Street Fight’s May Theme: Local Commerce’s Recovery Playbook

This post is the latest in our “Commerce and Coronavirus” series. It will be an editorial focus for the month of April and May, and you can see the rest of the series here. 

Once per month, Street Fight editors discuss the next month’s focus. You may have noticed themes that persist throughout each month, usually reflective of timely or foundational local commerce topics. We still cover major industry happenings, but these themes help structure the editorial flow.

But this month, we’re breaking protocol. For the first time ever, a theme is so relevant that we’re extending its coverage into the next month. April’s Commerce & Coronavirus theme — like the pandemic itself — will continue into May.  There’s really no other topic that feels as relevant right now.

This isn’t to say that our May coverage will be repetitive. Just as Covid-19 is a developing story, so will be our coverage. In fact, we’ll have a specific focus within the monthly focus that mirrors the current state of the virus’s effects on local media, advertising, and commerce.

For example, last month’s coverage included questions and speculations about how local businesses will operate and survive. Now, the focus shifts to longer-term questions. How will local commerce fare in the return to normalcy?

In our own reporting and analysis (and through the words of our contributors) this month, we’ll define the playbook for local re-entry. As business ramps back up, what will best practices be for local staples such as search marketing and reputation management?

We’ve already covered how businesses are digitizing to adapt to the challenges of commerce in a time of social distancing, embracing curbside pickup, social advertising, pop-up distribution centers, online classes, and retail tech. Street Fight’s parent company Brandify also ran a webinar that provided tactical information for local businesses to stay on top of their listings during a time when critical local search queries (e.g. pharmacy hours) are on the rise.

With an even longer-term view, we’ll examine how this period of uncertainty will shape the future of local commerce. As we wrote last month, being forced to do new things makes us see new things. And that’s where discoveries can be made for new practices that persist beyond hard times.

The coronavirus-fueled shutdown has shone a spotlight on local resilience. Forced to face lockdown-related challenges, many businesses have innovated as a matter of survival. It’s still a tragic time, but silver linings can be found in the fact that shifting ground is where innovation lives.

Through all this, our promise is to maintain the reportorial rigor and journalistic integrity that you’ve come to expect. Misinformation abounds in normal times, but the stakes are obviously higher now. So we’ll reinforce our own best practices as a journalistic entity that vets published content carefully.

We’ll label posts on this topic so you can look out for them (see the preface and links at the opening of this article). We’ll also give you the chance to see them all at once. This is part of an ongoing editorial strategy aimed at helping you find our most pertinent content across monthly themes.

Reach out to us with suggestions for monthly themes, opportunities to contribute, and to amplify your brand messaging alongside this thematic coverage. On that note, we’re excited to also announce that we’ve launched the latest version of our media kit. Check it out, and come be part of our narrative.