An Evaluation of Social Media on the Growth and Expansion of Small Scale Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of Small Scale Businesses in Nigeria.

Abstract

Social media has become a formidable tool for business growth and expansion (Tim, 2017), with over 2 billion people using social media it becomes a potent meeting place for business owners and customers (Kamz, 2017). This research tries to investigate the role of social media on business growth and expansion focusing on Small Scale Businesses in Nigeria. The research is informed by the need to study how businesses adopt social media to increase brand awareness, connect with potential clients, obtain customer reviews, increase product salability, and also the marketability of goods (Kemp, 2019). This study adopts the qualitative research strategy which collects data from conducting interviews, 8 interviews were conducted with small scale entrepreneurs in Nigeria via snowball sampling methods. Data is analyzed using thematic analysis, eight (8) themes are discovered which proves the potency of social media for business use in the 21st century. The findings of this research reveal that social media has more benefits for business especially in terms of communication, building customer relationships, advertising, low cost in operations, and using several digital channels, which increases the business presence. This study thus, recommends the use of social media for business and also constantly updating social media platforms to keep up with trends as the online environment is dynamic.