Leveraging Social Media Word-of-Mouth for Marketing Communications in the Nigerian Book Publishing Industry

Abstract

The marketing aspect of book publishing is essential to the publishing industry's survival in the digital markets. Although there have been efforts to improve marketing methods in Nigeria's book industry over the past several years, the reality is that marketing in the country has not received the maximum amount of attention. In addition to establishing marketing units to entrench innovative marketing practices, there has also been a shift towards business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing as publishers establish online presence by setting up websites to distribute and promote their books, in conjunction with other digital platforms. However, there is a knowledge gap on how Nigerian book publishers use social media for marketing communications, particularly the function of social media word-of-mouth in this context. In light of this, this study reviews the literature on the roles of social media word-of-mouth and social media advertising in the marketing communication strategies of book publishers. The results show that word-of-mouth marketing on social media, one of the most popular types of marketing communication, has established itself as a valuable source of information that consumers can use to make their purchasing decisions, based on favorable testimonials of other customers. On the other hand, there is the issue of unfavorable remarks or reviews that might prove to be counterproductive, necessitating the use of social media advertising as a method for participating in online communities and having one-on-one interactions with individual community members by specifically targeting them with social media messages.