The Differences in the Usage of Social Media between SMEs operating in the Iron and Mining Industries

Since Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in iron and mining industries are significant contributors not only for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and labour creation of countries but also export volumes of nations, they have also crucial roles to reduce unemployment rates, and increase amount of exports. But comparing to their larger counterparts, SMEs encounter more financing obstacles that might make them to become non-competitive. Within this context, their usage of social media platforms might increase their competitiveness because these digital marketing channels provide less costly solutions for their activities. But depending on their characteristics, their willingness and propensity to implement social media channels in their marketing operations can show differences. In this regard, this paper intends to examine whether the usage of social media channels by SMEs in iron and mining industries differ depending on their size and length of doing business. To hit this target, the researchers have created a questionnaire survey and have directed it to the randomly selected respondents from Cribis database. 702 SMEs that operate iron and mining industries of Slovakia and Hungary have fulfilled the survey. Independent Sample T test is applied to explore differences in the selected variables. While the usage of social media platforms by smaller and larger SMEs does not differ, older SMEs apply social media channels more than younger SMEs. These results are consistent for both Slovak and Hungarian SMEs. The reason of similarities in both nations’ SMEs might be related with similar social-economic conditions of these nations, education level and experience of firm executives. The cooperation of policymakers with SMEs, universities, industrial zones, and unions to encourage the effective usage of social media channels might increase SMEs operating in mining and iron industries and their executives’ competencies and competitive postures to contest with their larger-sized counterparts.