An Unexpected Journey: Designing a Social Media Marketing Framework for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

Introduction

SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) play an essential role in many countries worldwide. It is due to their role in providing jobs and supporting regional development and innovation, all of which contribute to the economic well-being (Savlovschi & Robu, 2011, Epede & Wang, 2022). A thriving and productive SME sector is critical to a country’s economic prosperity, and there appear to be opportunities for smaller enterprises to benefit from the usage of social media (Tiwasing, 2021). In emerging economies, formal SMEs generate up to 40% of national income (GDP) (Worldbank, 2022).

The internet's exponential growth has resulted in the rise of two critical phenomena: social media and online search engines. Social media is explicitly defined as a tool based on internet-based applications which best utilize the Web 2.0 ideology and technology, enabling rapid creation, exchange of content, interaction from a place of their comfort, garnering, and catering to humungous audiences, and building networks at fingertips (Andrade & Ruao, 2022). Web 2.0 technology and associated social media applications such as social network sites (SNSs), microblogging, weblogs, content communities, and wikis have been increasingly incorporated into organizational environments during the last few years (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). The use of social media apps has expanded beyond individuals to capture the attention of corporations. According to mounting evidence in this fast-paced world, small organizations can gain business value from using social media for internal and external objectives (Rishi & Bandyopadhyay, 2017).

It is critical for SMEs to develop a clear understanding of the business model to reflect on the target audience the business aims to capture and identify real problems that need to be addressed using social media as a powerful tool (Fang et al., 2021). Social media empowers strategies opted by SMEs for building brand recognition, addressing user review, understanding the areas of improvement, and building on constructive criticism received and giving a clear picture of the brand’s performance. It broadens the horizon of customer relationships with the business (Popli & Rishi, 2021). It eases out the direct communication channel, bringing in revolutionary ideas and accelerating innovations in collaboration and building brands at affordable costs (Rishi & Kuthuru, 2021a). We know that SMEs predominantly have local clientele and prefer not to broaden their business beyond their region due to financial constraints (Lacho & Marinello, 2010).

Many SMEs use social media for branding, research, customer relationship management, services, and sales promotions, among other purposes. However, the central focus is on brand building (Das & Mondal, 2020). Similarly, SME customers can access various shared information sources from other customers regarding experiences and suggestions using social media (Qalati et al., 2020). The network built through social media for small businesses ultimately contributes toward business value. However, there is a range of instances where business models fail to implement it due to a lack of information related to technology (Rugova & Prenaj, 2016). At the same time, there are potential adverse effects of social media that require digging deep into the business model of SMEs. In SMEs, social media majorly contributes to customer relationships (Economist, 2009). However, the challenge lies in the fact that SMEs fail to realize business value from the use of social media due to a lack of identification of customer value proposition, henceforth underperforming in their use of the applications of social media to gain the best out of it and convert into results (Qalati et al., 2021; Qalati et al., 2022).