An Introduction to Social Media Marketing

AUTHOR

Bernadette Coleman
@Advice_Local

It wasn't so long ago that social media was a completely new thing. Four years ago,
when we started Advice Interactive Group, many people didn't know what social
media was let alone the effect it would have on all of our lives. It was an exciting
interactive medium which suddenly took the world by storm to such an extent that
it became something that no business, small or large, local or global, could afford
to ignore. Today, there are more than 1.28 billion active users on Facebook alone,
currently the world's most popular social network. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and
various other social media sites have hundreds of millions of active users as well.

Social media is effectively a platform for conversation and sharing, powered by

services such as the ones mentioned above. While one of the major uses of social
media is keeping in touch with friends and relatives around the world, it is also a
platform for customers, investors and employees to communicate with one another,
and this is where the enormous and ever-growing industry of social media
marketing comes in. From this point forth, we will refer to social media marketing
by its popular abbreviation, SMM.

Succeeding With Social Media

SMM is all about being present and engaging your target audience directly, but at
the same time, the medium is largely unorganized and uncontrolled. In order to
succeed, you will need a strategy which helps you to reach out to the right
audience and join in with the global conversation that is social media. If you have
yet to be convinced of the enormous potential that social media offers to small
businesses, consider the following facts:

 According to the Social Media Examiner online magazine, 86% of marketers

in 2013 considered social media to be essential for their business with 49%
of marketers choosing Facebook as their primary social media platform.
 According to the marketing firm WebDAM Solutions, 43% of marketers
found customers through LinkedIn, while 52% of marketers found
customers through Facebook in 2013.
  According to Pew Research, approximately 73% of all Internet users used
social media services on a regular basis in 2013, with the most popular being
Facebook.

Now that you have an idea of the prevalence of social media and its rapidly
growing influence, let's take a look at some of the key ways in which social media
can help you connect with your target audience:

 Generate awareness of your company and its products or services by tapping

into one of the largest audiences in the world.
 Generate leads through your social networking connections, speeding up the
process by creating events and promotions.
 Draw in visitors to your website and other online portals by using your
social media resources to promote new content.
 Maintain direct relationships with your customers and potential customers in
order to improve your product and get to better know your audience.
 Provide customer service and advice directly to your audience and get useful
feedback from your followers to help track your success.
 Facilitate sharing of your online content through the use of social media
sharing buttons, effectively letting your audience advertise for you.

The above cites some of the key reasons to get involved in SMM, but there are
many more depending on the type of business you are operating. Local businesses
can also make extensive use of social media platforms targeted specifically
towards traditional high-street businesses. Sites like Google Places, Bing
Places, Yelp and Foursquare, among others, help you to show up in local search
results and online or mobile maps. What's more is that all of the above is
absolutely free to use, and while there are also paid SMM methods, the free ones
are far too valuable to neglect.

1 - Understanding the Social Media Marketing Process

Small business marketers often find the prospect of online marketing a daunting
one, not least because it can be difficult to know which areas to focus on. SMM is
an extensive subject with a complex hierarchy which you will need to familiarize
yourself with in order to plan your strategy. As is the case with many forms of
online marketing, SMM typically starts with your website:

 The foundation of your social marketing campaign is your website,

particularly a blog, which provides a regular stream of content to keep your
 audience interested, increase subscribers and social media followers and
raise awareness to your business and its online presence.
 RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow you to aggregate and sort your
content in such a way that you can provide more personalized content to
different segments of your audience. People can subscribe to your blog to
receive regular updates by way of RSS feeds.
 Social search tools, such as Google Places, Bing Places, Foursquare, Yelp
and other online directories may be used to get listed in local search results
and draw more attention to your business and its online presence. Social
search is heavily intertwined with SMM for small businesses.
 Social sharing and bookmarking refers to tagging and sharing content on
social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ or social
bookmarking websites like Delicious, Digg or StumbleUpon. For sharing to
happen, you need to have enough high quality and useful content.
 Microblogging, typically using the Twitter platform, can help to raise
awareness and promote your content, thus drawing in more visitors to your
website or blog. However, for microblogging to become successful, you
need plenty of content worth promoting and sharing.

SMM starts with extensive planning, followed by research into your target
audience. You will then need to move your focus to engaging your audience while
publishing content (content marketing) and promoting it on your various social
networks while also encouraging your audience to do the same.

2 - Social Media Networks to Use

While just about everyone has heard of the largest social media sites, such as
Facebook and Twitter, there are many others worth a mention to. This chapter
takes a look at the world's most popular social media platforms and how they can
help small businesses with their social marketing campaigns.
Facebook

With 1.28 billion active user accounts in March, 2014, Facebook is by far the
largest social media platform in the world providing both paid and free marketing
opportunities for businesses small and large.

 Facebook business pages offer a platform for businesses to provide regular

updates, build up subscribers and engage audiences directly.
 Facebook Ads provides a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system which
businesses can use to provide targeted ads to relevant audiences.
 Your target audience can share your content on their own Facebook accounts
and increase awareness by 'Liking' certain posts.

Twitter

The social networking and microblogging platform Twitter has 200 million active
accounts, and it is particularly popular for businesses, entrepreneurs and celebrities
to provide short, regular updates.

 Twitter users can post short 'Tweets' with a 140-character limit, making the
platform compatible with SMS as well.
 Create a Twitter page specifically for your business and use it to attract
followers and reach out to your target audience.
 Twitter Promoted Tweets provides businesses with a paid advertising
platform helping them to reach out to a wider audience.

Google+

Google+ has 540 million active accounts, making it the second-largest social
media site in the world. Most importantly, Google+ integrates with Google's other
important services for both businesses and individuals.

 Your Google+ profile is directly connected with your listing on Google

Places, a tool for local businesses to show up on maps and local searches.
 Google+ offers a professionally orientated platform for businesses, allowing
them to carry out direct relationships with things like live video
conferencing.
 Google+ integrates with other important Google services, such as Google
Authorship, Google Places and of course, the world's largest search engine.
LinkedIn

LinkedIn has 277 million users, and unlike Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, it is
specifically aimed towards a professional market consisting of both individuals and
businesses.

 Creating a Company Page with LinkedIn provides you with a platform to

showcase your business and connect with potential customers and leads.
 LinkedIn is the number one social media resource for professional
connections, such as those in business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
 Search for employees and valuable business leads by browsing through
professional profiles on LinkedIn.

Pinterest

Thanks to its unique, visual approach towards social media, Pinterest already has
well over 70 million active users and counting. Both individuals and businesses
can use Pinterest for sharing visual bookmarks known as 'Pins.'

 Pinterest is most suitable for businesses which rely heavily on visual media,
such as those in the fashion, photography, design and jewelry industries.
 Pinterest offers business accounts including useful additional features such
as the ability to promote Pins and analyze results.
 You can link your Pinterest business profile with other social media
platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram

Another primarily image- and video-based social media website, Instagram has
more than 150 million active monthly users making it one of the most popular
services of its kind.

 Being visually orientated, Instagram is ideal for businesses in the fashion,

food, travel, design and technology industries.
 You can post creative snapshots and other illustrations showcasing your
company's products, host photo contests and integrate promotional codes.
 You can only link to your business's website through your Instagram bio
page, though you can refer to it in post comments to help generate traffic.
YouTube

Though not primarily a social networking website, the world's third most visited
website and the most popular video sharing resource, YouTube also integrates
important social features making it too important to ignore.

 YouTube provides a free platform which businesses can use to publish video
content such as tutorials, product overviews and more.
 YouTube provides its own paid advertising program, allowing businesses to
have their ads appear in other people's videos.
 YouTube's social features include video commenting, integration with
Google+ and ratings by way of likes and dislikes.

The above social networks largely revolve around building up relations and sharing
content, but the list certainly doesn't end here. Another important type of social
media is social bookmarking, a type of service which allows users to add, annotate
and share content from elsewhere on the Web. Though the most of the above sites
also facilitate social bookmarking, there are a number of other websites which deal
primarily with this area of social media. Some of the most popular include Digg,
Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious. These sites provide you with a useful
platform for promoting your content.

