Despite the significant potentials that social media platforms offer for promoting the performance and competitiveness of SMEs, many of these SMEs though using these platforms, are yet to fully embrace these advantages. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of social media engagement and performance of SMEs in Akwa Ibom State. Three objectives were raised and the variables under consideration were
content creation and sharing, brand building and awareness, networking and collaboration. Based on these, three hypotheses were formulated for the study. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Data were collected from 331 respondents in three Local Government Areas namely Ikot Ekpene, Uyo and Mbo representing each of
the senatorial districts of Akwa Ibom State, using multi-stage sampling procedure. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the all the hypotheses. Findings of the study revealed that content creation and sharing, brand building and awareness, networking and collaboration all had positive significant effect on performance of SMEs in Akwa Ibom State. Based on this, it was recommended amongst others that small and medium scale enterprises should invest in high-quality content creation and sharing strategies on social media platforms. This includes regular engaging posts, visual and informative contents that appeal to the target audience.
