Aim: To review and discuss the use of social media platforms as digital marketing tool and promotional strategy by brands. The digital age inevitably brings changes and increased competition in ways businesses target, reach and recruit customers. This phenomena raises the question of which medium or media do businesses adopt in the marketing effort to reach, inform and convert customers; ultimately for survival? This review is an attempt to address this question within the context of the promotional activities of a beauty brand, Taliah.Approach: A review was conducted on the social media marketing activities of Taliah. It discusses different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube which the brand has combined to target, reach, persuade and convert their customers. In addition, the review identified four factors that reasonably affect the social media marketing as time and date; personality, call to action and post type. Consequently, this logical approach towards the subject-matter would help to provide knowledge and facilitate reaching the best-fit decision that can optimize the marketing activities of brands and businesses; considering the increasingly evolving technological era.Findings: The review considers the evolving changes in business as a result of the presence of various digital and interactive platforms and technologies. The study recognizes that the social media platforms provide opportunities for media content; including information on products and services to be processed and distributed to the targets. There is a worry that the market space is increasingly becoming competitive; particularly as consumers are empowered by the digital technologies to make informed choices among different brands and businesses. Arguably, this is one of the major factors that triggered the competition in the market and among brands.Review limitations/implications: The characteristics of the impact of the social media marketing on brands and businesses have recently been widely discussed because of their general applicability. Consequently, it is impossible to review and cover all the important aspects of the subject-matter in this review. This review focuses on the Taliah brand and how it has particularly conducted its social media and digital marketing management. It also examines four factors that reasonably affect the social media marketing; namely, time and date; personality, call to action and post type. The review examines and provides its own views based on content analysis of the social media marketing activities of Taliah brand.Practical implications: The review highlights the activities, benefits and challenges of applying social media as a marketing and promotional strategy. Social media platforms provide the channel through which brands and businesses can develop and disseminate information about their activities to their targets in an easy, less expensive and convenient manner. On the other hand, if brands and business understand the factors affecting the social media marketing; namely, time and date; personality, call to action and post type – they would be better prepared to checkmate these factors; including been able to aptly adapt the strengths of the social media in their marketing activities. This complement would strike the balance and potentially present a practical means through which brands could coordinate their marketing efforts in using various social media platforms. It is also crucial to gain insight into other factors that potentially impacting the activities of social media marketing strategy.Value: The review considers that the increasing changes in the market is itself an opportunity for the brands to rethink strategy on how various digital technologies and networking platforms can be optimized in marketing their activities and information. It is crucial and beneficial to emerging businesses and academics to understand how Taliah brand combined and utilized diverse social media platforms to target, reach out and recruit target customers; ultimately boosting its market shares.

The National Bureau of Statistics recently announced that the entertainment and media (E&M) industry in Nigeria recorded growth of 1.86% to 12.81%; contributing N54bn to the country’s GDP. The industry’s revenue is projected to reach an estimated $8.5bn in 2018, from $4bn in 2013, with internet as one of the key drivers (PwC report, 2016, p.14). This comes at a time when Nigeria’s economy has shrunk by 2.24% since 2015 and receded by 0.18% from the previous quarter. Therefore, this study unpacks the possibilities and challenges of the impact of e-marketing tools on the growth of the Nigerian E&M industry. E-marketing tools provide “a unique combination of powerful capabilities for marketers” (Parsons et al., 2015). E-marketing suitability for the E&M industry lies in its lower capital demand, and a convenient and online means of disseminating marketing messages across a heterogeneous population at an unlimited geographical space. E-marketing is a reality in Nigeria as a study by Mathew, Ogedebe & Ogedebe (2013, p. 549) shows that “Many Nigerians who used (sic) the internet as one form of communication or another are bombarded daily with advertisements of products and services from industries in the country.” This reality has brought a shift from mechanical to electronic and from analogue to digital; ultimately impacting the marketing realms. The internet enables these electronic/digital platforms; which marketers (E&M industry) and customers (content consumers) rely on to effectively reach and receive communication content and feedback respectively.  However, this study examined the challenges that have possibly hindered the full realization of the e-marketing tools of the Nigerian E&M industry and noted among others; poor power supply and unreliable network infrastructure in the country. There is also an increased customer expectation, security, content copyright and privacy issues as well as the challenge of compliance demand in the industry as influenced by ever dynamic digital boundaries. There is a huge economic need for the Nigerian government to live up to its obligation and enhance power supply and boost network infrastructure. The Nigerian E&M industry needs to continually integrate different digital platforms to reach targets and attract more content consumers. Both the government and industry should increasingly learn and bring a global perspective that can help the nation adapt to the constantly changing digital environment.

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Among others, the new media platforms are endowed with the capacity to reach wider targets of different demographic orientation; scattered at different geographical location. They also enable interaction between people; irrespective of location, religious divide and cultural inclination; ultimately for collaboration and socialization. For a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria which has unfortunately endured unending ethno-religious tensions from the onset, this paper attempts to examine the extent by which the new media (particularly the social media) provide the platform for such collaboration and socialization; particularly in removing the boundaries of ideological isolations and exposing young Nigerians to differing ideological worldviews which could help them renegotiate their ethnic and religious identity; moving from bigotry to tolerance? To answer this question, this paper investigated the new media usage patterns of young Nigerians with the view to assessing how much their use habit may have exposed them to this sort of socialization. Situated within the framework of the uses and gratifications theory, the study combined survey and focus group discussion (FGD) methods. A questionnaire was issued to 400 university undergraduates while two FGD sessions were carried out with 6 discussants in each session. Results showed that the Nigerian youths’ use of new media has exposed them to contact with ethnic and religious groups different from theirs, and that new media facilitates cross-ethnic and cross-religious learning as well as ethnic and religious tolerance among the youths. Hypotheses testing showed that the more the youths use the Internet the more they will be exposed to contact with ethnic and religious groups different from theirs and that the more the youths are exposed to online contact with such groups the more they will be tolerant towards them. It was concluded that the Internet could be a strong impetus for identity negotiation and renegotiation given that it affords the space for multicultural interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas, and so could serve as a potent tool for fostering cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and harmony in a multicultural society like Nigeria. The study recommended, among others, that efforts to achieve crossethnic and cross-religious tolerance and harmony in Nigeria shouldexplore the opportunities presented by the new media in this regard. Consequently, policymakers and other concerned institutions should work towards maximizing online cross-cultural contact and learning especially among the youths.

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