Deployment, Usage and Impact of Social Media Tools in Small and Medium Enterprises: A Case Study.

Social media are today engaging millions of users and provide a great venue for various business activities of Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs. However, many SMEs have been slow to adopt them due to perceived barriers such as lack of resources, negative views about their usefulness, and unfamiliarity with technology. Social Media Tools SMTs aim to lift some of these barriers by helping companies monitor, manage and enhance their social media presence. This paper presents a study that investigates the deployment, overall user experience and impact of such SMTs in SMEs. Four SMTs were introduced to three regional SMEs with diverse profiles. The SMEs freely used the tools for a period of one month, and both qualitative e.g. perceived issues and quantitative data e.g. Facebook page fans, Twitter followers were collected before, during and after the study. Evaluation results are presented per SME and common themes are tentatively discussed.