and re-post user-generated content about the destination.
Sked helped her set up and use our UGC platform Sked Library at no extra cost on her plan.
Alice’s agency has suddenly had to work from home, and is having a hard time collaborating across the team, particularly with people working reduced hours across brands.
Sked helped her by setting up ‘collaboration’ at no extra cost so the team can use internal comments, and extended some trial account add-ons for a new brand who are considering hiring Alice’s agency.
David is a brand manager for a franchise group who have had to close their stores.
As each store has its own social media accounts, David wants to help franchisees keep their local community engaged.
Sked helps David onboard franchisees to a single account so that they can make use of a shared Library of content each store can use as inspiration for content during the shut down.
If you’re not going to post anything during this period, pause your Sked subscription for 1 or 2 months and come back to it later. We’ll remind you before the account resumes and we can extend it if the world isn’t any better for you.
We’re still building the features that you need and improving the ones you love. Here’s what we have launched in the last month alone:
If you have a particular use case during this time that needs features not on your plan, get in touch. Of course, support is still there for help 24x7.
We've started a webinar series about how brands are approaching tactics and strategies in this time. You can watch our previous webinars, and sign up to join upcoming sessions.
Subscribe to Sked to attend exclusive webinars, hear from marketing experts and learn how to keep going during this hard time.
We're sharing stories from businesses about the impact that COVID-19 has had, their transformations and their authentic experiences.
Do you have a story to share? Get in touch and we'd love to feature you.
You ask, we get experts to answer – its's an advice column, but less romance and more communications. If you have a burning question, send it through for us to feature.
The first of these is coming out soon, but here's a helpful post in the meantime.
Because sometimes we all need a bit of joy!