Many other countries and geographical areas also have their own social media
networks, some of which have hundreds of millions of users. For example,
VKontakte, often dubbed the 'Russian Facebook' has around 250 million users
mostly in Russia and the former Soviet republics, while China has its Qzone social
network with almost half a billion users.
3 - Dos and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing

While incorporating SMM into your business's marketing strategy is of utmost

importance in today's increasingly online world, the process is not always an easy
one, and many businesses fall victim to some of the common SMM mistakes. The
following takes a look at some of the most important dos and don'ts of SMM:

 Do start with a solid plan. Your social media strategy needs to work together
with your other online marketing processes, such as search engine and
content marketing. You'll need to start with realistic goals and a thorough
knowledge of your target audience.
 Do not be tempted to go overboard by setting up profiles on as many social
media platforms as you can. While the largest platforms, such as Facebook,
Twitter and Google+, can be useful for almost any business, many smaller
networks are targeted towards a more specific industry or demographic.
 Do stay committed to your SMM campaign. Social media is all about
posting regular updates and engaging your audience on a regular, preferably
daily, basis. You need to stay involved for the longer term, and it should
become a part of your business's daily routine.
 Do not use social media as a platform for hard selling. Your social
networking profiles are not all about generating sales - they are a stepping
stone between your potential customers and them getting to know your
business. Sales pitches do not belong in things like Tweets and Facebook
posts.
 Do find the right compromise between professionalism and casualness,
depending on the particular social network you are using, but regardless of
the tone you use, be sure that you always use impeccable spelling and
grammar and have something to back up your statements.
 Do not expect an immediate return on your efforts, or in the case of paid
advertising, your investment. As is the case with almost any form of online
marketing (particularly the free ones), it will take time for your efforts to
come to fruition.
 Do listen to your audience. Social media is as much about listening as it is
about speaking. As previously stated, social media is all about conversation
rather than a platform for sales pitches. Be sure to partake in debates and
answer any queries that your audience may have as soon as possible.
 Do provide a regular, interesting and engaging stream of content that
provides something of value to your audience. Your social marketing efforts
 should start with your blog or website and the content you publish on the
Internet. SMM provides you with something to show off and share your
knowledge.
 Do track your results. Find out which social networks and any paid social
advertising programs you have are delivering the most traffic to your
website. Always track your results using the wealth of information generated
by such activities, and tweak and customize your campaign to keep it on the
up.

As the above notes point out, SMM differs immensely to traditional advertising.
These days, consumers are far more likely to respond to things like
recommendations based on shares and likes on social networks, and getting
involved in the discussion is critical for small businesses to stay competitive in a
constantly evolving marketplace.

4 - Taking a Local Approach with Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

As a small business with a physical location, it is essential to take a more localized

approach when building up your online presence. While most of the world's largest
global companies also have a strong presence in the world of social networking,
there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be using social media to market a
traditional bricks-and-mortar business as well.

The first place to start is to claim your profiles on the most important resources for
local listings. It costs nothing to claim your local profiles, and you should have
them all up and running within a few days once you have verified that you are the
real owner of your business. Some of the most important social resources for
claiming your local profiles include the following:

 Google Places. Claiming your Google Places profile will allow your
business to show up in local searches and on Google Maps.
 Bing Places. Claiming your Bing Places profile will allow your business to
show up in local searches with Microsoft Bing and on Bing Maps.
 Foursquare. Creating a listing on the Foursquare location-based social
networking website allows customers to find and 'check in' to venues.

You should also be sure to optimize your other social media platforms for a local
audience. For example, you can create a Facebook Page for a local business or
place and use Facebook Places, and most other social networks also allow you to
specify your location and company address so that people can more easily find you
when carrying out local searches.

Conclusion

Once you have defined your community and established your presence on social
media, you will need to keep your online social activities at a high professional
standard in the long term. To more effectively manage your SMM campaign, you'll
need to continue to research your audience to determine when is the best time to
post and engage. You will also need to track your performance through tools such
as Google Analytics and by listening closely to customer feedback and keeping in
touch with current trends. Above all, approach your audience in the right way,
using the tips included in this guide, and over time you will be able to strengthen
your relationship with your customers and reach out to new ones.
 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

