Social media is a powerful tool for businesses. It can help you build a brand, spread your message, and reach new customers.
But the learning curve can be steep. You don’t want to waste time learning all the nuances of different platforms and figuring out how to use them effectively.
This guide will break it down for you so you can get up to speed quickly!
Social Media Tools For Business Pdf
n this paper the authors will talk about the usage of social media channels for business expansion, promotion and marketing of SMEs. Indian SMEs are contributing towards the GDP of the nation and those SMEs are the backbone of the nation. The authors have discussed various other examples of SMEs from other countries successfully using social media channels for their promotion and business expansion. Research Methodology: The research methodology will be based on the previous literature on the topic of SMEs and social media tools. The secondary data which consist of previous journals, articles and reports will be used for this research paper.
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http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 137 editor@iaeme.com
Journal of Management (JOM)
Volume 5, Issue 3, May–June 2018, pp. 137–142, Article ID: JOM_05_03_017
Available online at
http://www.iaeme.com/jom/issues.asp?JType=JOM&VType=5&IType=3
Journal Impact Factor (2016): 2.4352 (Calculated by GISI) www.jifactor.com
ISSN Print: 2347-3940 and ISSN Online: 2347-3959
© IAEME Publication
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS FOR BUSINESS
GROWTH OF SMES
Anuj Kumar
Assistant Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Management and Research, New Delhi
Nishu Ayedee
Assistant Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Management and Research, New Delhi
ABSTRACT
In this paper the authors will talk about the usage of social media channels for
business expansion, promotion and marketing of SMEs. Indian SMEs are contributing
towards the GDP of the nation and those SMEs are the backbone of the nation. The
authors have discussed various other examples of SMEs from other countries
successfully using social media channels for their promotion and business expansion.
Research Methodology: The research methodology will be based on the previous
literature on the topic of SMEs and social media tools. The secondary data which
consist of previous journals, articles and reports will be used for this research paper.
Key words: Social media, SMEs, India, Facebook, Twitter
Cite this Article: Anuj Kumar and Nishu Ayedee, Social Media Tools For Business
Growth of SMES. Journal of Management, 5(3), 2018, pp. 137–142.
http://www.iaeme.com/jom/issues.asp?JType=JOM&VType=5&IType=3
1. DEFINITION OF SMES
Small and medium enterprises have been defined in different manners around the corners of the
world. The segmentation of SMEs is based on net worth, assets, no of employees and
shareholder worth. World Bank has categorized the SMEs into three segments (Aga, Francis,
& Meza, 2015).
1. Micro enterprises are those enterprises in which number of employees are less than 10, value of
assets less than $ 10000 and annual sales less than $ 100000(Ghatule & Dubey, 2016).
2. Small enterprises are those enterprises in which number of employees are less than 50, value of
assets and annual sales less than $ 3 million.
3. Medium enterprises are those enterprises in which number of employees are less than 300, value
of assets and annual sales less than $ 15 million.
The Indian government has passed MSMED act on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise
Development. This act has classified MSMEs on the basis of their investment in manufacturing
services sector. The table 1 is showing the classification of Indian MSMEs based on
manufacturing and services sector.
Anuj Kumar and Nishu Ayedee
http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 138 editor@iaeme.com
Table 1 (MSME, 2018)
Classification Manufacturing sector (Plant and
machinery) Services sector
Micro Up to Rs. 25 lakhs Up to Rs. 10 lakhs
Small Above Rs. 25 lakhs and up to Rs. 5
crores
Above Rs. 10 lakhs and up to Rs.
2 crores
Medium Above Rs. 5 crores and up to Rs. 10
crores
Above Rs. 2 crores and up to Rs.
5 crores
2. IMPORTANCE OF SMES
There are approximately 46 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in India and those
enterprises are employing approximately 106 million people. India’s 40% of the workforce is
employed in SMEs sector. The SMEs are contributing approximately 6.11% of the
manufacturing GDP and 24.63% of service sector GDP in India. The contribution of MSME
segment to the GDP in some of the global economies is in the range of 25-60 % range. It has
been expected that contribution of SMEs to GDP will increase to 22% by 2020(PTI, 2018).
