Social Media Resources as Strategic Determinants of Social Media Marketing Effectiveness

Recent research details some meaningful uses of digital marketing instruments but not the internal organizational antecedents of social media marketing performance. Drawing on resource-based theory, the concept of dynamic capabilities, and social media research, this article identifies social media–specific resources and dynamic capabilities that can enhance social media marketing performance, as well as a theoretically developed and validated scale to measure it. The empirical investigation of the impacts of these resources and capabilities on performance relies on data pertaining to consumer brands, including results of manager surveys, brands’ financial statements, Facebook fans, Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers, and brand image measures. The proposed social media resources and capabilities improve social media performance directly and brand perception indirectly. The impact of social media measurement also is moderated by firm size, such that it is more relevant for larger firms. A profile deviation analysis reveals that the gap in interrelated social media capabilities between top-performing benchmarks and other brands explains significant variance in social media performance.