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Brands and their Global Social Media Challenges

[fa icon="calendar"] 23-Jan-2012 09:20:00 / by Iliyana Stareva

A few days ago I came across an interesting whitepaper by LEWIS PR about the social media challenges brands and organisations are facing globally. The main emphasis is on the fact that nowadays “every brand is a global brand”.

Thanks to the internet and social media buyers can easily learn about companies and their products, they can interact with them as well as with other customers and most importantly they can express their own opinions. Organisations on the other hand have to listen to these multicultural, multilingual voices and correspondingly respond. The paper looks at the challenges of a multinational social media strategy, that works across borders, but also suggests some ideas how to cope with them, so I thought I should briefly present these to you.

Here it goes:

Challenges:

  • Organisational challenges

How do you effectively organize your social media marketing efforts - do you need multiple blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter profiles for each country or is just one global presence enough; which country is responsible for which region in the case of a crisis; how can you assess your global audience etc? 

  • Language

To what extent is content creation in the local language necessary; would English be sufficient enough or is a mix of both the best decision? How do you then correspondingly monitor and listen in the chosen language(s)?

  • Platforms

How do you decide which network is on the top of your priority list – the global leaders Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube or the local online networks that play a role in that local community?

  • Culture and politics

When you don’t really have control over the content created about your brand in social media, how do you still manage to carefully deal with issues such as incorrect translation or government regulations? 

  • Timezones

How fast can you react in a social media crisis that is happening in Australia, but you are currently in Germany, so that it doesn’t all turn out to be a huge disaster? 

  • Product messaging 

If you alter your product according to the needs and regulatory requirements of specific markets, how do you make it clear to which markets you refer to when promoting those products via social media?

Recommendations:

  • Understand where your communities are

Research your existing communities and find out who is talking about you, what and where by setting up monitoring tools such as Radian 6, Facebook Insights, Google Trends, so that you can find out which countries are engaging the most with your brand.

  • Organize your channels

Set up a clear social media strategy by choosing just one channel as your priority hub whether it is your website, blog, Facebook page etc. and use the rest of the networks where you are present to promote this focal point as well as to listen to the conversations happening there.

  • Develop content that meets your audience’s needs

For your global priority hub create content relevant to your global audience that provides a global view. For your other channels that are focusing on smaller communities make sure that you “talk” to those communities accordingly in terms of language, local needs and news etc.

  • Engage at a local level

Find out who are the biggest influencers in each community and then build and personalize relationships with them.

  • Manage local issues

In case of a crisis give exact data, be quick, transparent, professional and polite and respond in the local language, according to the local market.

  • Implement a global social media policy

Set appropriate social media guidelines by making sure that everyone in the organisation knows which channels are used and why, who is responsible for them and how to contact them, what are the rules (e.g. using social media at work allowed or not) and how to react in a crisis.

  • Measure, iterate, refine

Monitor the number of subscribers to your blog, use web analytics etc. and set Key Performance Indicators to find out if you have reached your social media marketing goals.

The paper also provides some very specific examples and tips about cultural differences in the usage of social media in 15 countries.  I wasn’t aware of most of them and I think you’ll find them quite interesting. For instance, did you know that in Hong Kong there is a local social media counterpart of each global network leader: renren for Facebook, sina for blogging, Youku and Tudou for video sharing and Sina Weibo for Twitter?

What can we conclude? Well, do your research (properly!), set a clear strategy, organize your activities, listen carefully and measure adequately.

 

Source: LewisPR 

 

Topics: Social Media

Iliyana Stareva

Written by Iliyana Stareva

Iliyana Stareva is the author of Inbound PR - the book that is transforming the PR industry. She's also a keynote speaker and a consultant in inbound and digital for fast-growing companies and agencies. Currently, Iliyana is Chief of Staff to the EMEA President at ServiceNow. Before that, she held global and EMEA-wide positions at Cisco and HubSpot. She is also certified by the PMI as a Project Management Professional (PMP)®. In her free time, you can find Iliyana writing for her blog, dancing salsa or travelling the world.

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