More and more companies are working in global markets and selling their products beyond their own country. That is why they must adapt their online strategy to the fields where they will act to make it easier for customers to communicate and view their content. If we talk about an international social media strategy, we must adapt each platform to the interests of the company and focus our efforts on the presence in each country.
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Strategy for operating in international markets
As for any strategy to be carried out within the company, it is optimal to have a previous planning where the guidelines that must be followed to achieve the relevant results are marked.
In this case, we want to emphasize some of the basic considerations for an international social media strategy.
1. Define an initial objective
The objectives can be very different for one company or another depending on the activity of the company. For some companies the objective will be linked to sales in that country, for others to gain followers and for some to improve their brand image.
Therefore it will be very important that you define what you want your objectives to be with the internationalization of your networks and that you apply them correctly.
2. Individualize each strategy
We should not fall into the laziness of creating a global strategy that works for, for example, the Spanish language. This can be counterproductive since, although in many countries the same language is spoken, it is very difficult for what works in one to have the same impact in the other. For example, Spain and Chile speak the same language, but when it comes to sales, they are two very different countries, with different cultures and traditions.
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3. Select the appropriate networks
Basically we all know the networks that are most famous and that can have more impact for our business. However, just because a social network is widely used and you think it is one of the best, it does not necessarily have to be the best for your business.
By this we mean that, for example, Instagram is a very powerful social network, but probably not suitable for any kind of business. Possibly sectors far from the usual audience of social networks have no place in a social network like Instagram and could allocate their efforts to another one like Facebook.
4. Do not generate empty content
On many occasions, we find web pages with very beautiful blogs and that visually are powerful, but when we enter to read the content of those blogs we realize that they have not solved our problem.
In this case, we will be getting the opposite effect to the one we want. The client will have been disappointed with us and it will be difficult for him to give us a chance again.
Therefore, our advice is to generate quality content. It is often better to write less but to write content that offers value.
5. Measure your results
It is vitally important that you keep a record of the actions you take. Social networks are often trial-and-error, as in life, you must make mistakes to learn.
Therefore, our recommendation is that you use applications such as Google Ads or Search Console to keep an overview of how your social networks are working.
When you act internationally, some applications have special tools that will make you reconcile your accounts in both countries very well. Next, we will tell you about three social networks that we think it is interesting for you to know about them.
It is undoubtedly the social network that best implements the internationalization of a brand. And it will not be necessary for you to create an account for each place where you want to act as in others.
What Facebook does is that when you have entered from a specific site it directs you to the page that it believes is most appropriate for you. For example, if we put Zara’s Facebook as a sample of what we say, it has three different locations (Spain, Italy and USA).
This means that Zara will have its Facebook page in three different languages. If you as a user want to access it, simply go to the “…” in the menu area and click on change region.
If we talk about the social network of short and concise messages we see how the optimization of the internationalization of the brand is left more to the choice of the consumer. In this case if you want to take your brand to another country you will have to have a different account for each of them.
In the case of Decathlon we see it clearly. They have a Twitter account for each of their markets. We are struck by the fact that they do not follow a unified line, they even change their profile picture, which leads us to think that they follow totally different strategies for each of their markets.
LinkedIn is a professional network so companies take it more seriously in terms of content. But how will the internationalization of LinkedIn accounts be?
Indeed, in this social network everything is much more formal and no duplication of accounts is generated. Most companies have a main account, where they upload content and make their jobs available.
We have observed how some companies, being global multinationals, decide to upload content in English and Spanish to give that point of internationality to the account. On the other hand, if we take Adidas, a German company, as an example, it only uploads its content in English.
Companies in this network manage to give that international touch in two sections.
- In the “About” section we see how they always put a map of the world with the points where they have their headquarters. In the case of Adidas it would look like this:
- Once you have started uploading your jobs, the “Life at the company” area will be activated. In it, companies make videos about their facilities, interviews with people who work in different locations and events organized by the brand. This gives the customer a point of proximity to the brand.
There is also an area where employees can post their testimonials about the company and tell about their experiences there.
Conclusions
We have seen 3 different social networks and their completely different ways of managing them for your international social media strategy. That is why we insist again on the idea of being very well informed when making this type of strategy.
They do not usually have a monetary risk, but they do have a risk in terms of the image of your brand.
From Nementio we want to offer our help on the road to the internationalization of social networks. Do not hesitate to contact us.
