Coming across basic challenges everyday as a small business is already a given but for an unexpected pandemic to completely wipe away efforts, traffic, sales and significant progress is heartbreaking and quite realistically, threatening.
Due to the present Covid-19 crisis, local small businesses that are situated in neighborhoods as physical stores had no other choice but to shut down which drastically affected their income and lifestyles.
A few local online businesses were still able to keep their practices alive since they are online based, however, were still affected.
Instagram now has the “Support Small Business” feature sticker where people can easily show love and appreciate small businesses on their Instagram stories with the sticker. The name of the business will be mentioned on the sticker and acts as a tag on the story. This provides a preview of the business to other viewers and allows them to go to the business’ account by clicking on the sticker.
TikTok has also tremendously helped in putting local small businesses on the map. Due to the rise in appreciation of small businesses, users have started to shoutout small businesses with the use of hashtags, reviews and short videos about the products they purchased from the business. Not only that, local businesses themselves, have shifted onto the thriving platform to provide customers a view of their products and even give them an insight as to how they create their products from scratch. These businesses have categories including jewelry and accessories, baking, embroidery, painting, skincare, handmade bags and clothing, pottery and more!
Social platforms like Instagram and Twitter quickly grow and knit together communities within the platform, which definitely played an advantage for the businesses. Throughout the past few months, a major of the Instagram and TikTok community acknowledged the hardships small businesses were facing during the troubled time.
By empathizing and taking action, users on these platforms have strongly supported these businesses by sharing these posts and tagging them on their stories, purchasing from these stores and producing haul content, recommending the stores to their families and friends, etc. These tiny practices are truly what makes a huge difference in the revenue of such small businesses by providing them exposure, which in result puts them on the map!