INTERNATIONAL
01. Mario Raposo

Abstract
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in
accordance with a variation on the systematic review approach, involving
synthesis- and interpretation-based assessment. The results demonstrate how most
of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer perspective in terms of usage, share,
and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions. The studies
focusing on the firm's perspective centered not only on the usage of social media,
but also on their implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The
majority of studies are quantitative and published in recent years. This study not
only reached certain conclusions for both theory and practice, but also defined
future lines of research according to the gaps detected by the study's results.
Social Media Marketing: A Literature
Review and Implications
Helena Alves
University of Beira Interior and NECE
Cristina Fernandes
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and NECE
M´
ario Raposo
University of Beira Interior and NECE
ABSTRACT
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web
of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in accordance with a
variation on the
systematic review approach, involving synthesis- and interpretation-based
assessment. The results
demonstrate how most of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer perspective
in terms of usage,
share, and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions. The
studies focusing on
the firm’s perspective centered not only on the usage of social media, but also on
their
implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The majority of studies
are quantitative
and published in recent years. This study not only reached certain conclusions for
both theory and
practice, but also defined future lines of research according to the gaps detected by
the study’s
results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The emergence of new information and communication
technologies, particularly the Internet and social net-
works, has changed market dynamics, threatening the
competitive positions of firms (Porter, 2001) and in-
creasing the power of consumers (Urban, 2005).
The Internet- and online-based social media have
changed consumer consumption habits by providing
consumers with new ways of looking for, assess-
ing, choosing, and buying goods and services (Albors,
Ramos, & Hervas, 2008). These developments influ-
ence how marketers operate and affect marketing prac-
tices in terms of both strategy and tactics by present-
ing marketers with new challenges and difficult choices
(Thomas, 2007).
We understand social media as including all
Internet-based technological applications, in accor-
dance with the principles of Web 2.0 and providing
the creation and exchange of user-generated content,
while also facilitating interaction and collaboration be-
tween participants (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Such
applications also include blogs and microblogs (such as
Twitter), social networking sites (such as MySpace and
Facebook), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), collab-
orative projects (such as Wikipedia), content commu-
nity sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr), and sites dedicated
to feedback (e.g. online forums; Chan & Guillet, 2011;
Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
According to Mangold and Faulds (2009), social me-
dia enables firms to communicate with their customers
and also allows customers to communicate with each
other. Communications between firms and their cus-
tomers help build brand loyalty beyond traditional
methods (Jackson, 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010),
which concede to the promotion of products and ser-
vices as well as the setting up of online communi-
ties of brand followers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Furthermore, conversations between customers pro-
vide firms with new means of increasing brand aware-
ness, brand recognition, and brand recall (Gunelius,
2011).
Researchers such as Castronovo and Huang (2012)
maintain that marketing strategies involving market-
ing intelligence, promotions, public relations, product
and customer management, and marketing communi-
cations should begin exploring and leveraging social
media, not only because there is a growing interest
among consumers in Internet usage, but also due to
the fact that consumers consider information shared on
social media as more reliable than information issued
directly by firms (Constantinides et al., 2010).
According to eMarketer (2013), firms have increas-
ingly adopted social media for various marketing ac-
tivities such as branding, market research, customer
relationship management, service provision, and sales
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 33(12): 1029–1038 (December 2016)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20936
1029
promotion alongside various studies that are putting
forward evidence of the positive implications of de-
ploying social media in marketing strategies. However,
many firms have yet to incorporate social media into
their strategies (Chan & Guillet, 2011) despite the
existence of diverse studies providing empirical evi-
dence of the benefits to companies (see, e.g., Alhabash,
McAlister, Quilliam, Richards, & Lou , 2015; Kozinets,
Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Mirchan-
dani, 2012; Kumar et al., 2013; Luo & Zhang, 2013; Yu,
Duan, & Cao, 2013), as well as detailing the means by
which social media marketing strategies may be im-
proved and leveraged (see, e.g., Guo, Pathak, & Cheng,
2015; Liu & Park, 2015; Lorenzo-Romero, Alarc´
on-
Del-Amo, & Constantinides, 2012; Qazi, Raj, Tahir,
Cambria, & Syed, 2014; Tang et al., 2015).
Given the limited scope of research into the differ-
ent aspects of social media, as well as their specific
significance to company marketing activities, this arti-
cle carries out a review of the literature on social media
marketing. The purpose of this article is also to identify
the fields of marketing where social media marketing
strategies have been applied and studied, the results
found, the types of research developed, and what im-
plications might be drawn from these studies for both
management practice and theory.
To the best of our knowledge, there has been no
generic review of social media marketing, and thus this
article makes a relevant contribution to this field of re-
search. Hence, our aim involves contributing to deepen-
ing and systemizing the study of social media market-
ing by surveying the most prominent lines of research
as well as those requiring further study. In addition,
by systemizing the conclusions of various social me-
dia marketing studies, we also deepen the knowledge
firms require in order to either take their first steps or
strengthen their recourse to social media for strategic
purposes.
METHOD
Within the scope of our objective of providing a sys-
tematic review of literature on the “social media mar-
keting” concept, we put forward two stages in this sec-
tion: (1) planning the review, which describes the way
in which we planned our systematic approach along-
side references to those authors following a similar
methodology; (2) conducting the review and analysis,
where we set out a description of the various phases
of the review and the systematization of the selected
literature.
PLANNING THE REVIEW
To ensure replicability for future researchers, we fol-
low a systematic review process. This is generally
understood as an overall perception of trust in the
scientific research existing in any field or topic (Pet-
ticrew & Roberts, 2006). Its aim is to identify, assess,
and summarize all relevant studies using a replicable
and transparent process (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart,
2003). We explained the criteria for the bibliographi-
cal research, for admission and exclusion, and the an-
alytical processes, thus providing a means to audit the
processes.
As the field of research in social media market-
ing proves quite recent and diverse, we here apply
a variation of systematic review, involving synthesis-
and interpretation-based assessment, in order to com-
bine the best evidence based management practices
(Macpherson & Holt, 2007; Thorpe, Holt, MacPherson,
& Pittaway, 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003).
CONDUCTING THE REVIEW AND
ANALYSIS
In the first phase of gathering references for our study,
we began by researching the Web of Science for all
titles containing the words “social media marketing.”
Following this, we then excluded books, book chap-
ters, reports, and conference proceedings due to the
variability in their respective peer review processes
and more restricted availability. In contrast, journal
articles were deemed to have been duly validated
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Bachrach, & Podsakoff, 2005).
Thus, we did not restrict the research to periodicals
with the greatest impact on their fields but rather in-
cluded all the articles from journals indexed by the Web
of Science containing the expression “social media mar-
keting.” We did not define any time frame for publi-
cation and our initial search returned 108 articles. In
the second phase, we carried out analysis in order to
verify whether the studies already identified were ap-
propriate to the purposes of this research. In this phase,
we retained only those articles from English language
publication and that were neither proceedings nor
commentaries. Following this procedure, we excluded
63 articles and maintained 44.
The third phase of this study involved individual-
ized and independent analysis of the articles by two
researchers through recourse to a predefined evalua-
tion grid that incorporated the analysis of the social
media marketing concept applied along with the re-
spective methodology, study type, sector, and the social
media channel utilized in the study along with the main
conclusions. This grid was subsequently compared and
refined.
In the fourth and final phase of our study, we com-
pleted content analysis and systematized the 44 arti-
cles, and to this end making recourse to NVivo (version
11.0) software. Based on these results, we extracted
summarized information on the subject to analyze in
terms of the type of study, type of analysis, conclusions,
scope, and similarities among the studies.
1030 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 1. A representation of the 100 words (with more than
four letters) most used in the articles analyzed.
AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ON SOCIAL
MEDIA MARKETING
The Concept of Social Media Marketing
Our first analytical stage consisted of trying to system-
ize the concept of social media marketing based on the
definitions appearing in the articles. However, we found
only the article by Chan and Guillet (2011) actually pre-
sented a definition of the social media marketing con-
cept based on the AMA (American Marketing Associa-
tion) definition of marketing in 2006; a definition that
was reviewed and updated by the AMA in 2013. Hence,
in terms of systemization, we may only state that prac-
tically all these studies approach the concept of social
media marketing as a transposition of the marketing
concept applied to social media with no author high-
lighting any particularities to applying the marketing
concept in this domain.
Areas of Study
The next stage deployed exploratory analysis of the con-
tent of the various studies analyzed. Figure 1 sets out
the results in a representation of the 100 words with
more than four letters that were most frequently men-
tioned in these articles.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, the most prominent
words are social media marketing, in agreement with
the area of study but appearing interrelated with others
on a secondary level in which the words Facebook, on-
line, information, and brand stand out, which to some
extent anticipate the content of these articles as we
demonstrate further on in the article. After analyzing
the dates of the articles, which vary from 2010 to 2015,
the majority appear in the last two years, conveying the
growing importance of this subject.
Figure 2 presents the results of the cluster analysis
that enabled the grouping of the analyzed articles in
terms of the similarity of the words used based on the
Pearson correlation coefficient. As observed, the cluster
analysis allows for the identification of various groups
of articles that prove more similar to each other when
the figure is read from right to left. Analyzing Figure 2,
we understand how there are clearly two main and mu-
tually distinct clusters. The first article cluster (iden-
tified at the top of Figure 2) above all spans articles
studying social media marketing as a means for man-
aging relations between clients and for fostering cus-
tomer engagement. While the cluster containing the
rest of the articles, although more diverse in nature,
above all, contains articles approaching the manage-
ment of marketing content and the social media and its
respective implications.
Our analysis also confirms that social media market-
ing has been approached across rather diverse fields as
reflected in the distance between some of the articles
analyzed, for example, the article by Ubeda, Gieure,
De-la-Cruz, and Sastre (2013) (in the extreme top left)
focusing on usage of social media by technology-based
firms and the articles by Hoffman and Fodor (2010)
and Kumar and Mirchandani (2012) (in the extreme
top right) focusing on measuring the return on invest-
ment in social media marketing campaigns.
This project also considered whether the empir-
ical studies analyzed focused more on consumer or
firm/organization perspectives, the subject studied, and
their respective key conclusions (Table 1). As observed
in Table 1, the greatest number of studies focuses
on consumer perspectives. Of the studies focusing on
firm/organization perspectives, those describing the
degree of use and facility of using social media by
firms/organizations predominate alongside the results
of social marketing strategies and also unethical usage
of social media marketing strategies, in this specific
case, by alcohol brands directed at adolescents.
In regards to studies focusing on consumer behav-
ior, four major lines of research stand out: (a) studies
of the influence of social media on increased consump-
tion by consumers, (b) studies of the usage, searching,
and sharing of information by social media consumers,
(c) studies of the influence of social media on consumer
attitudes toward brands, and (d) studies of how the in-
fluence among consumers gets processed through social
media.
These studies in turn reveal how microblogs and
social networks are the social media most commonly
adopted by firms, specifically Facebook (17 studies)
and Twitter (12 studies), with Myspace and YouTube
also encountered in three and two studies, respectively.
However, these studies also reported that in some sec-
tors, for example, in health, tourist destination man-
agement, and in the B2B context, their usage still re-
mains limited. The studies also conclude that social
media marketing actions impact company market val-
ues, their sales and word of mouth; above all, opin-
ion leaders use and share information on social media
IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 1031
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 2. Article grouping based on the similarity of their words.
and that their influence on other consumers depends
on their characteristics and overwhelmingly conveyed
by their communication networks rather than through
their contact networks; the messages and content of
social media cannot be the same for utility and he-
donic products; these are perceived differently by in-
dividuals with different levels of trait reactance; the
more personalized applications are, the greater their
success; and social media marketing actions and cam-
paigns contribute to improving consumer attitudes to-
ward brands similar to that proposed by Kaplan and
Haenlein (2010), Gunelius (2011), and Jackson (2011).
Type of Study
Finally, the typology of studies was analyzed regard-
ing the type of analysis carried out. As Table 2 sets
out, four studies are purely theoretical, 39 are empiri-
cal and, of those, 29 are quantitative, 5 are qualitative,
and 5 apply mixed methodologies and demonstrate a
predominance of quantitative techniques in the study
of social media marketing. In the quantitative studies,
the majority apply quantitative statistical and econo-
metric techniques such as linear regressions, structural
equations, and stochastic analysis, while in qualita-
tive studies content analysis predominates. Analysis of
Table 2 confirms that qualitative methodologies still
remain scarce in this field even if these open up un-
derstandings of the meanings to the phenomena under
study (Patton, 2002).
IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE LINES OF
RESEARCH
From the results presented by the various different
studies, we may identify various implications both for
theory and for practice. One of the conclusions reached
by the studies refers to how microblogs and social net-
works, such as Facebook and Twitter, constitute the
1032 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar

