Recently an increasingly number of "smart and ambitious" Chinese people are using every means of social media to do micro-business, selling everything from cosmetics, travel products to even plastic surgery treatment. But many of them turned out to be fake and fraud.
I think it's smart for businesses to sell goods on social media. I think in todays mobile technology age, the easiest way to reach consumer is through social media. But consumers should be aware of the these fraud business. Personally, If a certain business is questionable then I would not trust to do business with them. I guess it all comes down to the consumer's own judgement whether the business is to be trusted or not
Social media marketing is very effective and efficient, when done properly, and there is very little, if any, way to regulate its use in all of its emerging forms. Therefore, it's definitely a customer-beware sort of state right now, in which people can easily be tricked. That said, it's also a fantastic way for micro-business to take place and for people who have dreams of starting this kind of business to try out their ideas in a relatively risk-free environment. I think back to classified ads of 20 years ago, and how expensive they were. You might have to pay $250 to put two lines in the local newspaper advertising your service (which is not a very effective way to spread information about your service), and if you don't do that regularly, of course, very few people would be able to know about you (and you had to make $250 a week just to break even). But with digital media today, including web sites and social media, you just have to have something that people want to connect with, and to share that idea (often with low-impact labor that produces richly designed digital media forms, for free). The market has an entry floor in this case of almost nothing. If you pitch your idea out there, and it gets no response, then, hey, you tried, and not too much lost. But if you make connections, and your idea gets traction, then you can make a compelling case for pursuing it even further, again, with little or no upfront costs. On the whole, I think such an environment generates much more creativity and opportunity than it does crooks (although there will be some).
I am a lecturer and a fanatic of social media; I such people who use social media as social and collaborative. I always encourage my students to engage in social media
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