Social media opens the market to women entrepreneurs in Qatar cheaply and easily — but a reputation built there can be lost to a single mistake

Women in Qatar who want to start a business face barriers on several fronts, from financing and legal requirements to cultural norms and a business world dominated by men. This study asks why women entrepreneurs there use social media for marketing communication, what they gain, what gets in their way, and where media literacy fits in.

A qualitative study: in-depth interviews with ten women entrepreneurs in Qatar running businesses of varying sizes and already using social media, chosen purposively for their expertise, between September and October 2022. The interview questions were reviewed by experts in entrepreneurship and marketing communication and piloted with a small group; the thematic analysis was cross-checked by an independent researcher. Approval came from the Strategic Communication Management Program Board, Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University.

• Three reasons for using it: convenience (reaching customers in one click), being the most cost-effective form of advertising available to them, and the business opportunities it opens.
• Benefits came at two levels. Personally: brand awareness, talking to customers even outside business hours, and ease of access. For the business: building brand reputation, managing marketing, expanding, and driving sales.
• Three challenges: growing an audience, especially for a new business; staying professional in the face of negative comments and complaints; and reputation management — one participant warned that a single mistake can lead to a boycott of the business.
• The coping strategies participants actually used: growing the audience through quality content, collaborations with influencers and complementary brands, paid advertising, hashtags and geotags; setting guidelines on response times, tone and which comments to answer, then training the team on them; monitoring constantly, responding quickly, owning mistakes, communicating transparently and sharing positive customer reviews. Instagram and Snapchat were the platforms their customers used most.
• Participants saw social media as a space that cuts across gender lines, safe enough to do business in within a patriarchal society.
• The authors interpret the results through six frameworks, among them social exchange theory (it is used because the gains outweigh the costs) and the resource-based view (social media as a strategic resource that builds competitive advantage).

For organisations supporting women entrepreneurs, the lesson is that social media genuinely lowers the barrier to entering the market, but what entrepreneurs felt most exposed on was not posting — it was handling negative comments and protecting their reputation. Training should cover that, not only techniques for growing a following. The authors recommend building media literacy — analysing, creating and managing digital content — into entrepreneurship programmes.