Social Media Marketing: A Literature

Review and Implications
Helena Alves
University of Beira Interior and NECE
Cristina Fernandes
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and NECE
M´
ario Raposo
University of Beira Interior and NECE
ABSTRACT
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web
of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in accordance with a
variation on the
systematic review approach, involving synthesis- and interpretation-based
assessment. The results
demonstrate how most of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer
perspective in terms of usage,
share, and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions.
The studies focusing on
the firm’s perspective centered not only on the usage of social media, but also
on their
implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The majority of
studies are quantitative
and published in recent years. This study not only reached certain conclusions
for both theory and
practice, but also defined future lines of research according to the gaps
detected by the study’s
results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The emergence of new information and communication
technologies, particularly the Internet and social net-
works, has changed market dynamics, threatening the
competitive positions of firms (Porter, 2001) and in-
creasing the power of consumers (Urban, 2005).
The Internet- and online-based social media have
changed consumer consumption habits by providing
consumers with new ways of looking for, assess-
ing, choosing, and buying goods and services (Albors,
Ramos, & Hervas, 2008). These developments influ-
ence how marketers operate and affect marketing prac-
tices in terms of both strategy and tactics by present-
ing marketers with new challenges and difficult choices
(Thomas, 2007).
We understand social media as including all
Internet-based technological applications, in accor-
dance with the principles of Web 2.0 and providing
the creation and exchange of user-generated content,
while also facilitating interaction and collaboration be-
tween participants (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Such
applications also include blogs and microblogs (such as
Twitter), social networking sites (such as MySpace and
Facebook), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), collab-
orative projects (such as Wikipedia), content commu-
nity sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr), and sites dedicated
to feedback (e.g. online forums; Chan & Guillet, 2011;
Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
According to Mangold and Faulds (2009), social me-
dia enables firms to communicate with their customers
and also allows customers to communicate with each
other. Communications between firms and their cus-
tomers help build brand loyalty beyond traditional
methods (Jackson, 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010),
which concede to the promotion of products and ser-
vices as well as the setting up of online communi-
ties of brand followers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Furthermore, conversations between customers pro-
vide firms with new means of increasing brand aware-
ness, brand recognition, and brand recall (Gunelius,
2011).
Researchers such as Castronovo and Huang (2012)
maintain that marketing strategies involving market-
ing intelligence, promotions, public relations, product
and customer management, and marketing communi-
cations should begin exploring and leveraging social
media, not only because there is a growing interest
among consumers in Internet usage, but also due to
the fact that consumers consider information shared on
social media as more reliable than information issued
directly by firms (Constantinides et al., 2010).
According to eMarketer (2013), firms have increas-
ingly adopted social media for various marketing ac-
tivities such as branding, market research, customer
relationship management, service provision, and sales
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 33(12): 1029–1038 (December 2016)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20936
1029
promotion alongside various studies that are putting
forward evidence of the positive implications of de-
ploying social media in marketing strategies. However,
many firms have yet to incorporate social media into
their strategies (Chan & Guillet, 2011) despite the
existence of diverse studies providing empirical evi-
dence of the benefits to companies (see, e.g., Alhabash,
McAlister, Quilliam, Richards, & Lou , 2015; Kozinets,
Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Mirchan-
dani, 2012; Kumar et al., 2013; Luo & Zhang, 2013; Yu,
Duan, & Cao, 2013), as well as detailing the means by
which social media marketing strategies may be im-
proved and leveraged (see, e.g., Guo, Pathak, & Cheng,
2015; Liu & Park, 2015; Lorenzo-Romero, Alarc´
on-
Del-Amo, & Constantinides, 2012; Qazi, Raj, Tahir,
Cambria, & Syed, 2014; Tang et al., 2015).
Given the limited scope of research into the differ-
ent aspects of social media, as well as their specific
significance to company marketing activities, this arti-
cle carries out a review of the literature on social media
marketing. The purpose of this article is also to identify
the fields of marketing where social media marketing
strategies have been applied and studied, the results
found, the types of research developed, and what im-
plications might be drawn from these studies for both
management practice and theory.
To the best of our knowledge, there has been no
generic review of social media marketing, and thus this
article makes a relevant contribution to this field of re-
search. Hence, our aim involves contributing to deepen-
ing and systemizing the study of social media market-
ing by surveying the most prominent lines of research
as well as those requiring further study. In addition,
by systemizing the conclusions of various social me-
dia marketing studies, we also deepen the knowledge
firms require in order to either take their first steps or
strengthen their recourse to social media for strategic
purposes.
METHOD
Within the scope of our objective of providing a sys-
tematic review of literature on the “social media mar-
keting” concept, we put forward two stages in this sec-
tion: (1) planning the review, which describes the way
in which we planned our systematic approach along-
side references to those authors following a similar
methodology; (2) conducting the review and analysis,
where we set out a description of the various phases
of the review and the systematization of the selected
literature.
PLANNING THE REVIEW
To ensure replicability for future researchers, we fol-
low a systematic review process. This is generally
understood as an overall perception of trust in the
scientific research existing in any field or topic (Pet-
ticrew & Roberts, 2006). Its aim is to identify, assess,
and summarize all relevant studies using a replicable
and transparent process (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart,
2003). We explained the criteria for the bibliographi-
cal research, for admission and exclusion, and the an-
alytical processes, thus providing a means to audit the
processes.
As the field of research in social media market-
ing proves quite recent and diverse, we here apply
a variation of systematic review, involving synthesis-
and interpretation-based assessment, in order to com-
bine the best evidence based management practices
(Macpherson & Holt, 2007; Thorpe, Holt, MacPherson,
& Pittaway, 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003).
CONDUCTING THE REVIEW AND
ANALYSIS
In the first phase of gathering references for our study,
we began by researching the Web of Science for all
titles containing the words “social media marketing.”
Following this, we then excluded books, book chap-
ters, reports, and conference proceedings due to the
variability in their respective peer review processes
and more restricted availability. In contrast, journal
articles were deemed to have been duly validated
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Bachrach, & Podsakoff, 2005).
Thus, we did not restrict the research to periodicals
with the greatest impact on their fields but rather in-
cluded all the articles from journals indexed by the Web
of Science containing the expression “social media mar-
keting.” We did not define any time frame for publi-
cation and our initial search returned 108 articles. In
the second phase, we carried out analysis in order to
verify whether the studies already identified were ap-
propriate to the purposes of this research. In this phase,
we retained only those articles from English language
publication and that were neither proceedings nor
commentaries. Following this procedure, we excluded
63 articles and maintained 44.
The third phase of this study involved individual-
ized and independent analysis of the articles by two
researchers through recourse to a predefined evalua-
tion grid that incorporated the analysis of the social
media marketing concept applied along with the re-
spective methodology, study type, sector, and the social
media channel utilized in the study along with the main
conclusions. This grid was subsequently compared and
refined.
In the fourth and final phase of our study, we com-
pleted content analysis and systematized the 44 arti-
cles, and to this end making recourse to NVivo (version
11.0) software. Based on these results, we extracted
summarized information on the subject to analyze in
terms of the type of study, type of analysis, conclusions,
scope, and similarities among the studies.
1030 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 1. A representation of the 100 words (with more than
four letters) most used in the articles analyzed.
AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ON SOCIAL
MEDIA MARKETING
The Concept of Social Media Marketing
Our first analytical stage consisted of trying to system-
ize the concept of social media marketing based on the
definitions appearing in the articles. However, we found
only the article by Chan and Guillet (2011) actually pre-
sented a definition of the social media marketing con-
cept based on the AMA (American Marketing Associa-
tion) definition of marketing in 2006; a definition that
was reviewed and updated by the AMA in 2013. Hence,
in terms of systemization, we may only state that prac-
tically all these studies approach the concept of social
media marketing as a transposition of the marketing
concept applied to social media with no author high-
lighting any particularities to applying the marketing
concept in this domain.
Areas of Study
The next stage deployed exploratory analysis of the con-
tent of the various studies analyzed. Figure 1 sets out
the results in a representation of the 100 words with
more than four letters that were most frequently men-
tioned in these articles.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, the most prominent