SME sector in India is contributing 45% towards industrial output and 40% towards total
exports (KPMG, 2015). SME sector is the backbone of Indian economy because the growth of
employment is consistently increasing by SMEs sector. The growth rate of employment in
manufacturing and services sector is 18% and 34%(Vashisht, Chaudhary, & Priyanka, 2016).
The new entrants are consistently entering into the SMEs segment. The growth rate of
enterprises in the manufacturing segment is 23% and in services segment is 31%. Indian MSME
sector is growing rapidly irrespective of economic barriers in domestic and global context. The
importance of SMEs sector can’t be denied in employment generation, low capital and
technology requirement, promotion of industrial development in rural areas and use of local
resources. The leading industries in Indian MSME sector have been shown below in the figure
1.
Figure 1
There is no question on the performance of Indian MSME sector for providing maximum
opportunities in both self-employment and wage-employment outside the agricultural sector.
The annual performance and gross output of MSME segment is shown below in figure 2 and 3.
Social Media Tools For Business Growth of SMES
http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 139 editor@iaeme.com
The employment and gross-output has been increasing consistently from 2006 to 2012. The
gross output produced by the SMEs sector is more than market value of the assets. In 2006-07,
the gross output was approximately 11,988.18 billion while in 2011-12, it has been increased
to 17,908.04 billion.
Figure 2
Figure 3
The major strength of the SMEs sector lies in its ability to become flexible. The SMEs
sector in India are flexible enough to absorb new innovation and techniques. The cost of
adoption is less in SMEs sector (Uma, 2013). The large multinational organizations are facing
challenging conditions because those organizations don’t have labour and bills are high but in
SMEs the cheap labour is available and overhead cost is less. The decision making is strong in
SMEs because in most of the cases owners are themselves managing the organizations. The
SMEs are contributing heavily towards the domestic production and significant export earnings.
The SMEs have location-wise mobility and low intensive imports.
The weakness of SMEs sector lies in the lack of quality consciousness, financial strength
and work culture. The SMEs sector put less emphasis on total quality. The brand image of
SMEs sector is less influential in comparison to large multinational organizations. Less
influential brand image is a concern for financial mobility of SMEs sector. The seriousness of
labour is also a challenge in Indian SMEs sector. The labour gives less weightage to their
personal work and they don’t maintain regularity and discipline in reporting on time. Many
SMEs in India are facing sickness due to the lack of funds and labour. The sick units in Indian
SMEs segment are closing down on account of lack of quality and increased competition.
3. RESEARCH PROBLEM
Anuj Kumar and Nishu Ayedee
http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 140 editor@iaeme.com
The research problem arises here that SMEs segment in India need to increase its contribution
in the GDP of the country but less financial resources and increased competition are the biggest
obstacles in the path of SMEs sector. The solution of this problem is usage of social media tools
in daily operations of social media sector. Though the usage of social media tools is not in its
nascent stage but still in Indian scenario usage of social media tools is very much limited to
large organizations. The intensive use of social media tools in each and every aspect of SMEs
business is yet to explore by the owners.
Usage of social media tools in SMEs
The usage of internet and technology has been common practice among the organizations
now-a-days. The technology is very much connected with usage of social media tools. The
various social media tools used by the organizations are Facebook, Linked-in, You-tube,
Twitter and Instagram etc. The usage of social media tools can increase the reach of the small
and medium firms. Those organizations can adopt born-global business strategy with the
effective usage of social media tools. A number of studies have advocated about the usage of
social media tools in the business.
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research methodology adopted in this paper is based on the literature review of previous
papers advocated about the usage of social media tools for small and medium enterprises.
