By M. Isi Eromosele

Social media is one of the most effective communications tools we’ve had at our disposal for a long time. It has engendered a huge shift in how we engage with people. And it can deliver great results. However, it’s not necessarily right for every business.

There are a number of considerations to think about before you climb aboard. The following are questions that will need to be answered to help you to understand more about what’s involved and whether it’s right for you.

Is social media appropriate for your line of business?

Are your customers, clients and the people you want to connect with using social media? Are your competitors active in this space? Have you searched to see if people are already having conversations about your business, your industry niche or even your brand? If the answer is yes, then it could be a very useful tool for you.

There are some great free tools you can use to find what conversations are happening now. Social Mention is a tool that searches for brand names or keywords mentioned across the web. Twitter Search is a nifty little tool that offers a variety of ways to search for brand names or keywords on Twitter.

Google Blog Search does as the name suggests, let’s you search across the blogosphere. And of course, there is Google Alerts, which allows you to set up alerts that are emailed to you when a keyword is mentioned. These are just a few examples, there are many more.

Do you have buy in from your staff?

So you’ve determined that social media can help your business. Do your staff and other stakeholders feel the same? If not, you could be heading for an uphill battle. Social media can take a lot of time and resources, resources that can quickly be rendered useless if the staff doesn’t see the true value.

Make life easier for yourself by building a business case that will get full, ongoing

support from the start.

Do you have the resources for it?

Do you have someone that can dedicate ongoing time to social media? Are you able to restructure a member of your staff’s job description to allow for it? Can you commit to this time and not take this person away from their social media activities when it gets busy?

Remember, you can’t open the door to social media and close it when workload increases. If the answer is yes to these, then you do. If not, you may want to rethink about who you can use for this, either externally or internally.

Do you have the time for it?

Social media really is a marathon not a sprint, so don’t expect results overnight. Are you prepared to invest the time with little output at the beginning? Are you prepared to put in the groundwork even when you won’t see the return on your investment right away? Do you have the patience for it? If so, you’ll reap the rewards in the long run.

Is it a priority for you?

Do you have a quality, fully optimized website you can direct people to from your social media profiles or blog? Or is your website full of business content that doesn’t engage your audience?

Do you have other marketing or PR priorities to deal with first? Make sure your house is in order; it will be easier to integrate social media with your other activities if you do.

Do you know what your objectives are?

Do you know and understand what you want to achieve with social media? Are you clear what it can do for you and what it can’t? Have you tied this into your business plan?

You need to be certain of your goals before you start, otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time and effort on something that isn’t targeted to your specific needs.

Social media is more than just a ‘campaign’, it’s a long term commitment that needs ongoing support and to get a long-term commitment, you need a strong business case.

Aligning the business case with your business

First things first, get hold of the business plan and marketing strategy. Have a look at the objectives and work out which can be achieved by using social media. Be realistic here, social media isn’t the answer to everything, so pick out those that are achievable.

Then do your homework. Find examples of other businesses (preferably within your sector) that have achieved those objectives. Show how achievable it is, show how it can be measured, show an idea of realistic timescales.

Who’s using it?

Think about your stakeholders. These can be customers, clients, suppliers, partners, employees, journalists, peers, investors and anyone else your business needs to connect with. Segment these and then find where they are online. What social media platforms are they using? Is there a large number using Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? A niche social networking site? Can you find any stats showing usage?

You need to prove that the people you need to connect with are using social media. If you can find case studies that show results of how others have engaged with these audiences, use them.

Competitive analysis

Find out which platforms your competitors are using. Do they have any success stories or case studies? Do they appear to be reaping other rewards through using social media (has their press coverage increased? Has brand awareness grown? Are they directly engaging with prospects online? Are they speaking regularly at events?).

If so, these are great ways of showing how social media can work. But, don’t be put off if you can’t find many using social media. It could be that take-up in your industry is slow, which means you could be the first.

Brand reputation management

Finally, and perhaps the piéce de résistance to those brands that are regularly talked about, find what’s being said about you online. Show what people truly think of your brand using the free tools such as Social Mention and Twitter Search. This really can make people sit up, take notice and realize they need to be part of that conversation.

How will you do it?

The next step is to identify your goals and objectives. Goals are general, wider intentions whereas objectives are precise, measurable steps that help you to achieve your goals.

Identifying your objectives for social media is essential. If you have no specific reasons for using it, you’ll spend a lot of time having very enjoyable conversations, but these will achieve nothing. You’ll have no results to show how it’s working for you and no justification for the time and budget spent on it.

So start with your business plan and marketing strategy. What overall business goals do you need to meet? Break these down and think about whether social media can help you meet them.

Be realistic and identify those goals you can achieve. If you have a marketing strategy (and if not, why not?) go through those goals and objectives and pull out those that social media can help you to achieve. The key here is to align your social media objectives with your business goals to ensure you can achieve what you need to.

There is a wide range of objectives social media can help you with and an example of these is listed below.

Obviously, this list may not be right for your business and you won’t know which objectives are right until you’ve analyzed your business plan and/or marketing strategy, but it gives you a good idea of the types of things you can achieve by using social media.

Now I wouldn’t suggest including all of these. You’ll be setting yourself up for a fall if you do as there are far too many to manage. Instead pick out the key objectives you can achieve and don’t forget to apply the SMART rule: all objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. 

You’ll need to apply realistic time frames to each one and identify the metrics that will allow you to measure whether you’re achieving what you set out to achieve.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Copyright Control © 2012 Oseme Group

By M. Isi Eromosele

Today, every brand is a global brand. Your company operates on a global stage. Customers from around the world can access your content, discover and interact with other customers and add their own voice to the conversation about your brand. 

