Social Media Marketing Strategies Used by Small Retail Businesses

Reflections 
This process has been a long, arduous journey. It is overwhelming unbelievable 
that I am here now, but here I am. This journey has been challenging and rewarding all at 
the same time. My doctoral journey started at a very challenging time in my life when I 
needed a mental distraction. I did not know everything required to complete this level of 
education, but I am happy and glad that I stayed the course. My professional career in IT 
and my desire to start my own small business led to my interest in researching SMM 

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strategies. That and the fact that I had no idea what I would write about when I attended 
my first Residency shortly after registering for my very first doctoral class. Up until the 
point I had begun my research, the only thing I knew about social media was how to use 
certain applications and how they allowed me to communicate with my circle of friends.
Of course, I had seen the ads from the companies informing me of a specific product, but 
I did not understand the rationale behind the ads. I learned so much about the 
why
of 
certain SMM strategies; the more a consumer knows about a product, the more likely 
they are to buy it. Through existing research, I was able to understand the many SMM 
strategies used in business.
When I began my research four years ago, I had trouble finding articles related to 
small business customer engagement and SMM. There were many articles on the use of 
social media in business to business relationships or social media usage in small and 
medium enterprises, but not much on small business customer engagement and SMM. It 
was not until late 2016, early 2017 that I began finding more articles focusing on small 
business and SMM. This proved that there was a gap in the literature concerning SMM 
and small business customer engagement and that there was a need for this research.
What I found most interesting was that all study participants echoed many of the 
same experiences; however, each participant may learn new strategies or techniques to 
market their businesses. SMM is still in the early stages and some small business leaders 
do not know how to exploit the benefits of SMM (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). My 
knowledge of social media was enhanced by this study. I also learned multiple 

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considerations small business leaders should make when developing and implementing 
successful SMM strategies for customer engagement.