How to help your favourite businesses during lockdown

Here at Winzum we’ll be the first ones to say that this isn’t at all what we expected from 2020. In fact, we’re not sure anybody really expected the global Covid-19 pandemic to effectively take the world hostage and make concepts such as lockdown and social distancing the norm.

But, what can you do? In many ways we are all in this together, and that is why it is more important than ever to help your favourite independent businesses during lockdown.

You may have already read our blog article on how to support live music venues after lockdown (available here [supporting live music venues after lockdown]), however, as we plunge straight back into a second national lockdown we’ve compiled some ways to support your local businesses through the next month.

Social media interaction and engagement has never been so important

These days social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are some of the best ways for independent businesses to advertise themselves, however it can be frustratingly difficult to actually get people to see their pages. This fact has been heightened over the past few years too, as Facebook move towards paid advertising.

But here’s the thing: it’s actually much easier than you might think to help these businesses expand their social media reach, all you have to do is engage with their content as often as possible! You see, the boffins at places like Facebook run everything through an algorithm, and if a post has more organic engagement it will get shown to more people.

So drop a comment and a like the next time one of your favourite lockdown-struck businesses post, what’s the harm?

Favourite restaurant closed? Make sure you order takeaway

Over lockdown restaurants are only open in a very limited fashion, with most places only doing takeaway meals. Now, eating a takeaway from your favourite restaurant is bound to fall short of actually having dinner inside, however you still get the most important thing – the food!

Smaller restaurants in particular will be struggling, so make sure you buy order takeaways from these establishments as much as possible in order to help them make ends meet.

Buy as much music from your favourite musicians as possible

Musicians are some of the most afflicted members of society during lockdowns and the wider Covid-19 pandemic, with many of them effectively being out of a job. Due to the way the modern music industry works the vast majority of artists make most of their incomes from live shows, and this just isn’t possible at the moment.

This is why it is now more important than ever to buy as much music from your favourite musicians as possible, especially seeing as streaming sites like Spotify pay an absolute pittance.

Keep any postponed gig or festivals tickets and don’t be afraid to buy more

Obviously money can be tight, which is why many people have refunded any festival or gig tickets they had until the current wave of confusion and turbulence is over. Whilst this is completely understandable, if you are financially able to roll over your tickets to things like festivals it can be an invaluable help to the organisers.

A huge amount of money is needed for the planning of these events several months in advance, so it really does mean the world to organisers if people opt to roll their tickets over.