How Australian SMEs engage social media as digital touchpoints – a content analysis

ABSTRACT The extent Australian SMEs have progressively adopted social and digital touchpoints varies across industry business sectors. A lack of study into Australian SMEs’ Local Area Marketing (LAM) and digital touchpoint online engagement presence motivates this research. We adopt a website content analysis of 78 randomly selected Australian SMEs and franchises assessing their website presence. A comparison against two earlier explorations notes SME business sector differences. Franchises appear to have higher social media and touchpoint channel presences than SMEs. Discrepancies among the business sectors concerning touchpoint activation and engagement trends, suggest a decline in social media touchpoint presence amongst SMEs. ‘Commercial’ and ‘Professional’ franchise business sectors reflect Digital Touchpoint Involvement growth compared to earlier findings. For SMEs, ‘Commercial’ and ‘Trades’ business sectors indicate noticeable growth. The research reveals inconsistency across website activation touchpoints. In conclusion, a diagnostics mapping tool is proposed to measure touchpoint activation and identify potential touchpoint activation gaps.