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

1. Deployment, Usage and Impact
of Social Media Tools in Small
and Medium Size Enterprises:
A Case Study.
Elefterios Papachristos, Christos Katsanos, Nikolaos
Karousos, Ioannis Ioannidis, Christos Fidas, Nikolaos Avouris
upatras.gr

2. Objective
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Evaluation of the deployment of social
media tools in small enterprises
 What needs does a typical small enterprises
have regarding social media?
 What kind of tools could assist them?
 How easy can these tools be integrated into
their activities?
 How much impact can tools have on small
enterprise’s social presence?
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3. SMEs
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3 Greek SMEs with diverse profiles.
(staff of less than 20)
 SME 1
 SME 2
 SME 3
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Software Quality Research Group
16 staff members
Software Company
2 resident staff members and 4 external
collaborators
Internet Company
6 resident staff members and 2 external
collaborators

4. SME 1 profile: Software quality group
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• Facebook (67 likes - 10/month)
• Twitter (10 followers – 119 tweets)
• LinkedIn
Somewhat active SM users 1 hour/week
1 staff member responsible for SM management
Main goal: Networking, promoting our
research, attracting project partners

5. SME 2 profile: software company
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• LinkedIn (no company account)
• Facebook (48 likes)
• Twitter (0 followers – 0 tweets)
• YouTube
Mostly passive SM users 3 hours/week
2 owners responsible for SM management
Main goal: Establish the company’s brand
in the market of software houses

6. SME 3 profile: internet company
h t t p : / / h c i . e c e . u p a t r a s . g r 6 of 23
Active SM users 1 hour/day
4 staff member responsible for SM management
• Facebook (3418 likes, 3-4 posts/day)
• Twitter (0 followers – 0 tweets)
• Google plus
• Pinterest
Main goal: Increase our reach, widen our
customer base and sell more products
3 staff member responsible for SM management
New project
• Facebook (0 likes)
• Twitter (0 followers –0 tweets)
• Google plus
Travel
agency
Deals
website

7. Study method
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We introduced a variety of Social Media tools to the
SMEs:
 Monitoring tools
 Aggregators
 Presence Enhancement tools
 Provided instructional material/tutorials and
support
 Encouraged them to use them but did not impose
them to them
 Interviewed them regularly
 Monitored their Social media activities
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8. Social media Tools
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Hootsuite
(commercial tool)
InterSocial
Experimental
tools
InterSocial
Monitoring
Monitoring
Soneta Enhancement
ESA Aggregator
- Aggregator
- Enhancement
- Monitoring

9. Study timeline
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10. Pre-study interview (phase 1)
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 General Questions about
SM usage
 SM management/policy
 Social media Strategy
 Usage of SM Tools
 Followers/fans profiling
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11. Tool introduction
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InterSocial Monitoring tool Tutorial
1.General tool
Information
2.Specific
Instructions
3.Task Examples
For each tool introductory material was prepared

12. Deployment (phase 2)
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 What tools did they
use?
 How did they use
them?
 For how long?
 How easy it was to
learn to use them?
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13. User experience (phase 3)
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 Usefulness
 Usability
 Learnability
 Functionality
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14. Overall impact (phase 4)
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 What was the overall
impact?
 Did the tools support them
in achieving their goals?
 Will they keep using them?
 Did their social media –
related activities change?
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15. Result analysis
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Qualitative Quantitative
Narrative Summary
Analysis
Qualitative Data
Analysis (QDA)
Statistical Analysis
of objective metrics
• Klout
• Facebook
Insides
• Sprout Social
…
• Reach
• Page likes
• followers
• Post views
…
Objective
metrics
interview
transcripts
Code
frequencies
Study result
Summary

16. Stated problems
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1. Not convinced about ROI of SM for their kind of
company
2. Management of multiple social networks
3. Don’t know what to post
1. Management of multiple social networks
2. Lack of time to engage with SM
3. Don’t know what to post
1. Need more information about how to use new
social media
2. Lack of time to engage with SM
3. Don’t know what to post
Qualitative data Pre-study interview
SME 1
SME 2
SME 3

17. SME 1 results
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Small increase in Facebook followers from 69 to 74 page Likes
Small increase in Klout score from 27.1 to 30
Small increase in activity
Quantitative
Qualitative
The tools motivated the staff to increase their social media activities
Engagement in new types of social media activities (e.g. trend
monitoring, designing of campaigns)
Mostly interested in aggregators for the purpose of monitoring multiple
Social Networks
40% of comments related to the management of multiple Social
Networks
Intend to continue using social media aggregators for posting purposes
to identify social media opportunities.

18. SME 2 results
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Small increase in Facebook followers from 48 to 53 page Likes
Small increase in Klout score from 22.4 to 27
Small increase in activity
Quantitative
Qualitative
Change in attitude towards social media
They take the company’s social media presence more seriously
than before.
They revisited their social media objectives and strategy
Mostly interested in aggregators for the purpose of posting on
multiple Social Networks
72.2% of comments: “Don’t know how to use it appropriately”
Intend to continue using social media aggregators monitoring tools
(such as the ones provided) to identify social media opportunities.

