Paper Title
Strategic Aspects of Social Media for SMEs as Supply Chain Participants

Abstract
In the current university course books we can learn that mutually beneficial co-operation among Supply Chain (SC) members can be established only through time-consuming, long lasting relationships, which finally will lead to cooperation and trust. It might be still in effect, but times are changing. Time based competition does not allow the “waste” of such long lasting approaches. Today, we are witnessing that a new paradigm is emerging: social media has accelerated this process. Based on the globalization of SCs and Social Media (SM), even international SCs require less time to establish cooperation and alliances. Cultural differences between nations and people will no longer be insurmountable difficulties. On the contrary, large corporations may hinder these advantages, because they are usually dominant partners in the chain. This paper aims to investigate how SMEs should create a strategy towards a better use of current Social Media resources. Index Terms - Social media, Supply chain performance, Digitalization, SME, Strategy.