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ABSTRACT
Social media is already an established feature in the marketing strategies of large global brands. This study explores how the social media success stories of large global brands may be emulated on a smaller scale by nightclubs in the midlands and west of Ireland. The topic is explored from both consumer and organisation perspectives. Focus groups were conducted with target consumers and in-depth interviews were carried out with nightclub marketing personnel. The findings indicate nightclubs are highly compatible with social media, but nightclubs are not using social media to their full potential; instead they are adopting an unstructured, outdated approach. This study adds to the debate on the role of relationships and promotion in social media marketing by presenting a cross-sectional account of the current use of social media marketing. The resulting framework is designed for nightclub marketing managers as a tool to enhance their social media marketing strategies.
Key Words: Social media marketing; web 2.0 marketing; online marketing; service marketing; hospitality marketing; nightclub marketing
INTRODUCTION
Since the inception of the internet forty years ago many new applications have been created. One of the most recent innovations to emerge is web 2.0, 'a collection of web services which facilitate certain behaviours online, such as community participation and user-generated content' (Chaffey and Smith, 2008: 499). Examples include the micro-blogging site Twitter, the social networking site Facebook, and the video-sharing site YouTube. Circle (2009) lists these particular web 2.0 applications among the top future marketing trends. The addition of a Masters degree in social networking at Birmingham City University further illustrates this growing trend of using social media for communications and marketing purposes (Birmingham City University, 2009). Many organisations have begun to realise the power and potential of these new communication channels. Social media is already successful as a marketing channel for many large global brands. One need only look at Dell's microblogging on Twitter or Ikea's innovative use of photo tagging on Facebook for proof of this success (Circle, 2009; Warren, 2009). However, the most recent social media marketing industry report indicates social media marketing is still in the preliminary stages of development. ? significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their business, but 72% have only been doing...