19. SME 3 results
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Quantitative
No change in Facebook followers from 3418 to 3419 page
Likes
Small increase in Klout score from 43.0 to 45.2No change in
activity
No change in activity
Increase in Facebook followers from 0 to 4649 page Likes
in 1 month
Increase in Klout score from 0 to 51.5 in 1 month
Twitter
Actively engaged with twitter
managed to gain 149 followers in ten days
218 tweets in 1 month
Travel
agency
Deals
website

20. SME 3 results
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Qualitative
- Engagement in new types of social media activities
(e.g. trend monitoring, geolocation monitoring)
- Interest in a new Social Network (twitter)
- Mostly interested in Enhancement tools and for
information about more effective use
- 50% of comments related to time constrains
Will use introduced tools only occasionally in the
future

21. General results
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SME 2: Needed information and examples about
appropriate ways of using Social networks specific
to their company domain as well as how to
incorporate the tools in their activities (marginal
motivational effect)
SME 1: Had time issues and needed help in their
everyday activities (positive effect)
SME 3: Needed information about effective ways of
using New Social networks. Need information more
than tools. (marginal effect)

22. Tools
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In general tools were considered relatively
easy to deploy and use
usability
29%
usefulness
33%
functionality
16%
learnability
22%
Aggregators received the most positive comments
Geolocation monitoring was perceived useful
conceptually but companies had problems finding
appropriate ways to incorporate
it in their activities
Simple search data are not very useful to the companies,
some kind of data reduction, transformation or
summarization is needed

23. Conclusions
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- All In all the study revealed useful information
about the deployment of SM tools in various
SMEs
- Companies with varying profiles have diverse
needs and therefore the effect of introducing
Social Media tools in their activities differed
considerably
- Although the tools seemed to have a positive
effect on all SMEs it was often the case that
information about how to use SM appropriately
was valued more.
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24. h t t p : / / h c i . e c e . u p a t r a s . g r
Thank you

25. Pre-study interview questions
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General Questions
What social media do you use?
How much time do you invest on average per day on social media?
Do you believe that social media provide reasonable ROI (return/
investment)?
What is the main problem you face in regard to Social Media?
Social media management/policy
Who is responsible for managing the social media account?
How do you manage multiple administrator accounts?
Who is the contact person?
Who reply’s on customer messages?
Are employees allowed to post messages without supervision?
Social media Strategy
What is the over social media strategy of your company?
What do you hope to achieve through your presence in social media?
Do you have specific, measurable goals for using Facebook?
Do you have specific, measurable goals for using Twitter?
Do you have specific, measurable goals for using LinkedIn?
How do you measure if you achieve your goals?
How do you measure your success?
What kind of posts are you usually making?
Social media Tools
Do you use tools to automate posting and measure your success.
Do you use or have heard about one of the following tools
Facebook insides
Hootsuite
Klout
Sprout Social
SocialIQ
In what metrics would you be interested?
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Followers/fans profiling
Do you know what your target audience is?
Are you interested in the user profiles of your followers/fans?
Does demographic information about followers/fans help you form better
messages/posts?
5. Are you searching for and targeting influencers?
Miscellaneous
Do you launch Social media campaigns?
Do you pay to boost posts/ or pay for twitter followers?
Do you schedule your posts?
Do you know what the best time is to post your messages?
What are the most important problems you face in regard to social media?
No time to post
I don’t know what to post
It is difficult to keep up with multiple social media accounts
I have no time to engage in conversation with my customers
I don’t have enough information about how to use the various social
media effectively
I cannot afford having an employee focusing on social media
What kind of help would you prefer?
More information/ guidelines about appropriate use
Tools that allow the management of multiple social media accounts
(posting, viewing)
Tools and Metrics that let me measure my social presence and the
achievement of my goals
Tools that show me engagement and the effectives of specific post
Tools that would help me understand the needs of my audience better
Tool that would allow me to build more effective campaigns

26. interview questions
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Phase1: Deployment of Social media tools interview questions.
 How easy was to it to embed the provided tools in your SME
activities?
 Did you embed all the provided tools? For each tool you haven’t
used, please describe why you not?
 What level of effort was required to deploy the provided tools?
How would you improve the process?
 Did the deployment of the tools result in changes of your social
media policy? If yes, please describe them.
 How much time did you invest on the deployment of the provided
tools? What was the most time-consuming task?
 Did you find the provided training/instructions activities useful?
How would you improve the process? How easy would the
deployment be without the provided training?
Phase2: User experience with tools interview questions.
 How useful did you find the provided tools?
 How easy was it to use the provided tools?
 How did the provided tools support you in achieving your
objectives? Please provide examples.
 What are the 3 things you like best and least about the tools?
 If you could make one significant change to each one of the tools
what change would you make?
 How much time did you invest on the usage of the provided
tools? What was the most time-consuming task?
 Did the deployment of the tools result in changes of your social
media policy? If yes, please describe them.
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Phase3: Impact of tools on business goals interview questions.
 Did the provided tools support you in achieving your business
goals? Please provide examples.
 Do you intent to keep using the provided tools in the future?
Please explain why or why not.
 Would you recommend the provided tools to other SMEs? Please
explain why or why not.
 How much time did you invest on the usage of the provided tools.
What was the most time-consuming task?
 Did the deployment of the tools result in changes of your social
media policy? If yes, please describe them.
 Please describe the ideal social media tool that would support
your business goals.