How two organisations use social media to weather Covid-19 economic crisis

CORONAVIRUS | Businesses or brands which can change and adapt to new methods of running operations during the Covid-19 pandemic will have a better chance of weathering the crisis.

In a virtual press session by Facebook Malaysia yesterday, two women were highlighted for being able to utilise social media to benefit their organisations while under the movement control order (MCO).

Siti Zubaidah, a mother of six, is the founder of "Laman Segar", a food catering service in Malacca.

They mainly supplied catering to hotels and restaurants before the MCO, but she said they have now shifted their business towards door-to-door food delivery.

“In the first week, we didn’t know what to do, how can we do business because all the shops are closed. Then we sat down and discussed and decided to turn our business to do door-to-door delivery,” she said during the live stream.

They began to aggressively advertise and market on social media, such as Facebook to attract customers.

“We really had to change. Back then, most of our customers were restaurants and suddenly, we had to change to door-to-door delivery, so we started back from zero.

“We had to pull back our customers, we did lucky draws on Facebook live,” Siti Zubaidah said.

Their efforts have been successful so far, she said, and they have managed to even attract customers from outside of Malacca.

Now, she said, they have many customers from outside of state who order from them for their parents or relatives residing in Malacca.

At the same time, she said they also help others from kampungs (villages) in the area as well as local fisherfolks to market their products and fish too.

Uplifting disadvantaged women

Susheela Sabaratnam, one of the founding members of NGO Women of Will, said they too have shifted to using social media to facilitate their work under the MCO.

Women of Will, which was founded in 2016, works with disadvantaged women in the community and trains them to be home-based entrepreneurs.

“Now with the MCO, the ladies have all said that they have not conducted any business, they are unable to do anything.

“Some 80 to 90 percent (of our members) who are in the food business have lost out in terms of income,” Susheela said in the live stream.

She said her organisation wanted to help these women earn some income during Ramadan month, and they came up with the idea to create Ramadan markets using Facebook groups.

“So we took four communities in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor and formed groups with them, with the mothers so that they can sell their food items.

“We also encourage people not doing food items to come on board,” she said, adding that they have trained the women on the standard operating procedures (SOPs) needed to keep everyone safe and healthy.

In terms of how they have changed the way they engage the women, Susheela said they used to do face-to-face training as well as community days with the families.

Now, as they cannot engage with the women in person, she said they have moved their engagements to social media and phone calls.

The MCO was first implemented on March 18 and has since been extended three times up to May 12.

However, it is expected that the MCO might be extended once more, well into the Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebrations.

Those interested can visit Laman Segar's Facebook page here and Women of Will's website here. - Mkini