5. Discussion
The large and growing number of researches and articles that have addressed the related issues of social media marketing obviously approved the considerable attention paid for such phenomenon over the recent years (Alalwan et al., 2016b). Closer look at the time frame that this phenomenon has taken place leads to notice that the significant part of these studies have been published in the year of 2016; 2015; and 2014 respectively (i.e. Jung et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2016; McCaughey et al., 2016; Rejón-Guardia et al., 2016; Enginkaya and Yılmaz, 2014; Kim and Ko, 2012; Saboo et al., 2016; Saboo et al., 2015; Filo et al., 2015; Dwivedi et al., 2015). This, in turn, provides strong evidence that social media and their application should be the focus of attention for both perspectives practitioners and researchers. By closer reviewing the main body of literature of the social media marketing (144 studies), researchers were able to notice that there are several marketing applications and themes covered. As well as, different factors and methods that have considered by these studies in order to provide a clear and deep insight for such issues. As presented in section three, seven main themes that have listed by current studies according to the area of interest for 144 studies considered). The first theme have examined how using social media application could contribute to the promotional and advertising efforts (i.e. Chang et al., 2015; De Vries et al., 2012; Jung et al., 2016; Lee and Hong, 2016; Lee et al., 2016; Lin and Kim, 2016). Even though such studies accelerate the current understanding about the fundamental dimensions that should be considered by researchers and practitioners regarding the applications of advertising over the social media platforms, there are some areas that require further investigation.
