building a global + local social media strategy

7/25/2019 Building a Global + Local Social Media Strategy

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Building a

Social Media StrategyGLOBAL + LOCAL


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INTRODUCTIONIn todays digital world, brands can easily take their marketing efforts global

on social media. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer

broader access to brand product and content, while also giving brands

the opportunity to join customer conversations and resolve queries and

complaints quickly.

But, when a company goes global, new issues and opportunities arise

around localization of strategy and messaging. As a social media marketer,

you need to decide whether to build a social strategy that relies on distinct,

local teams that align closely with local culture, or maintain a single, global

messaging strategy that is developed at a centralized headquarters, or do

some mix of both.

To properly work through this decision, you must understand the differences

between global and local social media marketing strategies, the pros and

cons of maintaining each, and how to measure your results to determinehow well your strategy is working.


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THE GLOBAL-LOCAL DIVIDETo begin, well define a global versus a local strategy:

Global: A brands messaging comes from one centralized team and isconsistent across every market globally. Messaging may be translated into

local languages but its content doesnt change.

Local: A brands communications are created or customized by teams thatlive near and appeal to an area.

When social media marketing was relatively new, the choice to develop

a global or local presence wasnt nearly as hard. Brands tended to stay

within their home country and use their first language, giving them a local

presence by default.

Consider Nike, the well-known American athletic retailer that now has

a large global and localized presence. Early social strategies from Nike

appeared to be tailored to an English-speaking customer living in thenorthern hemisphere, as the brands first Tweet shows. Nikes first

presence was local because they were based in the US.

Now, due to technologys globalizing effects, consumers have more

opportunity to seek out brands that are farther from home. As this

happens, brands adapt by catering to different locations. But, how local

should brands go? Where exactly should they be spending money and effort?

Answers vary. Brands that rely on walk-in patronage may need a loc

presence. However, with a global-only approach, a web-based bran

monitor and control all aspects of its communications more efficien

Making a choice between a global and local strategy means know

your audience, understanding your resources, and having solid datmake your decision.

Nikes first tweet on December 29, 2011 addresses an English

speaking and likely American audience.


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LOCAL VS. GLOBAL: THE PROS AND CONSEach social media strategy local or global has pros and cons.

Understanding these tradeoffs will help your brand decide which type

of presence you need, or whether you want something in between:

a global-local presence.

Local presenceMany small companies start with a local social media strategy simply

because their products audience lives in their local community. As they

grow and move into other areas of the world, they often switch to a global

social media strategy because they dont have the resources to support a

local approach for multiple locations.

Local strategies have the benefit of relevance in their target market.

Marketers in local markets can easily build campaigns around products

that are appropriate to factors like seasons and holidays. These marketers

also benefit from cultural and linguistic knowledge, such as nicknames forneighborhoods or news about local celebrities.

Maintaining local social media presences, however, becomes more

challenging as a brand expands outside its original market. Brands w

multiple physical locations may find themselves struggling to produ

message that is both cohesive and relevant in many geographies.

Brands can stick with a local approach, setting up teams in new locathat know the culture of their new locations. Or, they can move to a

approach, keeping a single location the source of their social media

messaging strategy.

A local strategy makes sense for

businesses like restaurants, store

or any brand with walk-in locatio


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Global presenceHaving a global social media strategy helps ensure messaging is consistent

across markets and channels because the brands centralized marketing

team produces the messages. This approach works for brands with many

different branches that want a consistent voice. These companies might be

marketing to businesses and need a more polished image.

An example of a global marketing strategy occurred when Manchester City

Football Club in the UK translated their website into 13 different languages.

This made it easier for fans outside the UK to access team news, shop, and

connect, but kept the messaging consistent.

Despite these benefits, building a global presence is sometimes a difficult

task. Brands can spend large amounts of time trying to craft campaigns and

messages that will speak to an international audience. What seems normal

in one culture may hold a different meaning in another.

Global strategies work well for

brands with international appeal

and a largely web-based audience.

You can get a worldwide view of your social media fan base with

the Simply Measured Facebook Global Pages report


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THE GLOBAL-LOCAL PRESENCEYou may find that neither a purely global nor local approach satisfies all of

your marketing needs. Maybe its best to have a centralized group that sets

the tone for messaging then collaborates with on-site teams around the

world. For example, you might offer local customer support on Twitter in all

time zones. Theres no one-size-fits-all presence a business must have.

A global-local strategy allows for customization based on target markets.

Before deleting one-off accounts or at tempting to change your strategy

from one type of presence to another, here are questions to ask yourself:

1. Who is our audience and where are they located?Knowing your audience is essential for deciding on a strategy that

best suits your needs. Looking at users by region can help you decide

whether there are regions that need a specific local presence. Your

brand should consider both your audience and your competitors

audiences in making this decision. Competitors efforts often offerclues about where you could expand.

