Use and measurement of social media for SMEs

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate why small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are using social media and how they should measure its return on investment (ROI). The measurement of economic value associated with the use of social media by business is discussed in order to construct a model designed for analysing the ROI of social media for SMEs. The importance of a planned entry into the social media arena, formulation of measurable goals and objectives and understanding the business process are presented as vital pre-cursors to measuring, and indeed attaining, ROI. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review was compiled to explore the current thinking that exists on business use and measurement of social media in mainstream academic literature and other business-oriented publications. Primary research in the form of a survey was conducted with SMEs to determine the usefulness of social media and how SMEs measure its ROI. Findings – SMEs find some social media applications more valuable than others but 65 per cent of the companies surveyed did not measure the ROI. An overarching framework, aimed at SMEs, is presented which advocates that SMEs should take a strategic focus and plan their use of social media, and draw insight from both quantitative and qualitative data when measuring ROI. Originality/value – Most existing research on social media is related to large organisations and tends to focus on technical and commercial use rather than examining the value and ROI gained from social media from an SME perspective. This paper offers a simple framework to help SMEs plan their use of social media as well as measure its true value.

Openness, ICT and entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Whereas ICT can be leveraged to enhance entrepreneurship in order to address such unemployment challenges, as far as we are aware, the contemporary entrepreneurship literature has failed to connect with the ICT, openness and the doing of business. There is a growing body of literature on the employment of social media to promote entrepreneurship (Jones et al, 2015;McCann & Barlow, 2015;Wang, 2016) and knowledge sharing in entrepreneurial success (Allen et al, 2016).…”

Openness, ICT and Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…There is a growing body of literature on the employment of social media to promote entrepreneurship (Jones et al, 2015;McCann & Barlow, 2015;Wang, 2016) and knowledge sharing in entrepreneurial success (Allen et al, 2016).…”

Untitled

“…It can help small businesses to communicate cost effectively with customers on a global scale (Jones, Borgman, and Ulusoy 2015). McCann and Barlow (2015) noted that better communication and marketing of products/services is one of the main benefits identified from the use of social media among the small business. As an outcome, social media is perceived as performing a central role in current companies' marketing and business undertakings (Atanassova and Clark 2015;Kirtiş and Karahan 2011).…”