If you live in Northwest Arkansas, you are probably very familiar with Leisurlist, the area’s ultimate resource for everything to eat, see and do. Their Instagram feed is full of beautiful photos of delicious food from local restaurants, millennials sharing drinks at a local brewery and cute dogs living their best life. As a business focused heavily on live events, restaurants and places to gather, Leisurlist had to pretty much change their entire model overnight to meet the needs of this new social distancing landscape. We asked Leisurlist’s Director, Jerra Nalley, to share what the past few weeks have been like, and how they have been navigating this new territory.
“Our mission has always been to provide local resources and recommendations for our followers and to support local business. That has not changed, it is just currently looking a bit different than it normally does.”
How are you adjusting your business and marketing focus during this time?
We want to be a resource for our community to find things to do and support local business. On the website we are now focused the most on insider view articles highlighting everything from takeout and delivery restaurants in NWA (updated daily), to live updates from the governor and city leaders to ways to support local business virtually. We used to average 1 insider view blog post per week and now we are averaging 7-10 per week.
And what about events?
In terms of events, we pulled down the events on our main page that were cancelled and are now inputting remote events as we find them so local concerts, performances and more.
How has your content strategy changed?
The content on our email, podcast and social media channels have shifted. Instead of highlighting local things to eat, see and do, we are now focusing on what to eat with takeout and delivery, what to see and do virtually or in nature and what’s making us smile with the community giving back. We are posting more than ever, because we know that people are on their phones and want this type of content. We are shifting everything to provide it appropriately. We even changed our main header banners to be able to switch them out daily with new articles. We are currently testing a new virtual happy hour idea called Learn with Leisurlist where we go live on Tuesdays and Thursdays on Instagram with local businesses showing our users how to do something new like make a cocktail, style WFH looks or take photos.
“We still want to be a resource for our community to find things to do and support local business so we have shifted everything about our business.”
Stay tuned for more inspiring stories from businesses you know! And if you have a story, helpful tip, or funny meme you’d like to share, email us hello@creative.promo. We’d love to hear from you!
