Ready to launch your global social media campaigns? Here’s how to get started and keep organised.
Don’t start tweeting yet! First it’s important to define a clear social media execution plan.
If you’re targeting different channels for different audiences, things can get complicated very quickly. You should know which social media profiles go together, which pages on your site you should be linking to, and how all of your campaigns tie together.
Here’s how to keep your global social media strategy organised.
Define a Hub for Each Audience
Defining a hub on your website for each audience segment will help keep things organised. The hub is most commonly a blog, but can also be forum or a community page that you maintain.
Your blog for each audience segment should be written in the most commonly spoken language of that segment. All of your new content should be posted there first, so your social media channels can link back to a main content source. Your blog should also be a key part of your SEO strategy.
If you don’t have the resources to create a dedicated blog for each region or language you target, default to the secondary language of that region or English. English is the most widely-used language in the world, and is the dominant language of international business and global communication.
In an ideal world with unlimited resources, you’d have a different blog for each region you’re targeting. But in the real world with budgets and limited bandwidth, you need to be strategic about how you group regions by interest or language.
- English blog: United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada;
- Spanish blog: Spain, Mexico, Argentina;
- German blog: Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland.
Note that for each blog, you should choose one dialect and stick to it. For example, people in Spain and Latin America speak different dialects of Spanish. Ideally, you’d cater to each audience separately. If you don’t have the resources to do so, choose one dialect for your Spanish blog. Make this decision by comparing the size of your customer bases in Spain and Latin America, and prioritise based on where the biggest opportunity for growth exists.
Don’t spread yourself too thin, especially in the beginning. If you’re just launching your website, start with one blog in English and add blogs later as you build momentum.
Choose Social Sites To Target For Each Region
Next, decide which social networks to target for each region. Determine the number of social media profiles you will create based on the resources you have at your disposal. Putting your efforts into one Facebook page, for example, will allow that page to build momentum and grow a fan base much faster than if you had five different Facebook pages to maintain.
Let’s say your company targets audiences that speak English, Spanish, and German.
You might choose to:
- Have one Facebook page in English with language-targeted updates;
- Have one LinkedIn Company Page in English with localized product pages and language-targeted updates;
- Create separate Twitter profiles in English, Spanish, and German;
- Have one Tuenti profile in Spanish.
By localizing your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, instead of creating separate profiles in each language, you’d now have to manage six social profiles instead of ten.
Link Your Blog and Social Profiles
Now that you’ve defined your blogs and social profiles, it’s time to tie them together. Create a map so you know which social profile should link to which blog on your site.
