The last two years have been hard for small businesses all over the world. Meta’s State of Small Business surveys have consistently found that the pandemic has led to high closure rates, lower sales, cash flow problems and job losses for many small businesses.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been doing all we can to support small businesses by trying to help address some of their biggest pain points, like cash flow, and access to the tools they need to get setup and grow online. We’ve placed a particular emphasis on supporting diverse-owned businesses, with programs like Meta Elevate to support Black and Hispanic business owners and communities with training and resources to help them succeed online.
We’re celebrating National Small Business Week in the US by introducing new resources for diverse businesses and new tools for all small businesses.
New Resources for Diverse Businesses
This week, Meta Elevate and Adobe launched a global partnership to support diverse-owned small businesses. Meta and Adobe’s partnership will unlock educational opportunities for businesses all over the world through access to free training and tools, as well as gifted subscriptions to minority-owned businesses. This gift will be a one-year premium subscription of Adobe Express for 10,000 business owners.
This month is also Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The pandemic has been especially tough for Asian and Pacific Islander communities and businesses. Hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have increased 145% since the start of the pandemic. And across the US, Asian Pacific Islander businesses have been the most negatively impacted by the pandemic among all demographic groups.
To support Asian and Pacific Islander-owned businesses, we’re introducing resources and support through our new Meta Prosper program. Prosper will focus on providing content, training resources and events in six different languages (Chinese, Hindi, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese) on @metaprosper on Instagram and on the Meta Prosper Facebook page: facebook.com/meta-prosper. Small businesses will also be able to receive trainings with Gold House, as a continuation of our long-standing partnership to grow and celebrate API voices and brands through education, access and amplification.
New Tools for Small Businesses
Every week, more than 1 billion people connect with a business account across our messaging services. And three-quarters of adults globally say they want to communicate with businesses via messaging in the same way they communicate with friends and family.
So, we’re using our expertise in person-to-person messaging to simplify and improve how people and businesses communicate with each other across our apps. We built new tools to help small businesses get better results across the customer journey – from generating higher quality leads, to improving incremental sales, and getting higher customer satisfaction at lower cost. You can learn more about updates like bringing WhatsApp in Inbox, marketing messaging in Meta Business Suite and new lead generation tools for small businesses here.
Meta is in the business of small business. More than 200 million businesses use our apps every month to create virtual storefronts and reach customers. Millions have used our tools to help them make the transition online since the start of the pandemic. Whatever challenges and opportunities they will face in 2022 and beyond, we will continue to do all we can to help them find success online.