Social Media Effects On Small Business

For small time business owners just getting started, social media can be a perfect means of getting started. As anyone who has built or attempted a small business could tell you, getting started can be incredibly difficult. First off, the owner or co-owners must develop a good or service that they believe is marketable. Then they must accumulate the resources necessary to begin doing business, whether that be an established workspace, supplies necessary for production, willing employees, or otherwise. Finally, it is now the business owner’s duty to establish a name in their area, because once all this work is done the producer still must bring in customers to hopefully turn a profit. This is where social media shines in its usefulness to the …show more content…
This modern concept is known as “crowdfunding” and it is rapidly changing the way new businesses are made (Stanko, 2016.) The premise is simple; it begins with an individual with a potential product or service. This person must then create a business plan, detailing their prospective methods of bringing idea into fruition. This typically involves a target audience, a target goal for the monetary backing needed to fund this project, a demonstration and in some cases a working model of their creation, and details of how they plan to bring this product or service into circulation. Once all this is done, the salesperson moves onto the final step. He or she must now present this plan and product to an online audience, typically in the form of a project page. Ordinary online consumers, like you and I, then judge this product and the information given and decide whether or not to donate to this project and its founder. From this point on it is in the hands of the online consumer whether or not this project becomes fully funded and hopefully reaches the final stages of production and …show more content…
Most crowdfunding websites, like the popular Kickstarter and GoFundMe, have built in features made to keep supposed creators from taking their money and running with it. The most simple and effective of these being that when people pledge money to a product, their money doesn’t actually leave them. This is because no money is actually transferred until the project founder’s goal is reached, and until that point donators are free to withdraw their donations at any point. The greatest criticism of crowdfunding is that once this goal is met, the host website is no longer legally responsible for the money transferred. This means that if one decides they’d rather be a con man rather than a legitimate practitioner, there are no legal repercussions to simply not following through with a