Derham et al. (2011) found in his study that embedding social media in business is compatible
because it helps in reaching the niche customers and targeted customers effectively and
efficiently. The businesses can easily share the content of their products and services through
social media tools because those tools are accessible by everyone. SMEs have less budget in
comparison to large organizations. Alam (2009) also argued about the impact of cost of
adoption on usage of internet among SMEs. Social media tools are less costly and these tools
provide an opportunity to interact with global customers at less price. Chai et al. (2011) also
argued that the social media tools enhance customer relationships management by improving
international trust. It is easy for customers to get information about their organization, products,
services and other promotional activities from Facebook and gain knowledge from it. Social
media tools improve the relationships with the customers because it enables two-way
communication with the customers rather than one-way dominant communication by print
media. The social media tools provide an opportunity to the customers to comment on the
promotional videos and pictures of products and services (Ainin, Parveen, Moghavvemi, Jaafar,
& Shuib, 2015). The organizations can work on the feedback of the customers and make a
change in their products and services.
5. ADOPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY SMES IN EUROPE
SMEs have greater difficulties in reaching out the market. The social media tools have helped
the SMEs in Europe to reach target audience. Approximately 61% of the SMEs in Europe are
using social media tools for promotion, marketing, advertising, brand management and
customer relationship management (Batikas, Bavel, Martin, & Maghiros, 2013). The leading
countries where effective usage of social media is visible are United Kingdom, Netherlands and
Latvia. In United Kingdom 90% of SMEs are using social media tools. It has been observed
that 61% of the firms are using free social media tools while 39% of the firms are using paid
version of social media tools. Mostly the social media usage helped the firms in marketing as
52% of firms have adopted social media tools in marketing departments. There is a vast
difference between users and non-users of social media. The social media users are more likely
to open to new ideas and innovations. The usage of social media tools has helped the European
SMEs to become innovative and less hierarchical in nature. The users of social media tools are
Social Media Tools For Business Growth of SMES
http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 141 editor@iaeme.com
highly procedural. In this era of contemporary globalization, the employees want to be
participative in decision making of the companies. Social media tools provide the opportunities
to employees to participate in the decision making of the companies because the organization’s
formal hierarchy is much flatter after the usage of social media tools. Social media tools helped
the European organizations in improving their financial performance and it provides a different
way to communicate and collaborate with customers and stakeholders.
The perceived benefits of social media tools to European SMEs are increased connectivity,
knowledge surfacing and better communication. Social media helped the SMEs in developing
close relationships with employees internally and with customers externally. SMEs can do
knowledge surfacing by accessing information on customers’ activities. More number of
innovative ideas has been inculcated in the companies and information sharing is easy between
the people. It provides greater collaboration opportunities to the teams and reduction in external
communication costs.
The SMEs in Belgium are also finding social networking sites much useful tool in their
promotion, advertising and marketing activities. The usage of social media tools is directly
proportional to the number of Facebook users in Belgium. Belgium has approximately
4,923,480 Facebook users (Merckaert, 2013). Approximately 47.33% of Belgium population is
using Facebook as promotional tool (Merckaert, 2013). The number of users has increased over
a period so it will become easier for SMEs in Belgium to promote their products and services
to the users. The usage of social media tools helped the firms to engage with their core
customers and build communities. The leading social media platforms like Facebook, Google+,
Twitter and YouTube helped in expanding the reach of small and medium enterprises. SMEs
can expand themselves beyond the domestic boundaries with the help of social media platforms
(Alam S. S., 2009). The usage of social media tools also helped the firms in maximizing return
on investment on marketing and advertising. The data gathered on social media sites will help
in gauging customer sentiments. The usage of analytics can be helpful in tracking the
customers’ inputs on products, services and offerings. The brand reputation of the SMEs also
improved and it enhances productivity too.
Examples of SMEs used social media tools to improve their performance
1. Coconut Bliss is an ice-cream company which effectively used the social media to promote its
products and services. The usage of photos and videos on blogs helped the company to reach
out the customers and improve its sales. The company has effectively used the promotions to
engage its fans. The company has effectively used its cameras and integrated photos to attract
the customers (Mershon, 2018).
2. Jamaicans Music is an online music channel which has used social media tools for promotion
and expansion of its business. This online channel has achieved astronomical growth through
smart social media practices- 1.5 million new fans in just a span of 4 months (Mershon, 2018).
Jamaicans Music is effectively using Facebook by providing contests, free music, games and
other valuable resources. The company is providing chances to its fans for revisiting the
Facebook page again and again.
