Social Media As a Pathway to Entrepreneurial Success: Overcoming Barriers for Black Women Entrepreneurs

This study examines social media's significant yet challenging role as a tool for entrepreneurial success among Black women entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is a powerful pathway to social and economic mobility, offering underrepresented groups opportunities for financial independence and influence. Social media platforms have opened up avenues for brand building, customer engagement, and business scaling. Still, Black women face obstacles in leveraging these opportunities such as algorithmic bias, underrepresentation, and social barriers. This paper explores these challenges and the strategic approaches Black women entrepreneurs can employ to build a robust social media presence despite systemic limitations. It also provides policy recommendations to mitigate these barriers' impact and calls for targeted support from government and private sector initiatives, including education on platform algorithms and inclusive design. Finally, empirical research directions are proposed to deepen understanding of how Black women utilize social media for opportunity recognition and business performance.