2. What is our audience looking for?When your customers look for football fan gear are they searching for

NFL teams (American football) or FIFA teams (international soccer)? You

need a digital strategy that puts your products in front of the customer

in an appropriate way.


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3. What are our strengths and weaknesses?Youll want to determine your strengths and weaknesses in terms of

resources and skills. For example, a weakness may be lack of funding for

translators to bring a global campaign to certain areas of the world. A

strength may be having local offices that can handle a regions needs,

including adaptations for language and culture.

4. How do we build a cohesive strategy across all channels? Internet users have come to expect that brands are consistent, whether

the brands presence is in the US, Europe, South America, Africa, or

Southeast Asia. This means you need to be strategic in how you label

local profiles, or how your global presence responds to local needs.

Besides cohesiveness across localities, brands must adopt a cohesive

strategy across channels. This means that messaging on all social

networks should align with product and branding guidelines.

5. How do we know if were doing it right?The recurring question when it comes to social media is how to both

benchmark and measure the outcome. A good social media strategy is

based on data both as a guide for creating global or local personas

and for determining success. Being able to easily review data improves

the efficiency of creating and implementing an audience-friendly brand

persona, whether global or local.

With the expansion of paid media, data is also key in being able

attribute success to the right things. Knowing how your paid, ow

and earned media help drive customer acquisition and engagem

across your global or local presences will help improve resource

allocation. Furthermore, it can help make reporting on and analy

results more efficient.

Building a social media strategy with the right combination of globa

local components is integral to competitive success. You need to ba

the standardization that comes with a global presence, and the loca

based customization of a local presence, to offer a cohesive and cus

oriented experience across all social media channels.

A good social media strategy is

based on data both as a guidecreating global or local persona

and for determining success.


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3. Who are our target audiences?Comparing your current audience to your potential target audiences

is essential for deciding where you need to focus your resources.

First, gather information about your current audience that will help

you identify topics that your customers care about. You can then

research those topics or keywords in Tweets by people who are not yet

customers. By studying keywords in potential markets youll discover

areas of opportunity.

Data on your current audience also provides information on engagement

trends, such as where your audience is when they engage, their age,

gender, and which platforms they use most. These factors will help you

decide how, where, and when to strengthen your social media efforts

with a more local or global approach.

4. What are our brands current strengths and areas for

opportunity as a global and a local entity?Your brands current social media campaign performance will help to

assess strengths and weaknesses on both a global and a local scale.

You will be able to identify areas where you could customize for certain

customers and highlight areas in which your strategy lacks cohesion.

For example, you may find that certain keywords work better in certain

regions. Your competitors might have a better presence in a region

where you have a large, engaged audience. You could find that your

business (and audience) would benefit from using local languages.

The Simply Measured Facebook Page Insights Report provides informatio

about your audience, such as age, gender, and location.


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WHERE CAN YOUR BRAND EXPAND?With data about strengths and areas for improvement, you can determine

how to expand your brands presence. There are a few factors that play

into the decision of whether and where you should build or reinforce your

social presence.

Location: Looking at the countries where your audience engages allowsyou to pinpoint locations that have a large potential for new customers.

Geo-location data will help alert you to locations where you may not

provide customized service options, but have a large enough following or

fan base to warrant a local team.

Language: Consider the languages your audience uses. If your brandservices a large number of people who speak a different language than

that of your brand, you may benefit from translating your global messaging

into that language and offering customer service and other options in

that language. Or, you can put a local team in that area to work with thatcommunity more closely.

Knowing that a large percentage of their Twitter audience is GMT -

sample brand can assume that many of their followers are based o

East Coast of the United States.

Facebook Insights provided by Facebook show which languages your audience uses.

LANGUAGE

TOTAL FANS 2,083

English(US)

English(UK)

148

Spanish

6

French

3

English(Pirate)

3

Leet Speak

2


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Competition:Your competitors social media presences are great sourcesof information when searching for locations that have a demand for your

product. You can get an idea of international localization efforts by looking

at branch profiles. For example, Doves Brazilian audience size of nearly five

million people shows that they have been successful in building a localized

experience in that region. Doves competitors may consider expanding their

own presence in that region to remain competitive.

By comparing data about a competitor, and the location and languages

used by your audience, you can make more effective social media

strategy decisions.

CONCLUSIONChoosing between or blending a centralized global presence and a

diverse set of local presences requires research and analysis to ensure

success. You should keep your audience in mind at all times: who are they,

what do they need, and does their brand fulfill that need. This monitoring

means periodically collecting data on languages, localities, and trends in

keywords and topics.

A brand must consider factors that come with each type of presence,

such as controlling messaging or hiring new talent in target regions. With

careful planning, however, you will find that you can tailor global and local

strategies to meet specific business needs. In addition, determining what

type of presence your brand needs can help you target audiences you may

not previously have considered.

This graph from the Simply Measured Facebook Global Pages reporthas large followings in Brazil, India, and the Philippines. Based on this

competitive brand may decide to expand their presence in any of the


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