How To Localize Social Media Content

Over the last few years, social media marketing has grown up from an experimental avenue for reaching students and twenty-somethings to a major channel for global companies to communicate with their customers. But, these digital consumers demand elegant solutions for interaction, which has opened a host of complications for global brands.   

With interactions primarily happening within a varied stream of engaging content, we can’t expect users to seek out the correct content for their location and language. Given the precision of targeting available (down to the city level in most countries!), having a compelling content calendar that’s actionable and useful for the long run for a large enterprise can be a challenge.  Some points to consider when putting together your branded Facebook content plan:

A social network isn’t a separate country

It needs to feed across multiple countries, regions, and languages. Most companies will set an overall strategy centrally, but we generally recommend having local country or language managers who are empowered to engage with customers directly using their local knowledge.  However, some companies (especially in the entertainment or consumer packaged goods space) may be able to take an extremely streamlined approach because they have very few inbound customer service inquiries.

Local information matters

Brands that can provide localised content in publishing and customer service run the risk of appearing tone deaf on social media and alienating customers at a time when they’re willingly interacting. There’s nothing more irritating than signing up for a promotion on a brand’s Facebook page to find out that its only available in the US, not the UK (because the brand is only differentiating by language not by location).

What works in one region won’t necessarily work in another

Brands know this. Advertising, product promotions, packaging and even brand names vary from country to country, so social media promotions should be the same. Of course, the travel industry has always understood the power of a deft touch of local flavor.

Localise Facebook pages, but unify them under one corporate page

For most global brands, some version of the hub and spokes model will be most efficient. It’s key to have a mixture of national and international content, to maintain the overall brand presence, but spicing up that content with local relevance. (Think of the bit at the end of the news: ‘and now for the news wherever you are…’).

What other ideas about localizing social media content can you suggest for those in the dark? How have you implemented these tips in your own media page?

Source: Econsultancy

Image: Tech Maso