how do you make social media work internationally and locally?

One topic that has been on my mind in recent days has the thought, when working with an international brand, is how do you make social work on both an international and local basis?

So far the answer seems far from easy.  If you were going to take it at its simplest forms you would have 2 options;

  1. Keep everything on a tight leash globally by running everything by product or service.  This then ensures that the message stays consistent and you have minimal number of Facebook or Twitter pages.
  2. Forget the products or services and enable all territories to have access as most queries are localised as are many campaigns.

Neither of these I think you will agree are the ideal solution.  One problem being with twitter for example, it is only prominent in English speaking nations and is thus irrelevant to many territories out there.

And yes it does depend on what your objectives are and these are going to vary company to company (or team to team).

So what can we do?

Facebook does allow regional wall posts dependent on which language you have your profile set to.  This does allow both global and local posts to be made by the brand and with good access, planning and training this can work well.

On Twitter, I don’t think anyone has the perfect solution as yet.  If you are going to have multiple accounts to serve different needs then I think the most important thing is to make as easy to find a possible for you customers.

Half the battle for a consumer is to find out how you get a response (if you do) and which one of the hundreds of fan pages/twitter accounts is a real one.  If the battle is hard they will give up…simple as that.

There are so many options out there for big companies and so many fake/fan pages set up.  What we have seen over the past 2/3 years is organic growth of brands on social spaces.  We will now see a period of consolidation as they sit back and try to work out how to proceed.

What would your message to brands out there who are trying to become better in the space?

 

Next time I’m going to look at how brands/clubs can utilise their athletes/ambassadors to spread the key messages and enhance your reach.

About author

Daniel McLaren
Daniel McLaren 820 posts

Dan is the Founder & CEO of Digital Sport. Can be found at sports industry events and heard every week on the Digital Sport Insider podcast. @DanielMcLaren

You might also like

SPORTEL 2021: Day One Recap

This year’s prestigious SPORTEL convention kicked off in sunny Monaco today, welcoming a host of familiar faces as well as plenty of new ones. Doors opened at 8:30am with businesses

Six Founding Riders Set To Bring The Vision Of The UCI Track Champions League To Life

Olympic Champions, UCI World Champions and World Record holders join the new track cycling competition debuting in November 2021 The UCI Track Champions League is delighted to announce that six

Sports related spending to soar this summer as pre-pandemic life resumes

New insights from eBay Ads UK reveal the potential for brands to engage with an excited but nervous nation as sports events get back on track  As pubs and indoor