From strategic orientation to social media orientation: Improving SMEs’ performance on social media

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a framework of small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) strategic orientation (SO) and its impact on social media performance. Moreover, it introduces a new concept, social media orientation (SMO) (composed of sales and business development (SBD) and visibility) to add in the model.

A quantitative approach was used and, based on a study of 257 SMEs, analyses were performed. A smartPLS analysis was judged appropriate regarding the sample size.

Results show that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and customer orientation have a positive influence on SBD which in turn has a positive influence on social media performance. Visibility is positively influenced by EO and has an indirect effect on social media performance. Social media performance is therefore directly influenced by SBD and indirectly by visibility.

The authors complete previous research that called for the introduction of different SO on a same study and go further as the author highlight the role of EO on visibility (and not only on business or performance). A second contribution lies in the conceptualization of SMO (defined here with SBD and visibility) and third in the measurement of social media performance through growth and attention.

SMEs first need to develop their visibility, and then link it to SBD.

This research is one of the first to explore SMEs’ SO on social media and proposes a new concept defined as SMO. It gives SMEs future direction on how to perform on these platforms.