Social Media Marketing Strategies Used by Small Retail Businesses

Emergent Theme 2: Social Media Content 
Ashley and Tuten (2015) described social media content as any information 
delivered on social networking sites. Business leaders and customers used social media 

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platforms as communication channels for interaction, sharing information, making or 
influencing purchasing decisions, and to provide persuasive messaging (Chang, Yu, & 
Lu, 2015). Individual users, groups, and consumers and businesses shared content 
(Kumar, Amber, Shukla, & Choubey, 2017). Social media content could be stored, 
retrieved at a later date, modified or updated, and used to facilitate joint ventures between 
companies and users (Shan et al., 2014). P4 stated that a new customer referenced past 
posted content to place a new order. The participants in this study used multiple 
strategies to create social media content to communicate, connect, and engage with 
customers. This theme aligned with Rogers DOI theory in that study participants used 
social media channels to communicate product information from the originator [source] 
to the customer.
The second element of the DOI process is communications channels. Diffusion is 
precise and includes elements of innovation, requiring at least two individuals to adopt 
the innovation, and a communication channel (Rogers, 2003). Business leaders 
effectively used communication channels to create organizational value and to influence 
and control messages (Shankar et al., 2016). Communication channels could also be used 
as mechanisms to share and influence the adoption of innovations. Efficient use of 
communication channels could lead to the creation of new innovations or products and 
the improvement in the quality of existing products (Wu & Huang, 2014). Study 
participants chose to use multiple social media platforms to deliver messages; 
information was transmitted from a source to the intended audience (Rogers, 2003).

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Business leaders effectively used social media content to facilitate positive 
engagement and gain customer interest (Kumar et al., 2016). Customers responded to 
social media content by liking and responding to posted content (Kumar et al., 2016).
Social media content changed how users perceived things. Table 2 shows participants’ 
Instagram posts, which consisted of a combination of text, photos, and videos and 
followers; P5 uses Facebook exclusively. The study participants stated that customers 
preferred visual information over plain text. 
Table 3.