Utilization of social media for different business purposes: A social media age?

Abstract

The utilization of social networking sites (SNSs) and social networking information (SNI) as parts of broader social media (SM) for various business purposes and practices have gained substantive importance from the academicians and practitioners in recent years. This paper theoretically aims to highlight some of such utilization based on published papers. We carefully selected 132 such papers from “Google Scholar” searching for most frequently used keywords such as SM, SNS, SNI, business, human resource management (HRM), marketing, branding, talent search & acquisition, recruitment & selection etc. After reviewing those papers, we identified that, in general, SM is an increasingly used platform for different business purposes. We anticipate that, despite of several flaws, SNSs will continue to gain momentous attention of all types of users in upcoming years creating a social media based business world. We are hopeful that the paper will be useful for the academicians, practitioners and policymakers from a number of viewpoints.