Developing 1a Successful Social Media Strategy in the International Business Environment Social media use has grown tremendously in the past few decades. It is estimated there are nearly 2800 million active users on Facebook, 140 million users on Twitter, 800 million exclusive users on YouTube, and about 150 million users on LinkedIn globally(Chanthinoket al., 2015). Companies around the world from small enterprises to multinationals are using social media to become more competitive as a communication, customer relationships, marketing, and sales tool. Nonetheless, not all social media strategies are effective especially operating in the international business environment. The following literature review aims at investigating how firms 1can develop a successful social media strategy in the international business environment. The paper proposes that a successful social media strategy should focus on the customer and its engagement through communication, marketing, product presentation, and value of the social information in firm competitiveness(Chanthinoket al., 2015; Fulgoni, 2015; Young &Rossmann, 2015; Singhal, 2016; Harlow, 2015). A research article by Fulgoni (2015), investigates the case studies of the finalists in the 2015 Social Media Strategy Prize. The research reviews how each company or organization in the final list of competitors utilized different social media strategies to gain competitive advantages. The author is keen to emphasize the level of creativity through ingenious social media tool and strategies. This research article brings to light two effective social media strategies including paid and unpaid social media. One of the organizations reviewed is the Ireland Immigration Council that used social media to increase awareness on sex trafficking through social media site Tinder (Fulgoni, 2015). This is a form of unpaid social media, where the company uses minimal resources to engage its target audience and creates a sort of buzz in social networks that it catches the attention of other popular media channels such as television. The social awareness campaign grew popular and earned its time of news programs across the country and yielded positive results as the government of Ireland implemented a law on sexual offences. For the paid social media, companies such as Coca Cola used paid social media to drive its sales especially in North America through the “#ShareaCoke” campaign(Fulgoni, 2015). Nonetheless, the author is quick to identify that the campaign was not as successful in other countries. The author recommends understanding the uniqueness and needs of local markets to better shape messages and campaigns to align to the diverse customers around the world. Overall, this article encourages the use of creativity to enhance social media strategies as well as considering the audience in each local market to ensure that the strategy fits the local market. The second article focuses on a more specific social media strategy that is in terms of developing communities. The article develops and studies a framework for developing a community through social media for a university library. This is meant to create awareness, communication, as well as engagement with the targeted audience. The authors conclude that interactivity and personality are excellent principles for a successful social media strategy when focusing on developing a community. Through information sharing and interactivity, the researchers were able to grow the library’s Twitter followers over 100% in only one year (Young &Rossmann, 2015). One of the strategies used was offering personality-rich content that enabled interaction from both users and the library. Therefore, companies should focus on enabling the personality of the organization to be felt or seen in their social media content. Through a feeling of relevance and personality, customer’s satisfaction is highly increased and enables development of a community(Young &Rossmann, 2015). Such communities can be made up of people from numerous countries enabling successful social media use in the international market. The third article investigates the impact of social media strategies on developing trust amid customers in relation to organization, product, and service. The study focused on questioning about 270 participants in India through questionnaires (Singhal, 2016). The authors suggest that the research results illustrate a relevant correlation between customer trust and customer engagement, therefore, organizations should effectively engage their customers using social media to develop their trust. From the research, most people believed that they increase their trust in an organization, brand, or product if their social media engagement is handled professionally. This means that most online users trust organizations more when their social media strategy is professional or has a dedicated department or human resource to enable customers find, offer, and share opinions about the organization or its products(Singhal, 2016). This article is relevant in illustrating the best methods of engaging consumers to enable develop their trust. Moreover, the authors also recommend organizations to ensure that their social media strategic are customer-centric. This means that organizations should always be focused on engaging potential and existing customers. A sure way of achieving this is ensuring that social media content and conversations are always monitored to ensure that all is well and trust can be developed easily(Singhal, 2016). Evidently, social media can enhance the trust of customers when engagement is seamless and professional. The fourth article is the most engaging and tends to offer a holistic framework for developing a successful social media strategy. The study offers a conceptual framework for developing a social media strategy by reviewing relevant literature surrounding the topic. The authors form a model on the essentials of a successful social media strategy. From their literature review, the authors conclude that a successful social media strategy is based on four dimensions. The first dimension is customer communication capabilities where social media offers unlimited ways for organizations to communicate with their customers. The study illustrates that organization should use social media applications and tools to publicize, contact, connect, and educate with its customers and prospective customers offering them a voice as well as a discussion platform on mutual ideas and interests(Chanthinoket al.,2015). The second dimension of a successful strategy is the product diversity exhibition awareness. The article makes it clear that organizations should consider how they present their products or services on social media platforms such as features, designs, brand image, and packaging. This means that creating lively, colorful, and resembling images or animations of a product can enhance consumer engagement. Moreover, all images of products marketed on social media should have a close resemblance of the physical products(Chanthinoket al., 2015). The whole idea is ensuring that customers can trust that what they see or perceive is what they will get. The third dimension of a social media strategy is proactive competitor learning competence. The authors suggest that much of the needed customer information such as opinions and reviews are easily free and accessible on social media(Chanthinoket al., 2015). Therefore, they should implement a strategy that monitors such information to gain external organizational learning especially as it relates to competitors and competition in the market. This is linked to the fourth dimension, which is market response suitability orientation. This dimension also relies on the use of the rich and easily accessible information social media to make suitable forecasts on how a market is expected to respond or evaluate current and future trends. All these dimensions are effective components or a successful social media strategy. They offer all the main aspects including communication, marketing, and competitive advantages in the international business environment. The last article also illustrates the importance of knowledge management and the use of social media as a tool for achieving knowledge competencies. The article develops a model framework for using social media strategy to harness the power of knowledge through a literature review. This is based on the fact that social media offers increased free and useful information such as the number of unique visitors, the number of likes, return visits, and active users among others (Harlow, 2015). These types of information can be used as a strategy in gaining increased knowledge capital that can be maximized into value-generating actions in marketing and communications. In conclusion, a successful social media strategy should focus on the customer and its engagement through communication, marketing, product presentation, and value of the social information in firm competitiveness. These key features are important for any successful strategy since the customer is the most valuable in social media since they can create, share, and contribute to content creation. Moreover, focusing on the customer though these dimensions ensures that the social media strategy is a success by developing their trust, appeal for products, engagement, and a sense of community.