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

Social media can be an effective source of feedback on open-ended work, such as product design. Unlike large businesses with entire teams dedicated to "social," little is understood about how small business owners-constrained both in personnel and resources-leverage the benefits of direct, informal communication channels afforded by social media. Drawing on a series of design workshops and interviews with 26 small business owners at a local feminist makerspace, we report on 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 they often targeted audiences narrowly to reinstate control and build trust. In addition, the small business owners in our workshop idealized building authentic relationships with their social audiences to create collectively. To do so successfully, participants detailed the extensive behind-the-scenes work required of them such as navigating blurred personal and business identities and the self-regulation necessary to continuously stay engaged and not internalize discouraging feedback.