words are social media marketing, in agreement with
the area of study but appearing interrelated with others
on a secondary level in which the words Facebook, on-
line, information, and brand stand out, which to some
extent anticipate the content of these articles as we
demonstrate further on in the article. After analyzing
the dates of the articles, which vary from 2010 to 2015,
the majority appear in the last two years, conveying the
growing importance of this subject.
Figure 2 presents the results of the cluster analysis
that enabled the grouping of the analyzed articles in
terms of the similarity of the words used based on the
Pearson correlation coefficient. As observed, the cluster
analysis allows for the identification of various groups
of articles that prove more similar to each other when
the figure is read from right to left. Analyzing Figure 2,
we understand how there are clearly two main and mu-
tually distinct clusters. The first article cluster (iden-
tified at the top of Figure 2) above all spans articles
studying social media marketing as a means for man-
aging relations between clients and for fostering cus-
tomer engagement. While the cluster containing the
rest of the articles, although more diverse in nature,
above all, contains articles approaching the manage-
ment of marketing content and the social media and its
respective implications.
Our analysis also confirms that social media market-
ing has been approached across rather diverse fields as
reflected in the distance between some of the articles
analyzed, for example, the article by Ubeda, Gieure,
De-la-Cruz, and Sastre (2013) (in the extreme top left)
focusing on usage of social media by technology-based
firms and the articles by Hoffman and Fodor (2010)
and Kumar and Mirchandani (2012) (in the extreme
top right) focusing on measuring the return on invest-
ment in social media marketing campaigns.
This project also considered whether the empir-
ical studies analyzed focused more on consumer or
firm/organization perspectives, the subject studied, and
their respective key conclusions (Table 1). As observed
in Table 1, the greatest number of studies focuses
on consumer perspectives. Of the studies focusing on
firm/organization perspectives, those describing the
degree of use and facility of using social media by
firms/organizations predominate alongside the results
of social marketing strategies and also unethical usage
of social media marketing strategies, in this specific
case, by alcohol brands directed at adolescents.
In regards to studies focusing on consumer behav-
ior, four major lines of research stand out: (a) studies
of the influence of social media on increased consump-
tion by consumers, (b) studies of the usage, searching,
and sharing of information by social media consumers,
(c) studies of the influence of social media on consumer
attitudes toward brands, and (d) studies of how the in-
fluence among consumers gets processed through social
media.
These studies in turn reveal how microblogs and
social networks are the social media most commonly
adopted by firms, specifically Facebook (17 studies)
and Twitter (12 studies), with Myspace and YouTube
also encountered in three and two studies, respectively.
However, these studies also reported that in some sec-
tors, for example, in health, tourist destination man-
agement, and in the B2B context, their usage still re-
mains limited. The studies also conclude that social
media marketing actions impact company market val-
ues, their sales and word of mouth; above all, opin-
ion leaders use and share information on social media
IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 1031
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 2. Article grouping based on the similarity of their words.
and that their influence on other consumers depends
on their characteristics and overwhelmingly conveyed
by their communication networks rather than through
their contact networks; the messages and content of
social media cannot be the same for utility and he-
donic products; these are perceived differently by in-
dividuals with different levels of trait reactance; the
more personalized applications are, the greater their
success; and social media marketing actions and cam-
paigns contribute to improving consumer attitudes to-
ward brands similar to that proposed by Kaplan and
Haenlein (2010), Gunelius (2011), and Jackson (2011).
Type of Study
Finally, the typology of studies was analyzed regard-
ing the type of analysis carried out. As Table 2 sets
out, four studies are purely theoretical, 39 are empiri-
cal and, of those, 29 are quantitative, 5 are qualitative,
and 5 apply mixed methodologies and demonstrate a
predominance of quantitative techniques in the study
of social media marketing. In the quantitative studies,
the majority apply quantitative statistical and econo-
metric techniques such as linear regressions, structural
equations, and stochastic analysis, while in qualita-
tive studies content analysis predominates. Analysis of
Table 2 confirms that qualitative methodologies still
remain scarce in this field even if these open up un-
derstandings of the meanings to the phenomena under
study (Patton, 2002).
IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE LINES OF
RESEARCH
From the results presented by the various different
studies, we may identify various implications both for
theory and for practice. One of the conclusions reached
by the studies refers to how microblogs and social net-
works, such as Facebook and Twitter, constitute the
1032 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Social Media Marketing: A Literature
Review and Implications
Helena Alves
University of Beira Interior and NECE
Cristina Fernandes
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and NECE
M´
ario Raposo
University of Beira Interior and NECE
ABSTRACT
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web
of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in accordance with a
variation on the
systematic review approach, involving synthesis- and interpretation-based
assessment. The results
demonstrate how most of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer
perspective in terms of usage,
share, and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions.
The studies focusing on
the firm’s perspective centered not only on the usage of social media, but also
on their
implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The majority of
studies are quantitative
and published in recent years. This study not only reached certain conclusions
for both theory and
practice, but also defined future lines of research according to the gaps
detected by the study’s
results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The emergence of new information and communication
technologies, particularly the Internet and social net-
works, has changed market dynamics, threatening the
competitive positions of firms (Porter, 2001) and in-
creasing the power of consumers (Urban, 2005).
The Internet- and online-based social media have
changed consumer consumption habits by providing
consumers with new ways of looking for, assess-
ing, choosing, and buying goods and services (Albors,
Ramos, & Hervas, 2008). These developments influ-
ence how marketers operate and affect marketing prac-
tices in terms of both strategy and tactics by present-
ing marketers with new challenges and difficult choices
(Thomas, 2007).
We understand social media as including all
Internet-based technological applications, in accor-
dance with the principles of Web 2.0 and providing
the creation and exchange of user-generated content,
while also facilitating interaction and collaboration be-
tween participants (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Such
applications also include blogs and microblogs (such as
Twitter), social networking sites (such as MySpace and
Facebook), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), collab-
orative projects (such as Wikipedia), content commu-
nity sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr), and sites dedicated
to feedback (e.g. online forums; Chan & Guillet, 2011;
Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
According to Mangold and Faulds (2009), social me-
dia enables firms to communicate with their customers
and also allows customers to communicate with each
other. Communications between firms and their cus-
tomers help build brand loyalty beyond traditional
methods (Jackson, 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010),
which concede to the promotion of products and ser-
vices as well as the setting up of online communi-
ties of brand followers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Furthermore, conversations between customers pro-
vide firms with new means of increasing brand aware-
ness, brand recognition, and brand recall (Gunelius,
2011).
Researchers such as Castronovo and Huang (2012)
maintain that marketing strategies involving market-
ing intelligence, promotions, public relations, product
and customer management, and marketing communi-
cations should begin exploring and leveraging social
media, not only because there is a growing interest
among consumers in Internet usage, but also due to
the fact that consumers consider information shared on
social media as more reliable than information issued
directly by firms (Constantinides et al., 2010).
According to eMarketer (2013), firms have increas-
ingly adopted social media for various marketing ac-
tivities such as branding, market research, customer
relationship management, service provision, and sales
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 33(12): 1029–1038 (December 2016)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20936
1029
promotion alongside various studies that are putting
forward evidence of the positive implications of de-
ploying social media in marketing strategies. However,
many firms have yet to incorporate social media into
their strategies (Chan & Guillet, 2011) despite the
existence of diverse studies providing empirical evi-
dence of the benefits to companies (see, e.g., Alhabash,
McAlister, Quilliam, Richards, & Lou , 2015; Kozinets,
Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Mirchan-
dani, 2012; Kumar et al., 2013; Luo & Zhang, 2013; Yu,
Duan, & Cao, 2013), as well as detailing the means by
which social media marketing strategies may be im-
proved and leveraged (see, e.g., Guo, Pathak, & Cheng,
2015; Liu & Park, 2015; Lorenzo-Romero, Alarc´
on-
Del-Amo, & Constantinides, 2012; Qazi, Raj, Tahir,
Cambria, & Syed, 2014; Tang et al., 2015).
Given the limited scope of research into the differ-
ent aspects of social media, as well as their specific
significance to company marketing activities, this arti-
cle carries out a review of the literature on social media
marketing. The purpose of this article is also to identify
the fields of marketing where social media marketing
