How to Launch an International Social Media Campaign

Global social media is no longer a ‘big boy’s game’ left to the likes of Coke, Nike, Apple or General Motors.  The low barrier to entry to social media marketing makes it possible for any business to spread its wings and tap into lucrative international markets.

Venturing beyond your local zone through social media can help to increase brand awareness, boost sales, offers unprecedented growth opportunities and can provide competitive advantage.

Admittedly, pulling off an international social campaign is no easy task—a lot of planning, goal setting and potential outsourcing will be required but if done well, the efforts will be well worth it especially in terms of brand exposure.

So here’s how to set up a social media campaign that allows you to reach an international audience:

Establishing your goals

A global campaign is a big deal—it will cost you time and money so you need to have a very clear strategy that will enable you to make the most of the resources you have available. Develop a set of goals to guide the direction of your campaign. Examples of possible goals include:

• Tap into new markets via public relations, advertising and social media
• Increase brand awareness and buzz
• Boost traffic to the website or blog
• Generate leads and build a list through social marketing etc.

Select your target audience

Given that you are just getting started, you want to limit your global campaign to the audiences or countries that already have the greatest potential for your business. There is no need to establish a social media presence in Ethiopia if you are receiving very little traction from there in terms of traffic, leads or sales.

Some questions to consider include:

• Where is most of your traffic coming from? Google Analytics can show you this.
• Which of the countries that are bringing in traffic have the best potential for expansion and growth?
• What is the market size?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the target market?

Knowing your audience and really narrowing down on them is perhaps the most important aspect of launching your global social campaign.

Determine audience preferences

Once you have decided the countries you will work with, the next step is to research the specific characteristics of your target audience. Some important factors to consider include:

Social media platforms– Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ may be dominant in the U.S. and Western Europe but other countries around the world have their own preferred social networking sites besides the U.S.-based sites. This interactive map shows the distribution of social media networks around the world.

Usage- Audiences across the world use social media differently and for different purposes. For example, in China and Japan, people largely use social media to share and download music and games, while in Europe, they mostly use social media to share pictures, exchange information and chat. Knowing how each audience uses social media will make it clear how you should be engaging your audience.

Language differences– Each country has its own dominant or preferred language. Just ensure that your campaign is set up to target people of a specific country even if they share a language with another country. For example, if Germany and Switzerland were among your target countries, you would need different social media profiles, website and blog pages for each country even though they share a language.

Devices: You also want to know the best medium through which you can reach your audience. In Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America, most people access social media on the go through their mobile devices. However, the device can also vary with the time they log onto social sites and the amount of time each audience generally spends logged onto these sites.

Develop a content strategy

Content is the backbone of your social media campaign. Yes, your strategy could include display advertising on social media, sales offers and hardcore marketing but all these need to be supported by relevant, meaningful content. After all, consumers all over the world are wary of overt advertising and marketing.

Your website and blog is essentially your content hub. It is from here that you can dedicate pages for each of your target audience and populate these with high quality, localized content.  You have the option of creating multiple pages for each audience on a single website or preferably, dedicating a separate website/blog to each target audience.

At this point, you would have to recruit local contributors and content creators to ensure that the content on each dedicated page or site is local, pertinent and authentic.

Engage

Finally, it is obviously not enough to create social profiles in different languages. The game really starts when you begin to engage with your audience all over the world.

Again, you need a social media manager in each location to help with engagement in real time and with as much of a local flavor as possible. This does not have to cost you a fortune; you can build a small effective team by outsourcing through online freelance and translation communities.

What is important to understand is that what may work in one country, likely won’t work in another. You also need to be aware of locality based trends and cultures which can usually only really be understood by a local national or a global marketing agency that has worked in that country or can do the appropriate research.

Social Media Campaigns

With conscientious preparation, you can leverage the power of social media to take your business to the next level, and indeed to the next country. It’s important to take the time to really understand your new audience, the country and their cultures when penetrating a new market. This can make the difference between a failed campaign and a hugely successful one.