3. Kelly Lester founded Easy Lunchboxes out of a personal desire to find healthy ways to package
food. The company has found unusual success due to wise social practice and social branding.
The company has integrated multiple opportunities to connect socially and to subscribe
newsletter. The founder of the company has used the space effectively by keeping their brand
exciting. The focused plan of the company to market through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
has helped to create unique content and integrate them with each other.
Anuj Kumar and Nishu Ayedee
http://www.iaeme.com/JOM/index.asp 142 editor@iaeme.com
6. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the above discussion, it can be said that social media tools played an important role
in business expansion and promotion of SMEs in various countries. Social media tools helped
in promotion, advertising, marketing and customer relationship management. These tools are
cost-effective and helped in reaching a number of customers outside the geographic region. The
brand management of the company also enhanced with the usage of social media tools. A big
number of customers are using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Those
customers can do two-way communication with the company through social media channels.
Indian SMEs are contributing towards the growth of nation. They are an important factor of the
GDP of country. Those SMEs can take learning from SMEs in Europe, Malaysia, Belgium and
other countries to effectively use the social media tools for their promotion, marketing and other
activities. The usage of social media tools can help Indian SMEs in expanding their business
over domestic boundaries. The SMEs can increase their customer base and enhance promotion
within limited budget by using social media tools.
google scholar
Google Scholar is a popular way to showcase your papers and the citations they’ve received. Google Scholar also calculates a platform-dependent h-index, which many researchers love to track (for better or for worse).
In this week’s challenge, we’re going to get you onto Google Scholar, so you can up your scholarly SEO (aka “Googleability”), more easily share your publications with new readers, and discover new citations to your work.
Step 1: Create your basic profile
Log on to scholar.google.com and click the “My Profile” link at the top of the page to get your account setup started.
On the first screen, add your affiliation information and OU email address, so Google Scholar can confirm your account. Add keywords that are relevant to your research interests, so others can find you when browsing a subject area. Provide a link to your OU faculty or lab homepage, if you have one.
If there are others who share your name, their articles may show up as yours at this point. Don’t despair! Go ahead and add those articles, even though they’re not yours. You will then have a chance to delete them in the next step (and as part of this week’s homework).
Click “Next,” and – that’s it! Your basic profile is done. Now, let’s add some publications to it.
Step 2: Add publications
Google has likely already been indexing your work for some time now as part of their mission as a scholarly search engine, so this step is pretty easy..
Google Scholar will provide you with groups of articles they believe belong to you. Select any group that is your work. If you don’t see your articles in a group, click “Search articles” to do a search, and add your articles one at a time. Click the blue arrow at the top left of the page to move on to the next step.
As mentioned above, there may be publications in the article groups that you do not want included on your profile. These may include newsletter items or articles that do not reflect your current research interest. They may also include articles from researchers other than yourself. You can manually delete those after you have created your account.
Your profile is now almost complete! Two more steps: add a photo by clicking your avatar next to your name and profile information, and set your private profile to “Public.”
Step 3: Make your profile public
Your profile is private if you’ve just created it. You can change your profile visibility by clicking the pencil icon next to your name and checking “Make my profile public” in the window that appears. If, at any time, you want to revert your profile to private again, you can do so by clicking the pencil icon next to your name.
Bonus: Add co-authors
While your profile is technically complete, you’ll want to take advantage of Google Scholar’s built-in co-authorship network. Adding co-authors is a good way to let others know you’re now on Google Scholar, and will be useful later on in a challenge, when we set up automatic alerts that can help you stay on top of new research in your field.
To add a suggested co-author, find the “Co-authors” section on the right-hand section of your profile just underneath the “Cited bar” bar graph. Click “EDIT” to the right of “Co-authors.” In the window that appears, you can search for your co-authors. If they have a Google scholar profile, you can select the plus sign next to their name to add them to your co-author list. After you’ve selected the plus sign, you will need to then click on the blue check mark at the top of the window.
That’s it! Now you’ve got a Google Scholar profile that helps you track when your work has been cited both in the peer-reviewed literature and is another scholarly landing page that will connect others with your publications. The best part? Google Scholar’s pretty good at automatically adding new stuff to your profile, meaning you won’t have to do a lot of work to keep it up.
