What have been the influencers doing during Covid-19?

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Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, it gave one of the toughest times to all of us including the frontlines, businesses, and netizens. Most of the businesses are opening their new online channel and slowly shifting there. People are forced to stay at home and people are work remotely and attending online classes too. When people are staying at home, what’s their main entertainment or best friend nowadays? The answer is the internet. People are binge-watching all the old and new series drama, downloading all sorts of games to play with their family and friends and also watching live videos from their favorite influencers. Everything needs to do with the internet. 

Since the first day of Movement Control Order (MCO), influencers in Malaysia had generated more than 3,727 posts with the hashtag of #stayathome with the total number of 18million of likes and 231thousands of comments. As we can see from the graph above, travelers and food bloggers are not so active recently as they are not allowed to travel outside and even inside the country, therefore, most of their posts will be throwback pictures or videos of their past trips. Influencers who are focusing on sports indeed increased their postings as they did videos or live to teach people how to exercise correctly and stay productive throughout the MCO. Of all the posts posted on Instagram, the highest engagement post has a percentage of 19.17% with 4,877 likes and 40 comments in the post. 

So, what have been the influencers posting or doing during the MCO period? Let us summarize it for you. 

1. Spreading positive and useful messages

For most of us, this is our first time facing MCO and it is understandable that people are very panic. During the first two weeks of the MCO, influencers took their part to encourage and convince the public to stay at home and be positive for everything that we are going through. They made videos or photos to explain why the netizens should stay at home, why we all should wear a mask when we are out from our house and also stop panic buying. They also shared their experiences going to supermarkets and lots of them noticed netizens are panic buying all the necessities. Most of the daily needs are out of stock and supermarkets were packed with people. 

2. Hand wash challenge

As we all know, wash and sanitize your hand often is very important at this moment. Instead of just showing a picture of you washing hands, influencers are making it more engaging and fun by transforming a simple image into a dance move or challenge so we all can do it as well when we are bored. Besides that, we can also teach our toddlers or small children on how to keep their hands clean.

3. On the way to becoming the second Gordon Ramsay

Look at the positive side, MCO actually gave us a good opportunity to spend quality time with our family and do all sorts of things together. Many influencers actually share videos and pictures of them cooking and baking with their loved ones. Aside from that, they also shared their recipe so that the public could cook together as well. There are also influencers who shared how to cook simple meals so that those who are not good at cooking are able to prepare themselves.

4. Workout and burn the fats off

Daily routine: wake up, eat, work from home, nap, dinner, watching your favourite drama and sleep. That’s basically our daily routine during this whole MCO, right? Don’t you feel a little unhealthy and unproductive? So, influencers came out with easy exercise where we all are able to do so even we are not in the gym or without dumbbells. Some of them even did a live video to have a gym session with their fans so that everyone could work out together and sweat it all out. And now, we all can build our little six-packs and for those who already have it are able to maintain as well.

5. Creating TikTok Videos

Other than Instagram, what’s next? It’s TikTok! TikTok doesn’t need special editing skills or effects or equipment to do so. They just need a phone, a TikTok account and record it. Then post it on their TikTok account. It is very simple and everyone could do so wherever they are. This is one of the most popular apps for everyone during this MCO. Influencers are starting to create their TikTok account and have fun with it.