As a marketer you need to be conscious of the different needs of your audiences around the world.

This creates some major challenges. How do you meet the needs of an audience that speaks multiple languages? How do you appear responsive when your customers could be in several time zones? 

How do you support differing interests, products, cultures and regulations? How do you segment and prioritize your social media efforts?

The answer: Create a social media strategy that works across borders and achieves your global marketing goals.

Global Branding Challenges

One of the most common challenges marketers face is how to create a social media strategy that maps onto their global organization. Should every country have its own blog and Twitter feed? 

Who is responsible for responding via social channels if a crisis occurs in another region? How much input should markets have into each other’s content, given that it can all be accessed by a global audience?

Organizations need to establish a framework that makes sense and has clear ownership, while providing enough flexibility to meet the needs of each country.

Language

Marketers have long understood the importance of local language content. But social media has introduced the concept of self-publishing and made every company effectively a media company. So, if value-added online content is a key element of your marketing strategy, how do you continue to serve the language needs of your customers?

Does that mean multiple blogs in multiple languages or a single English-language blog? Do you allow mixed-language content on your YouTube channel and Twitter feed or dilute your online equity by creating multiple channels? And how do you set up listening platforms to cover every language?

Platforms

Even as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube continue to grow globally, local online networks remain a force to be reckoned with when developing global social media strategies. How do you evaluate and prioritize these platforms? What is best practice for the most significant ones?

Culture and Politics

A number of multi-million dollar ad campaigns have flopped in certain countries because the name translated to something completely different or because the content was offensive in that culture.

Marketers have to understand global sensibilities – its part of the job. But, in social

media, where you don’t have control over the content that your brand is associated with, this becomes even more challenging.

Time Zones

Social media is all about speed. So what happens if a customer in Germany complains on Twitter about your product and no one in that time zone is authorized to act? What if no one is even listening during that time?

If your organization is large enough to have listening posts and crisis response processes set up in every time zone, great. But, for many, that isn’t the case and, in the hours between that first complaint and your alarm clock beeping, the situation may have spiraled to much more serious proportions.

Product Massaging

If you adapt your product offerings to suit the needs of each market, you also have a messaging challenge. Products designed to support regulatory or legal requirements may differ from country to country. Key demand drivers may vary across markets.

Use social media to launch a promotion or new product and you have to ensure that the markets it applies to are made clear or risk confusing and disappointing customers.

In summary, marketers need to ensure that they have a clear strategy that addresses all these challenges from the outset. Whether you’re marketing a sophisticated multi-national, or a start-up with international ambitions, you need to factor in global audiences from the outset and have a plan in place to meet their different needs.

Market Breakdown: What You Should Know About Social Media Around The World

United States

Add value to your community. Audiences in the United States are accustomed to the top brands in social providing a great deal of value in the form of premium content, interesting discussions and real-time customer service.

United Kingdom

UK audiences react well to content that is humorous and witty. But beware, there’s a fine line between being witty and being offensive.

It’s important to be aware of the regional sensitivities within the UK. Beyond London, areas such as Manchester, Bristol, Leeds and Newcastle are critical social media hubs.

Spain

Companies serious about engaging Spanish audiences must have Spanish language social media programs.

Community self-regulation is common and guidelines for online behavior are becoming more widely recognized and upheld. Be aware of these guidelines if participating in or hosting communities.

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, there are a lot of widely-read collaborative blogs. Most of them are open to new contributors, so consider joining forces to reach a large audience instead of building your own corporate blog.

Belgium

Belgians use Dutch, French, German and English to communicate online. Include multiple languages when building sites that are intended for a Belgian audience, but in social networks, forums and microblogs, be led by your audience’s choice of language.

Data privacy is a big issue in Belgium – be aware that most users are sensitive about sharing personal information.

Italy

All content and social media communications must be in Italian.

Brands have limited presence in the social media sphere in Italy, with campaigns focusing on specific products rather than brand identity.

France

Always communicate in French if you want to generate engagement and a positive response.

Social networks and sharing sites are more popular than blogging. Consider using Twitter and Facebook to nurture and retain customers.

Germany

Although most Germans do understand English, they appreciate it if a company uses the mother tongue, so try to tweet and post in German.

Germany is extremely focused on data privacy. Make sure you know the rules for company use of social media and explain what exactly you will need any user data for.

Poland

Local language and references are essential.

Adopt the right tone: be informal but informative. Be careful of over-enthusiastic product-centric content as it could meet with skepticism.

Czech Republic

If you pursue a Facebook strategy, be sure to provide interactive content for users: contests and games are the most successful.

Hong Kong

Language choice is important. If you want to reach people in mainland China, use Mandarin. For people in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the correct language.

For every well-known Western social media channel exists a local counterpart (Renren for Facebook, Sina for blogging, Youku and Tudou for video sharing, Manzuo for deal-of-the-day and group buying, Sina Weibo for Twitter). This creates audience fragmentation so brands need to research their target markets carefully.

India

Bollywood and Cricket are two mainstays of Indian culture and marketers can benefit by strategically incorporating them. Many brands have successfully involved Bollywood celebrities in community building.

Singapore

Singapore’s population is made up of people from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Singapore. Therefore be mindful and respectful of different races, beliefs and religions.

Be sensitive about the tone of content associated with your brand; for example, any content that appears to tarnish the reputation of Singapore will offend your audience. Equally, avoid any content that could be perceived as being critical of the government.

Australia

Australia has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Asia Pacific region and one of the largest Facebook user bases per capita in the world.

Content must be relevant to the Australian market and not replicated from the U.S. or Europe. APAC-wide information is generally well received by Australian audiences (particularly in the business community), However an Australian angle is more compelling.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Copyright Control © 2012 Oseme Group