strategies have been applied and studied, the results
found, the types of research developed, and what im-
plications might be drawn from these studies for both
management practice and theory.
To the best of our knowledge, there has been no
generic review of social media marketing, and thus this
article makes a relevant contribution to this field of re-
search. Hence, our aim involves contributing to deepen-
ing and systemizing the study of social media market-
ing by surveying the most prominent lines of research
as well as those requiring further study. In addition,
by systemizing the conclusions of various social me-
dia marketing studies, we also deepen the knowledge
firms require in order to either take their first steps or
strengthen their recourse to social media for strategic
purposes.
METHOD
Within the scope of our objective of providing a sys-
tematic review of literature on the “social media mar-
keting” concept, we put forward two stages in this sec-
tion: (1) planning the review, which describes the way
in which we planned our systematic approach along-
side references to those authors following a similar
methodology; (2) conducting the review and analysis,
where we set out a description of the various phases
of the review and the systematization of the selected
literature.
PLANNING THE REVIEW
To ensure replicability for future researchers, we fol-
low a systematic review process. This is generally
understood as an overall perception of trust in the
scientific research existing in any field or topic (Pet-
ticrew & Roberts, 2006). Its aim is to identify, assess,
and summarize all relevant studies using a replicable
and transparent process (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart,
2003). We explained the criteria for the bibliographi-
cal research, for admission and exclusion, and the an-
alytical processes, thus providing a means to audit the
processes.
As the field of research in social media market-
ing proves quite recent and diverse, we here apply
a variation of systematic review, involving synthesis-
and interpretation-based assessment, in order to com-
bine the best evidence based management practices
(Macpherson & Holt, 2007; Thorpe, Holt, MacPherson,
& Pittaway, 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003).
CONDUCTING THE REVIEW AND
ANALYSIS
In the first phase of gathering references for our study,
we began by researching the Web of Science for all
titles containing the words “social media marketing.”
Following this, we then excluded books, book chap-
ters, reports, and conference proceedings due to the
variability in their respective peer review processes
and more restricted availability. In contrast, journal
articles were deemed to have been duly validated
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Bachrach, & Podsakoff, 2005).
Thus, we did not restrict the research to periodicals
with the greatest impact on their fields but rather in-
cluded all the articles from journals indexed by the Web
of Science containing the expression “social media mar-
keting.” We did not define any time frame for publi-
cation and our initial search returned 108 articles. In
the second phase, we carried out analysis in order to
verify whether the studies already identified were ap-
propriate to the purposes of this research. In this phase,
we retained only those articles from English language
publication and that were neither proceedings nor
commentaries. Following this procedure, we excluded
63 articles and maintained 44.
The third phase of this study involved individual-
ized and independent analysis of the articles by two
researchers through recourse to a predefined evalua-
tion grid that incorporated the analysis of the social
media marketing concept applied along with the re-
spective methodology, study type, sector, and the social
media channel utilized in the study along with the main
conclusions. This grid was subsequently compared and
refined.
In the fourth and final phase of our study, we com-
pleted content analysis and systematized the 44 arti-
cles, and to this end making recourse to NVivo (version
11.0) software. Based on these results, we extracted
summarized information on the subject to analyze in
terms of the type of study, type of analysis, conclusions,
scope, and similarities among the studies.
1030 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 1. A representation of the 100 words (with more than
four letters) most used in the articles analyzed.
AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ON SOCIAL
MEDIA MARKETING
The Concept of Social Media Marketing
Our first analytical stage consisted of trying to system-
ize the concept of social media marketing based on the
definitions appearing in the articles. However, we found
only the article by Chan and Guillet (2011) actually pre-
sented a definition of the social media marketing con-
cept based on the AMA (American Marketing Associa-
tion) definition of marketing in 2006; a definition that
was reviewed and updated by the AMA in 2013. Hence,
in terms of systemization, we may only state that prac-
tically all these studies approach the concept of social
media marketing as a transposition of the marketing
concept applied to social media with no author high-
lighting any particularities to applying the marketing
concept in this domain.
Areas of Study
The next stage deployed exploratory analysis of the con-
tent of the various studies analyzed. Figure 1 sets out
the results in a representation of the 100 words with
more than four letters that were most frequently men-
tioned in these articles.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, the most prominent
words are social media marketing, in agreement with
the area of study but appearing interrelated with others
on a secondary level in which the words Facebook, on-
line, information, and brand stand out, which to some
extent anticipate the content of these articles as we
demonstrate further on in the article. After analyzing
the dates of the articles, which vary from 2010 to 2015,
the majority appear in the last two years, conveying the
growing importance of this subject.
Figure 2 presents the results of the cluster analysis
that enabled the grouping of the analyzed articles in
terms of the similarity of the words used based on the
Pearson correlation coefficient. As observed, the cluster
analysis allows for the identification of various groups
of articles that prove more similar to each other when
the figure is read from right to left. Analyzing Figure 2,
we understand how there are clearly two main and mu-
tually distinct clusters. The first article cluster (iden-
tified at the top of Figure 2) above all spans articles
studying social media marketing as a means for man-
aging relations between clients and for fostering cus-
tomer engagement. While the cluster containing the
rest of the articles, although more diverse in nature,
above all, contains articles approaching the manage-
ment of marketing content and the social media and its
respective implications.
Our analysis also confirms that social media market-
ing has been approached across rather diverse fields as
reflected in the distance between some of the articles
analyzed, for example, the article by Ubeda, Gieure,
De-la-Cruz, and Sastre (2013) (in the extreme top left)
focusing on usage of social media by technology-based
firms and the articles by Hoffman and Fodor (2010)
and Kumar and Mirchandani (2012) (in the extreme
top right) focusing on measuring the return on invest-
ment in social media marketing campaigns.
This project also considered whether the empir-
ical studies analyzed focused more on consumer or
firm/organization perspectives, the subject studied, and
their respective key conclusions (Table 1). As observed
in Table 1, the greatest number of studies focuses
on consumer perspectives. Of the studies focusing on
firm/organization perspectives, those describing the
degree of use and facility of using social media by
firms/organizations predominate alongside the results
of social marketing strategies and also unethical usage
of social media marketing strategies, in this specific
case, by alcohol brands directed at adolescents.
In regards to studies focusing on consumer behav-
ior, four major lines of research stand out: (a) studies
of the influence of social media on increased consump-
tion by consumers, (b) studies of the usage, searching,
and sharing of information by social media consumers,
(c) studies of the influence of social media on consumer
attitudes toward brands, and (d) studies of how the in-
fluence among consumers gets processed through social
media.
These studies in turn reveal how microblogs and
social networks are the social media most commonly
adopted by firms, specifically Facebook (17 studies)
and Twitter (12 studies), with Myspace and YouTube
also encountered in three and two studies, respectively.
However, these studies also reported that in some sec-
tors, for example, in health, tourist destination man-
agement, and in the B2B context, their usage still re-
mains limited. The studies also conclude that social
media marketing actions impact company market val-
ues, their sales and word of mouth; above all, opin-
ion leaders use and share information on social media
IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 1031
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 2. Article grouping based on the similarity of their words.
and that their influence on other consumers depends
on their characteristics and overwhelmingly conveyed
by their communication networks rather than through
their contact networks; the messages and content of
social media cannot be the same for utility and he-
donic products; these are perceived differently by in-
dividuals with different levels of trait reactance; the
more personalized applications are, the greater their
success; and social media marketing actions and cam-
paigns contribute to improving consumer attitudes to-
ward brands similar to that proposed by Kaplan and
Haenlein (2010), Gunelius (2011), and Jackson (2011).
Type of Study
Finally, the typology of studies was analyzed regard-
ing the type of analysis carried out. As Table 2 sets
out, four studies are purely theoretical, 39 are empiri-
cal and, of those, 29 are quantitative, 5 are qualitative,
and 5 apply mixed methodologies and demonstrate a
predominance of quantitative techniques in the study
of social media marketing. In the quantitative studies,
the majority apply quantitative statistical and econo-
metric techniques such as linear regressions, structural
equations, and stochastic analysis, while in qualita-
tive studies content analysis predominates. Analysis of
Table 2 confirms that qualitative methodologies still
remain scarce in this field even if these open up un-
derstandings of the meanings to the phenomena under
study (Patton, 2002).
IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE LINES OF
RESEARCH
