Purpose: Customers increasingly devote a lot of time on social as well as digital media for a number of reasons, from obtaining information to make final product purchasing. Consequently, small companies devote a significant amount of time on social media to engage with their audience in order to promote their brand, improve sales, improve relationship with their customers and boost a number of visitors on their website. The importance of social media is continuously growing that’s why the objective of this study is to present a bibliometric analysis of social media as a marketing tool based on Scopus database literature for a certain time period. Research Methodology: During the period 2010 to 2022, 640 publications related to social media and social media marketing were identified for bibliometric study. Bibliometric analysis is carried out with the help of VOS Viewer software. Co-authorship and Co-occurrence analysis technique were used to identify the trend of publications, most cited research articles, authors and keywords. Result: Galati A. was the author who contributed most to social media as a marketing tool publication. USA and United Kingdom were the most influential countries in social media research areas. Additionally, four themes of co-word analysis were identified in the study which are Communication Tool, Evolvement of Social Media Marketing, Social Media Adoption, and Consumer Behaviour. Implications: This study will be helpful for the various researchers in providing directions for future research.

To highlight the link between keywords in a certain cluster or subject, visualised co-word networks were created. The four clusters of keywords were recognized as Communication Tool, Evolvement of Social Media Marketing, Social Media Adoption, and Consumer Behaviour. A first cluster “Communication Tool” refers to various social media platforms such as in the network are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that are employed to communicate with their customers or clients, or staff. The second cluster “Evolvement of Social Media Marketing” comprises 5 keywords as internet, internet marketing, digital marketing, social networks or social media platforms, and social media marketing which shows the growth of social media marketing over time. The third theme “Managerial Application” consists of 4 keywords that are Web 2.0, social networking sites, SMEs, and advertising which indicates small and medium enterprises started using the social networking sites for advertising and promoting their product. The last and fourth cluster is “consumer behaviour” and how e-wom (electronic word of mouth) on social networking platforms influences the customer’s intention to purchase the products and services. 

The bibliometric analysis provides a comprehensive perspective of certain research domains, allowing researchers to focus on specific areas in order to add new results and information to the literature. This bibliometric research study summarises Scopus publications on social media as a marketing strategy. As per the search results, from 2010 to 2021, the usage of social media as a marketing tool in small businesses has expanded rapidly, according to the search results. The majority of the studies utilize the terms social media and social media marketing as per the analysis. “Advertising, social networks, purchase intention, multiple social media platforms, digital marketing, social media marketing, web 2.0, branding, and many more” were explored in addition to social media and social media marketing. Second, the study demonstrates that, since 2010, research on social media marketing has received a lot of attention due to the rapid expansion of the internet and social media. Author linked nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom contribute significantly to the number of published articles and citations. India ranks third in terms of research contributions. Through co-authorship analysis, the authors were grouped into three clusters, each with two linkages. There are 11 authors out of 535 who have published at least one study in the area of social media as a marketing tool. Galati A. is the author who contributed the most to the social media marketing. According to the outcome of co-occurrence anlysis, four clusters of keywords were identified: communication tool, the evolution of social media marketing, social media acceptance in MSMEs, and social media influence.