Employing Social Networks in practicing Marketing Communication Among Telecommunications Companies in the Sultanate of Oman

The study aims at detecting, characterizing and analyzing the extent to which Telecommunications Companies working in Oman employ social media in practicing marketing communication, and identifying the attitudes of social networks accounts' managers towards their utilization in marketing communications.
The study relies on survey methodology using the content analysis tool of the accounts of Telecommunications Companies in the Sultanate of Oman. The analysis sample included 304 posts of both companies on Twitter and Instagram.
The study found out that marketing communication posts constituted 70% of the total publications of telecommunications companies, and that Twitter is the network that was most used in the practice of marketing communication. The study also found out that 93.87% of marketing communication posts targeted clients, and Arabic language ranked first among the languages ​​used in marketing communications posts.
Finding also empathized that the sales promotion aspect came first with a percentage of 49.06% of the marketing communication mix used in posts via Social Networks accounts, followed by events-based marketing by 28.77%, and finally advertising ranked third by 16.04%.
The study also revealed that the Social Networks Marketing Communication Model in the Sultanate focused mainly on event-based marketing as an input to the model, and has achieved a high level of viral marketing as a main output.
The results also illustrated that "ease of use" index was the leading indicator of marketing communication, followed by the index of "interactive dialogues" and the index of "providing useful information to the public" ranked third.
Finally, the results of the interviews showed that the main challenges facing telecommunications companies in utilizing social networks to practice marketing communications in the Sultanate are the negative perceptions of the institutions and constant criticism, besides the varying levels of prevalence of the use of social networks, and finally the difficulty of formulating content for marketing communication posts via social networks.