For businesses that are already internet connected, social media can be adopted without any additional resources. Social media can even be deployed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) due to its low cost and minimal technical requirements (Ferrer et al., 2013). As a result, social media use continues to grow exponentially among businesses (Mourtada and Alkhatib, 2014), and is rapidly becoming a crucial business management phenomenon (Trainoret al., 2014). Organizations are therefore using more platforms (Kietzmann et al., 2011). Social media is perhaps an increasingly popular choice for businesses because it allows communications to go beyond a private one-to-one conversation to become many-to-many (Siamagka et al., 2015). Social media functions also provide relatively cheap options for analytics, automated publishing, content management, conversion tracking and customer targeting. Businesses can use social media to promote their products, services and brands. Various studies have investigated the use of social media in businesses and have found that it has many benefits (Kenly and Poston, 2016; Pan and Crotts, 2012; Arora and Predmore, 2013; Siamagka et al., 2015; Venkataraman and Das, 2013; Zolkepli and Kamarulzaman, 2015). For example, approximately 70 percent of United Arab Emirates (UAE) residents have reported taking advice from social media before making purchase decisions (YouGov, 2016). There is also evidence that social media provides increased reach through brand engagement (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). Social networking sites are therefore perceived as an electronic marketplace, where business and customers interact (Gazal et al., 2016). Social media use enables SMEs to access markets outside their immediate geographical area, without a physical presence being required (Bilbao-Osorio et al., 2014). It appeals to SME owners because it can make geographic locations, distances and time irrelevant (Alarcon et al., 2015). The impact of social media on SMEs has meant that it has become an important topic in the business and entrepreneurship literature (Edosomwan et al., 2011). Durkin et al. (2013) found that SMEs can gain particular benefit from using alternative business management tools like social media, because they often lack the necessary resources for traditional forms of management. Previous studies have tended to consider social media use in business-to-consumer contexts. Studies have, for example, examined the impact of social media on consumer purchase decisions (Pookulangara and Koesler, 2011), its use in boosting brand recognition or obtaining feedback from customers (Siamagka et al., 2015) or how it can provide useful market research data (Rapp et al., 2013) and generate word-of-mouth recommendations (Chang et al., 2016). Despite its increasing relevance and perceived value for SMEs (Durkin et al., 2013), there are still very few studies on the way in which SMEs use or decide on social media channels. Only a handful of studies have so far examined the use of social media to improve business management and particularly its impact on business performance (Ainin et al., 2015). There have been some studies on usage levels, barriers and metrics for social media in SME contexts (Ainin et al., 2015), but little is known about how social media adoption by SMEs affects their performance in the Middle East, especially the UAE.