The Unique Challenges for Creative Small Businesses Seeking Feedback on Social Media

Video

DOI

Social media can be an especially effective source of feedback on open-ended work, such as product design. Unlike large businesses with entire teams dedicated to “social”, there is little understanding of how small business owners constrained both in personnel and resources can leverage the benefits of direct, informal communication channels afforded by social media. Through a series of design workshops and interviews with 26 small business owners at a local feminist makerspace, we uncover the unique challenges small business owners experience when seeking feedback on open-ended work via social media. We found participants carefully balanced large-scale access to diverse audiences with attempts to receive reliable feedback, and often targeted audiences narrowly to reinstate participants’ control and trust. While business owners idealized building authentic relationships with their social audience to create collectively, they shared the behind-the-scenes work needed to do so successfully such as navigating blurred personal and business identities, and self-regulation necessary to continuously stay engaged and not internalize discouraging feedback.