Sep 1, 2010 4:43 AM
How does your company manage social media across countries?
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Working in Europe, I'm constantly hearing about social media programs designed for one country accidentally reaching users in other countries -- especially when they're done in English. Toyota's excellent social media-focused iQ car launch in the UK attracted attention from the US, where the car isn't available. Yesterday a client told me that their Australian marketing team launched a Facebook page that they thought was just for their market -- but when they looked at the analytics, they found only about 5% of the page's fans were Australian, with the rest coming from other big English-speaking markets.
As I see it, there are two big challenges when global companies use social media:
I'm planning to write some research on this topic in the near future, and would love to hear your thoughts!
All digital content, especially on the web, is best considered Global until proven otherwise... especially when the content is in a widely spoken laguage like English. Below is a simple example of a hub and spokes strategy that may be helpful both to keep people in your company sane, to improve the experience of your users, and to improve things like SEO.
Depending on the medium (your corporate www site, facebook, twitter, etc.) and your company's size, you can set up some simple governance (standard naming protocol for local versus Global site, common URLs, templates, etc.) to drive productivity and also help capture local audiences with relevant local content but linking those sites to the Global site is usually key.
If your company or brand is big enough, consider a hub and spokes strategy for each of your key brands and each of your key mediums. For example:
Thanks for the feedback, Brian - I do rather like the hub and spoke model, and have recommended it to a couple of clients this year. Captain Morgan is one notable example of this strategy in action: If you click on the 'Around the World' tab of their Facebook page you can choose your country on a pirate's map. My main concern with their implementation is that the map is pretty well hidden (not many consumers actually click on tabs, according to most Facebook marketers I've talked to) -- so I think most people will just default to the central page.
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