Hashtag marketing model on social media platforms

Abstract

The online marketing environment is currently facing a new additional marketing approach which is called social media platforms. Several examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These platforms had brought the opportunity on marketing field to engage with the availability of huge market in the targeted environment. However, some issues become obstacles to this opportunity such as service charge, effectiveness on information diffusion, and information overload. Therefore, one of the ways to solve those issues is by implementing Hashtag approach as it has become a present and one of social media platforms ability. Furthermore, the Hashtag approach can enhance the marketing process among social media sellers but there is still lack of guidelines on the area. A review of the literatures on Hashtag and social media marketing theories had been carried out in developing the Hashtag marketing model to act as a guideline for the social media sellers. Research has shown that Hashtag marketing on social media platforms is influenced by four factors which are structure diversity, interactivity, information diffusion, and followers. These four factors are used as main components in the proposed model. In confirming the model, a quantitative survey was distributed to 40 social media sellers. Respondents were asked to respond to several questions? sections which are demographic, structure diversity, interactivity, information diffusion, followers and the last one is the section for measuring the importance level on each factor. Analysis of the responses by using SmartPLS3 software demonstrated that all those four factors are valid and reliable as Hashtag marketing factors. The results indicated that Hashtag factors do have an impact on social media marketing platforms. On this basis, it is recommended that social media marketing use Hashtag Marketing Model as the guidelines for the marketing activities by social media sellers.