Meta Rolls Out New Small Business Tools With a Focus on Diversity

Facebook’s parent company Meta is rolling out new small business tools with a focus on supporting diverse companies and an overall goal of helping all firms succeed. 

“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 set up and grow online,” Sheryl Sandberg, Meta chief operating officer said in a press release on Wednesday (May 4).

“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,” she added.

Meta Elevate was launched to support Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs and their communities by offering training programs and other resources to assist them in achieving success online.

In recognition of National Small Business Week in the U.S., which runs from May 1 to May 7, Meta teamed with Adobe to launch educational opportunities for small firms around the globe. One perk includes a one-year premium subscription to Adobe Express, offered to 10,000 minority-owned businesses.

Since May is also Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Meta is supporting small businesses in the U.S. with the launch of its new Meta Prosper program. The initiative will offer content training resources and events in six different languages — Chinese, Hindi, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.

“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,” Sandberg said in the release.

Meta is tapping its experience in person-to-person messaging to make it easier for consumers and businesses to communicate. 

“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,” Sandberg said in the statement. 

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