Literature Review: Social Media Marketing for Business Success

This literature review explores the impact and advantages of social media in business, comparing it to traditional marketing methods. It examines how social media marketing provides businesses with a broader reach to customers within a short time frame, and how it has become an essential strategy for both small and large businesses. The review discusses the shift from traditional marketing, highlighting its limitations like high costs and inability for one-on-one marketing, while showcasing social media’s effectiveness in engaging customers and facilitating direct feedback. The analysis includes a discussion of the common themes across the articles, the limitations of the reviewed articles, and the future scope of the study, emphasizing the benefits of social networking tools for business and identifying key requirements for effective social media marketing. The review references multiple research articles, evaluating their methodologies and findings to provide a comprehensive understanding of social media's role in the business landscape.

Running head: A LITERAUTRE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN
BUSINESS
A literature review on the use of social media in business
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1A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
Introduction
Social media is being used across the world in a rapid pace. As a result, from personal
sphere of life to business sector, the existence of social media is prominently visible. Digital
media marketing or social networking marketing is a form of marketing strategy, by which
business individuals promote their service as well as products over the social media sites.
This method of marketing consists of online advertisement through social networking sites,
photo sharing, micro blogging and video sharing. One of the major advantages of social
networking platform provides is that it helps the business to reach out to more customers
within a short time span (Leung, Law, Van Hoof and Buhalis 2013). Therefore, it has been
seen that the effect of social networking platform based marketing is significant on all
business. The aim of the study is to understand the advantages of the use of social networking
sites for the purpose of business thus it reviews several research articles in this regard. The
study will have a close look at the small businesses who think social media marketing is a
costly marketing strategy.
Summary
Profits of the usage of social networking sites for the business purpose have been a
research topic over the years. Many researchers have been carried out in order to figure out
the connection among social media and business. For instance, one research has been done on
uses of social networking sites in business (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014).
One of the major benefits of social networking sites is that it provides a platform by which
business can reach out to the targeted audience which traditional way of marketing strategies
fail to do (Kasemsap 2014). According to another research Ryan (2016), social media can be

2A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
an effective way of drawing the attention of new customers by introducing more engaging
contents.
The role played by social networking in business is growing in rapid speed (Tiago and
Veríssimo 2014). Efficiently using the social media sites in order to promote products have
become essential marketing strategy for both small and big business. However, still some
organizations rely only on traditional mode marketing, while using social media based
marketing, they can be doubly succeed. Done effectively, social networking marketing can
increase the sales margin of any business. It has been observed that social media marketing
are generally thought complicated and most business individuals are still unaware of the
benefits social media in business.
Common themes within the articles
Traditional way of marketing and its challenges
As per Leeflang, et al. (2014), traditional way of marketing strategy mainly focuses
on mass marketing and it is unable to do one-on-one marketing. The language of the content
for social media marketing is generally more attractive while language of traditional media
based content follows formal language and is less attractive. Another study states that the
traditional media marketing is very expensive (Laroche, Habibi and Richard 2013). The other
drawback of traditional marketing is cost. Often start-ups cannot afford the money of
traditional marketing. Traditional media marketing does not allow customers give feedback,
which is nowadays have become the essential demand of most customers. The study show
that social media based marketing has more success rate than traditional media marketing due
to increased involvement of people with social media.
Role of social media marketing in declining of traditional media marketing

