Identifying and Prioritizing Social Medias Functions in Small and Medium Enterprises from the Perspective of Iranian Experts

The main objective of the present research is to identify the function of social media in small to medium businesses. In the first stage, the functions were identified using literature review, then they were determined using interviews and theme analysis. A survey has been conducted to finalize the functions using questionnaire from 80 experts and their comments and viewpoints were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis. Results of the factor analysis identified the functions of sales and advertising effectiveness, branding, cost, improving employees’ communications, organizational effectiveness and knowledge management. Afterwards, the functions were prioritized using ANP method and also the opinions of 12 experts. The results showed that sales and advertising effectiveness (0.349) have assigned the highest and organizational effectiveness and knowledge management (0.07) have assigned the lowest weights, respectively.