Businesses affected by COVID-19 breathe a sigh of relief with the new features on Instagram

The novel coronavirus pandemic, known as COVID-19 has affected the entire world in terms of businesses, jobs, economic conditions of the nation etc . Nothing has killed more human beings than this infectious disease.  

Small Business are affected

Small businesses are at risk of permanently closing over the next few months if the pandemic COVID-19 continues to cause chaos on public health and the economy, according to surveys published.“Small businesses are the backbone of local communities and restaurants are the soul of neighborhoods: they bring people together and build community. We want to do our part in helping them stay open, keep in touch with customers, and be informed on how to navigate this crisis,” said Justin Osofsky, Instagram’s chief operating officer.

Gift cards, food orders online, and fundraising stickers

To support small businesses during this pandemic, Instagram has now officially announced some new and helpful features. Gift cards, food orders online, and fundraising stickers tools for Stories and profiles, which will provide businesses impacted by the COVID-19 shutdowns with an alternative way to generate income during the ongoing crisis. They can feature gift cards, online food orders and fundraisers in their profiles. This move will help businesses spread the word to their customers and followers. These features have been released for the Instagram users in the United States and Canada. They will be rolled out globally in the next few weeks. Users can encourage their followers to show support by sharing stickers in their own Stories.

These stickers will help the users to reach the website and complete their order. Stickers can also play a major role in linking out to a fundraiser built on Facebook. It can be added to businesses’ profiles, too, as a permanent button. Nearly all Instagram accounts follow at least one business. Any moves by a small business to promote their wares on the app might just benefit from a highly engaged audience.

Instagram, and the small business owners, are expecting that this feature will help in increasing their sales and profits. Million Americans are filing for unemployment due to this pandemic and funds for anything other than essentials are likely to be quite low. 

Users can share the stickers to their own stories further spreading the word. This could be a useful feature for the businesses because users have more time on their hands and are likely to be more active on Instagram following the places they enjoy.

“Businesses can share new gift cards, food order, and fundraiser stickers in Stories and on their profiles. When you see gift cards or food orders, you can tap to make your purchase through our partner’s site. Fundraisers [when tapped] open on Facebook to a personal fundraiser created by business owners or their supporters.”

Take-out orders and delivery are presently the key concentration for the restaurants. Retailers are being compelled to close their stores and are looking for choices to create income. Without their regular foot traffic, retailers are losing out significantly.

eCommerce tools can be the best option in this situation. Providing easier ways to promote gift cards is a good option, giving loyal customers more ways to support the businesses they love amid the crisis.

A new option was added by Facebook earlier this month to its personal fundraising options. This will enable business owners to create personal fundraisers and to call on their customers for support. Fundraisers will be attached to personal fundraisers on Facebook. Businesses will have an option to connect these personal fundraisers to a dedicated support Instagram Stories Sticker as well as a business profile button, adding more ways to raise awareness of fundraising campaigns. These new measures will bring forward more options for businesses to reduce the impacts of COVID- 19. 

 So, if you’re one of the lucky ones who still have an income, make sure to give back to your community by supporting. 

Deepthi Raghunath

Well-known as a “Bengali in Sweans” due to the usage of Hindi in my talks I love creating and managing digital content to build relationships for organizations and individuals. Rest assured, my clients are always my priority.