3A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
According to Leung, Law, Van Hoof and Buhalis (2013), social networking
marketing plays an integral role for the decline of traditional media marketing. The research
stated certain reason behind the fall of traditional marketing and rapid growth of social media
usage has been marked as one of them. Another study Royle and Laing (2014) discovered
that people are switching to two-way interaction medium like social media platforms instead
of one-way interaction mode of traditional media marketing. Most people these days,
especially young generation are the users of more than one social networking site. Therefore,
they prefer visiting those networking sites in their free time. The study said that in this fast
paced life, people feel disturbed when the watch advertisements over television, but when
those advertisements aired over social media platform, they read or watch the content.
Dissimilarities among the articles
In order to evaluate the pattern and strength within the variables, the articles have
different methods to collect the data and the process of conserve it like recording, storing and
reducing and transforming to statistics such as percentage and numeric. In regard to the
themes of the articles, the articles researched on different aspects. For example while
Leeflang, et al. (2014) elaborates the traditional way of marketing and its challenges, Leung,
Law, Van Hoof and Buhalis (2013), focuses on the role of social networking marketing in
declining of traditional networking marketing. Similarly, Ryan (2016) lights upon on the fact
that how social media can be an effective way of drawing the attention of new customers by
introducing more engaging contents.
Limitations
However it must be mentioned that the articles are not free from limitations.
The articles which have been reviewed collected and examined primary and secondary

4A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
data resources in order to give the response to the research problem and to assess the research
outcome (Leeflang, et al. 2014). The primary data of the papers included both quantitative
and qualitative methods. In order to make the comparisons of findings, quantitative data
collection method of the articles consisted of close-ended questionnaires, regression and
correlation methods, and mean, mode and median. On the other hand qualitative method
involved interviews with close ended questionnaires, observation, focus groups and case
studies Ryan (2016). To identify the difference between variables, secondary data of the
articles included all the data that have already been published in the form of books, journals,
news articles, and journals. Author credential, depth and quality of the content were
considered while analyzing secondary data. The entire process of the collection of the data
was too long to present in the form of the articles. Thus lack of clarity was seen in the
reviewed articles.
In order to carry out the research, guidelines regarding ethics were not strictly
followed in the articles. During the collection of primary data, participants were not
welcomed willingly and they were not given freedom to contribute Leung, Law, Van Hoof
and Buhalis (2013). While collecting secondary data, the some of the research papers did not
include every essential reference in order to maintain their credibility.
Future scope of study
The study intends to give a clear analysis of social media and its usefulness in
business. The study initially addressed why there is a lack of awareness regarding the usage
of social networking platforms and the reason behind business individuals hesitate using
social media platforms through reviewing the articles. Along with that, one research also
highlighted the essential requirements of social media marketing so that it can be done
effectively. The review is beneficial for the further researches in future. The review is also

5A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
beneficial for them who are still unaware of the benefits of social networking in business and
for them who do not know the essential requirement of effective implementation of social
networking tools in business. The advantages of using social networking tools for the sake of
business, which is the main focus of the study, has been discussed by reviewing relevant
article in the study. Beside these points, discussing the advantages of social media tools in
business, the research pointed out the core issues regarding the social media marketing.

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References
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H. 2014.Social media utilization in
business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human
Behavior, 30, 606-613.
Kannan, P. K. 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research
agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), 22-45.
Kasemsap, K. 2014. The role of social media in the knowledge-based
organizations. Integrating social media into business practice, applications, management,
and models, 254-275.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R. and Richard, M. O. 2013. To be or not to be in social media:
How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information
Management, 33(1), 76-82.
Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T. 2014.Challenges and
solutions for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.
Leung, D., Law, R., Van Hoof, H., and Buhalis, D. 2013.Social media in tourism and
hospitality: A literature review. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 30(1-2), 3-22.
Royle, J., and Laing, A. 2014.The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital
Marketer Model for the communication industries. International Journal of Information
Management, 34(2), 65-73.
Rutsaert, P., Regan, Á.,Pieniak, Z., McConnon, Á., Moss, A., Wall, P. and Verbeke, W.
2013. The use of social media in food risk and benefit communication. Trends in Food
Science & Technology, 30(1), 84-91.

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Ryan, D. 2016. Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the
digital generation.Kogan Page Publishers.
Schaupp, L. C., and Bélanger, F. 2013.The value of social media for small
businesses. Journal of Information Systems, 28(1), 187-207.
Tiago, M. T. P. M. B., and Veríssimo, J. M. C. 2014. Digital marketing and social media:
Why bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), 703-708.
Tsimonis, G., and Dimitriadis, S. 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing
Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), 328-344.