Limitations
Dirty data in the form of incorrect publications isn’t the only limitation of Google Scholar you should be aware of. The quality of Google Scholar citations has also been questioned, because they’re different from what scholars have traditionally considered to be a citation worth counting: a citation in the peer-reviewed literature.
Google Scholar counts citations from pretty much anywhere they can find them. That means their citation count often includes citations from online undergraduate papers, slides, white papers and similar sources. Because of this, Google Scholar citation counts are much higher than those from competitors like Scopus and Web of Science.
That can be a good thing. But you can also argue it’s “inflating” citation counts unfairly. It also makes Google Scholar’s citation counts quite susceptible to gaming techniques like using fake publications to fraudulently raise the numbers. We’ve not heard many evaluators complaining about these issues, but it’s good to be aware of them.
Google Scholar also shares a limitation with two scholarly social media sites we’ll be exploring in later challenges: ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Each of these sites are somewhat of an information silo. You cannot export your citation data, meaning that even if you were to amass very impressive citation statistics on the platform, the only way to get them onto your website, CV, or an annual report is to copy and paste them – way too much tedium for most of us to endure. Their siloed approach to platform building definitely contributes to researchers’ profile fatigue.
Its final major limitation? There’s no telling if Google Scholar will be around tomorrow. Remember Google Reader? Google has a history of killing beloved products when the bottom line is in question. It’s not exaggerating to say that Google Scholar Profiles could literally go away at any moment. Google Scholar is not alone in this; we recognize that several of the services in the OU Impact Challenge could suffer the same fate. That’s why one of the most important challenges will come in a few weeks – uploading your work to SHAREOK.
Homework
Google Scholar can only automate so much. To fully complete your Google Scholar profile, let’s manually add any missing articles. And let’s also teach you how to export your publication information from Google Scholar, because you’ll want to reuse it on other platforms.
- Add missing articles
You might have an article or two that Google Scholar didn’t automatically add to your profile. If that’s the case, you’ll need to add it manually.
Click the “+” button in the grey toolbar above your listed articles.
Select “Add articles manually” from the dropdown menu. Then you should see this screen.
It’s here where you can add new papers to your profile. Include as much descriptive information as possible – it makes it easier for Google Scholar to find citations to your work. Click “Save (the blue check mark at the top right of the window)” after you’ve finished adding your article metadata, and repeat as necessary until all of your publications are on Google Scholar.
- Clean up your Google Scholar Profile data
Thanks to Google Scholar Profiles’ “auto add” functionality, your Profile might include some articles you didn’t author. If that’s the case, you can remove them in one of two ways:
Clicking on the title of each offending article to get to the article’s page, and then clicking the trash can in the top right of the pop up window.
From the main Profile page, ticking the boxes next to each incorrect article and selecting the “Delete” from the grey bar above your articles
Google Scholar will automatically update your profile when it finds new publication it believes are yours.
You can keep a close eye on what articles are automatically added to your profile by signing up for alerts and manually removing any incorrect additions that appear. Here’s how to sign up for alerts:
Click the blue “Follow” button at the top of your profile
Select “New articles in my profile”
Enter the email address where you want these alerts sent
Click “DONE.”
- Learn how to export your publications list in BibTeX format
There will likely be a time when you’ll want to export your Google Scholar publications to another service, and we’ll ask you to do that in a future challenge. If you already have accounts with other services, here’s how to export in BibTeX format. Please know: one of the reasons we had you sign up for ORCiD first, is that this can often be done automatically through ORCiD’s syncing capabilities. But for other times you may want to export in BibTeX format:
Tick the box next to each article whose details you want to export. (If you want to export all your articles, tick the box to the left of TITLE in the gray bar above the list of your works.) Click the “Export” button, and then choose BibTeX to export your file. You will get a browser window with your citations in BibTeX format, which you can then “Save as…” or copy/paste to a text editor and save.
Using the same instructions above, you can also download your citations as a .csv file or for EndNote. These files download directly to your computer.
In future challenges, we’ll also cover how to use Google Scholar to stay abreast of new research in your field and new citations to your work.
Conclusion
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