From the results presented by the various different
studies, we may identify various implications both for
theory and for practice. One of the conclusions reached
by the studies refers to how microblogs and social net-
works, such as Facebook and Twitter, constitute the
1032 ALVES, FERNANDES, AND RAPOSO
Psychology & Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Social Media Marketing: A Literature
Review and Implications
Helena Alves
University of Beira Interior and NECE
Cristina Fernandes
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco and NECE
M´
ario Raposo
University of Beira Interior and NECE
ABSTRACT
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web
of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in accordance with a
variation on the
systematic review approach, involving synthesis- and interpretation-based
assessment. The results
demonstrate how most of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer
perspective in terms of usage,
share, and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions.
The studies focusing on
the firm’s perspective centered not only on the usage of social media, but also
on their
implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The majority of
studies are quantitative
and published in recent years. This study not only reached certain conclusions
for both theory and
practice, but also defined future lines of research according to the gaps
detected by the study’s
results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The emergence of new information and communication
technologies, particularly the Internet and social net-
works, has changed market dynamics, threatening the
competitive positions of firms (Porter, 2001) and in-
creasing the power of consumers (Urban, 2005).
The Internet- and online-based social media have
changed consumer consumption habits by providing
consumers with new ways of looking for, assess-
ing, choosing, and buying goods and services (Albors,
Ramos, & Hervas, 2008). These developments influ-
ence how marketers operate and affect marketing prac-
tices in terms of both strategy and tactics by present-
ing marketers with new challenges and difficult choices
(Thomas, 2007).
We understand social media as including all
Internet-based technological applications, in accor-
dance with the principles of Web 2.0 and providing
the creation and exchange of user-generated content,
while also facilitating interaction and collaboration be-
tween participants (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Such
applications also include blogs and microblogs (such as
Twitter), social networking sites (such as MySpace and
Facebook), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), collab-
orative projects (such as Wikipedia), content commu-
nity sites (e.g., YouTube, Flickr), and sites dedicated
to feedback (e.g. online forums; Chan & Guillet, 2011;
Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
According to Mangold and Faulds (2009), social me-
dia enables firms to communicate with their customers
and also allows customers to communicate with each
other. Communications between firms and their cus-
tomers help build brand loyalty beyond traditional
methods (Jackson, 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010),
which concede to the promotion of products and ser-
vices as well as the setting up of online communi-
ties of brand followers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Furthermore, conversations between customers pro-
vide firms with new means of increasing brand aware-
ness, brand recognition, and brand recall (Gunelius,
2011).
Researchers such as Castronovo and Huang (2012)
maintain that marketing strategies involving market-
ing intelligence, promotions, public relations, product
and customer management, and marketing communi-
cations should begin exploring and leveraging social
media, not only because there is a growing interest
among consumers in Internet usage, but also due to
the fact that consumers consider information shared on
social media as more reliable than information issued
directly by firms (Constantinides et al., 2010).
According to eMarketer (2013), firms have increas-
ingly adopted social media for various marketing ac-
tivities such as branding, market research, customer
relationship management, service provision, and sales
Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 33(12): 1029–1038 (December 2016)
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20936
1029
promotion alongside various studies that are putting
forward evidence of the positive implications of de-
ploying social media in marketing strategies. However,
many firms have yet to incorporate social media into
their strategies (Chan & Guillet, 2011) despite the
existence of diverse studies providing empirical evi-
dence of the benefits to companies (see, e.g., Alhabash,
McAlister, Quilliam, Richards, & Lou , 2015; Kozinets,
Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Mirchan-
dani, 2012; Kumar et al., 2013; Luo & Zhang, 2013; Yu,
Duan, & Cao, 2013), as well as detailing the means by
which social media marketing strategies may be im-
proved and leveraged (see, e.g., Guo, Pathak, & Cheng,
2015; Liu & Park, 2015; Lorenzo-Romero, Alarc´
on-
Del-Amo, & Constantinides, 2012; Qazi, Raj, Tahir,
Cambria, & Syed, 2014; Tang et al., 2015).
Given the limited scope of research into the differ-
ent aspects of social media, as well as their specific
significance to company marketing activities, this arti-
cle carries out a review of the literature on social media
marketing. The purpose of this article is also to identify
the fields of marketing where social media marketing
strategies have been applied and studied, the results
found, the types of research developed, and what im-
plications might be drawn from these studies for both
management practice and theory.
To the best of our knowledge, there has been no
generic review of social media marketing, and thus this
article makes a relevant contribution to this field of re-
search. Hence, our aim involves contributing to deepen-
ing and systemizing the study of social media market-
ing by surveying the most prominent lines of research
as well as those requiring further study. In addition,
by systemizing the conclusions of various social me-
dia marketing studies, we also deepen the knowledge
firms require in order to either take their first steps or
strengthen their recourse to social media for strategic
purposes.
METHOD
Within the scope of our objective of providing a sys-
tematic review of literature on the “social media mar-
keting” concept, we put forward two stages in this sec-
tion: (1) planning the review, which describes the way
in which we planned our systematic approach along-
side references to those authors following a similar
methodology; (2) conducting the review and analysis,
where we set out a description of the various phases
of the review and the systematization of the selected
literature.
PLANNING THE REVIEW
To ensure replicability for future researchers, we fol-
low a systematic review process. This is generally
understood as an overall perception of trust in the
scientific research existing in any field or topic (Pet-
ticrew & Roberts, 2006). Its aim is to identify, assess,
and summarize all relevant studies using a replicable
and transparent process (Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart,
2003). We explained the criteria for the bibliographi-
cal research, for admission and exclusion, and the an-
alytical processes, thus providing a means to audit the
processes.
As the field of research in social media market-
ing proves quite recent and diverse, we here apply
a variation of systematic review, involving synthesis-
and interpretation-based assessment, in order to com-
bine the best evidence based management practices
(Macpherson & Holt, 2007; Thorpe, Holt, MacPherson,
& Pittaway, 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003).
CONDUCTING THE REVIEW AND
ANALYSIS
In the first phase of gathering references for our study,
we began by researching the Web of Science for all
titles containing the words “social media marketing.”
Following this, we then excluded books, book chap-
ters, reports, and conference proceedings due to the
variability in their respective peer review processes
and more restricted availability. In contrast, journal
articles were deemed to have been duly validated
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Bachrach, & Podsakoff, 2005).
Thus, we did not restrict the research to periodicals
with the greatest impact on their fields but rather in-
cluded all the articles from journals indexed by the Web
of Science containing the expression “social media mar-
keting.” We did not define any time frame for publi-
cation and our initial search returned 108 articles. In
the second phase, we carried out analysis in order to
verify whether the studies already identified were ap-
propriate to the purposes of this research. In this phase,
we retained only those articles from English language
publication and that were neither proceedings nor
commentaries. Following this procedure, we excluded
63 articles and maintained 44.
The third phase of this study involved individual-
ized and independent analysis of the articles by two
researchers through recourse to a predefined evalua-
tion grid that incorporated the analysis of the social
media marketing concept applied along with the re-
spective methodology, study type, sector, and the social
media channel utilized in the study along with the main
conclusions. This grid was subsequently compared and
refined.
In the fourth and final phase of our study, we com-
pleted content analysis and systematized the 44 arti-
cles, and to this end making recourse to NVivo (version
11.0) software. Based on these results, we extracted
summarized information on the subject to analyze in
terms of the type of study, type of analysis, conclusions,
scope, and similarities among the studies
ABSTRACT
This study carries out content analysis and systemizes articles on social media
marketing in the Web
of Science database. Forty-four studies were analyzed in accordance with a
variation on the
systematic review approach, involving synthesis- and interpretation-based
assessment. The results
demonstrate how most of the studies analyzed focus on the consumer
perspective in terms of usage,
share, and influence of social media on consumer decisions, and perceptions.
The studies focusing on
the firm’s perspective centered not only on the usage of social media, but also
on their
implementation, optimization, and measurement of results. The majority of
studies are quantitative
and published in recent years. This study not only reached certain conclusions
for both theory and
practice, but also defined future lines of research according to the gaps
detected by the study’s
results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
02.Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing

Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing is the major peer-reviewed,

professional journal for all those involved in the marketing of products or services
using digital channels. Its overriding goal is to provide an authoritative,
practitioner-focused forum to support the professional development of all those
working in, or entering, the field. As such, the Journal’s content is both of direct
relevance to the practice of digital marketing and intellectually rigorous. 

Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing is listed and indexed in Scopus

and Cabell's Directories of Publishing Opportunities.

Published quarterly and guided by an eminent Editorial Board of digital and social
media marketing experts, each quarterly 100-page issue provides in-depth,
practical articles written by leading professionals on new thinking, strategies,
techniques and trends, plus the latest best practice and detailed analysis of how
leading brands are using digital and social media marketing around the world.
Articles focus on end users and the brands they represent, documenting the
challenges they face and how they are tackling them, with case studies from
leading digital marketers to benchmark your organisation against. The journal does
not publish advertising and all content is peer-reviewed to ensure that it is of direct
relevance to those working in the field, combining the latest strategic thinking with
the practical knowledge needed to put it into practice.

Journal of Digital and Social Media Marketing provides an authoritative, high-

quality forum for the latest thinking, practice and developments in all and any
aspect of digital and social media marketing, including:

 Digital marketing
 Social media marketing
 Running effective digital campaigns
 Search engine marketing
 Organic search optimisation
 Content marketing
 Engagement
  Measurement and analytics for social media and digital marketing
 Digital corporate communications and PR
 User experience and customer service
 Mobile marketing
 Influencer marketing
 Online reputation and crisis management
 Conversion optimisation and lead generation
 Email marketing
 Affiliate and referral marketing
 Viral marketing
 Social media and sponsorship

Essential reading for Chief Marketing Officers, Heads of Marketing, Digital

Marketing and Social Media Marketing, Marketing Directors, Brand
Managers and Marketing Managers, as well as SVPs, EVPs, VPs,
Departmental Heads, Directors and Senior Managers in:

 Digital marketing
 Social media
 Social media marketing
 Mobile marketing
 Online marketing
 Brand strategy and management
 PR and corporate communications
 Metrics and marketing analytics
 Creative services
 Website design and management
 E-Commerce
 Database marketing
 Consumer research and insight
 Marketing and brand consulting
 Sponsorship
  Sales
 Marketing law

 
UK

Henry Stewart Publications LLP

Registered office: Ruskin House, 40/41 Museum Street
London WC1A 1LT
Tel: +44 (0)20 7092 3465
Email: [email protected]
Registered in England, Incorporation No. OC 317997
USA

03.Author links open overlay panel Ali Abdallah Alalwan

Abstract
People worldwide are largely engaged and attached with the web 2.0 technology
and Social media platforms. By the same token, businesses start looking at such
technologies as effective mechanisms to interact more with their customers.
Equally, the related issues of social media marketing have been also the focus of
attention for academics and researchers to expand the current understanding about
such phenomena over the marketing area. Accordingly, the main aim of this study
is to systematically examine and review the current studies that have conducted
over the related area of social media and marketing. By reviewing approximately
144 articles, the researchers were able to provide an overview of the main themes
and trends covered by the relevant literature such as the role of social media on
advertising, the electronic word of mouth, customers’ relationship management,
and firms’ brands and performance. In this review, it has also studied the most
common research approaches adopted to examine the related issues of social media
marketing. Further discussion is also introduced followed by an explanation of the
current review limitations and recommended directions to be examined by future
studies.

NATIONAL
01.Abstract

Citation
Baidya, M. (2014), "Special issue on Social media marketing", Journal of Indian
Business Research
Publisher
Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Special issue on Social media marketing

Article Type: Call for papers From: Journal of Indian Business Research, Volume
6, Issue 1

Guest Editor: Suren Sista, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

Social media in its various forms has inundated our lives in the brief time that it
has existed. Researchers from various fields have shown an interest in studying
behaviour and outcomes of the use of social media. The levels of engagement by
users and their involved behaviour has attracted various organizations, be it
governments or their departments, political entities, or commercial enterprises.

Of special interest to marketers and researchers in marketing is how this

phenomenon is shaping the world of marketing. We invite researchers to submit to
the special issue of the Journal of Indian Business Research (JIBR) on social
media marketing their current thinking on social media marketing. Of special
 interest would be how this is impacting India and other emerging markets. Authors
may choose to submit papers on any of the following topics:
 Using social media for on-going dialogue with the consumer
 Co-creation by involving the consumer
 Social media opportunities across different sectors
 Governance and policy making
 Impact of social media in the B2B space
 Social media in the spiritual space
 Social media opportunities in different countries (India, China, South Africa,
South Korea, Indonesia)
 Use of social media in building destination and people brands
 Social media analytics and ROI
 Integrating social media with key areas of business such as PR, customer
service, marketing and advertising
 Content marketing and social media
 Social media in political campaigns
 Social media data analytics and usage in marketing strategy
 Understanding the digital consumers in emerging markets
 Creating a successful social marketing program in the digital marketing
world

02. Affiliations

 Senior Research Fellow (SRF), Department of Management Studies, Indian

Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee - 247 667, Uttarakhand, India

DOI: 10.17010/ijom/2017/v47/i3/111420
Abstract
It has been observed that Internet technologies and web-based applications are
persistently increasing and in the current scenario, technology is more about
linking people rather than linking customers. Social media usage has escalated in
the past few years, which has made it easier for firms and consumers to intermingle
with each other and their friends and make it further easier to communicate with a
large audience. In the findings of a study conducted by McKinsey Global Institute,
it was revealed that 1.5 billion people use social networking sites, and out of these,
80% interact regularly with other social media users. The popularity of social
media has made 70% companies use social media actively. Social media has now
reached a place where it is seen as a way of life to socialize and conduct business.
However, social media, apart from being an effective tool for interaction, has got
risks attached to it. This conceptual paper focused on introducing the key terms,
concepts, relevance, benefits, and hazards of employing social media as a
marketing instrument. It also aimed to discuss how social media affects a firm's
performance and marketing strategy. This paper highlighted the problems that
companies may face by adopting social media as a marketing tool and the
managerial implications of it with the help of few cases.