An active presence on social media is not just a marketing fad, it’s a crucial part of any business’ marketing strategy - the new way how to build your brand and engage with your customers or other target audiences. Many US companies understand the importance of social media as well as importance of country specific websites for each of their key markets. But they are still often unsure about how to manage social media across a number of multilingual markets. Which social media networks are important for my business? Do I need to create a new business profile in each country? If you’re asking these questions – don’t worry! You’re not the only one and we have answers to that.
Which social media networks are important for my business?
Firstly, the good news: the major social media networks popular in America are most likely to be popular among your target European audiences. Moreover, they are not just popular – they are the leaders! Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ all have a solid base of members across the European countries. So if you are already active on these, you should do the same in your export markets. Our ebook Managing social media in Europe gives you an overview of the top 5 social media networks across the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland. Facebook is a clear leader with the following percentages of internet users with a Facebook account:
| Country | % of internet users with a Facebook account |
| UK | 78 |
| Germany | 67 |
| France | 75 |
| Italy | 82 |
| Spain | 87 |
| Poland | 81 |
Source: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobile-worldwide-2014/
Did you know there are also local European social networks? Examples of local networks that allow you to create a business profile or aim to facilitate business exchanges include: Tuenti in Spain, Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France. There is no standard answer as to whether or not you should be involved in them. If the network you are considering has a substantial base of users, you need to know if you can find your target audience there, and discover what types of interactions are possible. Some of the top local social networks are more focused on matchmaking or finding old friends from high school, and might not be appropriate for brand building. You might not even be able to create a business profile with which to speak to the local audience.
Do I need to create a new business profile in each country?
Not necessarily. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ allow you in different ways to create multilingual posts and target them at a specific audience located in different target countries. So you will only need one account for each network to manage your US and European social media strategy. Twitter does not currently have such feature, so ideally you should create a separate account for each target country. Social media networks continually make advancements and updates to facilitate and improve targeting multilingual audiences, so keep checking for new multilingual features across all platforms.
How do I manage my Facebook business page in multiple countries?
Today’s blog focuses on the #1 European social media network: Facebook. We will give you some tips on how to build and manage your fans across different countries.
As we already said, you can use a single Facebook account to manage fans from multiple countries. Firstly, you need to understand where your current fans come from. On your business page go to: Insights -> People. Under the default tab “Your fans” you will see the number of fans by country. You should also pay an equal attention to the languages they speak, which is visible on the same page. Can you see any patterns already? Maybe your fans are currently all from the USA, speaking English, maybe you will see a good representation of your export markets. If you already see a high number of fans from different countries, speaking different languages, this can help you prioritize your countries/languages of focus. If you aren’t seeing many fans from your target export markets, you can increase this number with paid advertising. At the top of the page click on: Promote Business -> Promote Your Page and specify here your target audience, including the country they should come from. Write the text of the ad in the language of your target country. Alternatively, if you already have subscribers from your target countries, you can run email campaigns to build up your fan base.
Once you have a fan base from different countries you are happy with, you can start marketing to them specifically. When you write your post in a specific language, click on the little arrow next to a globe sign and select Limit audience by Location/Language and specify your target audience as required. When you publish the post, it will be only visible to the Newsfeed of the fans that speak the specified language and come from the specified country. All posts will be still visible on your Timeline, but fewer than 2% of fans view that.
A good way of extending reach of your posts is with paid promotion – this can be optimized for engagement, click-throughs or other metrics. In all cases, when setting up your ad, you will be able to specify your target audience by country and language. And if they like what they see – you might gain another fan from you target market!
If you would like to learn more about the top European social media networks and managing Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ social media accounts, download our ebook below!
Remember, the key to a successful international social media strategy is posting in a country specific language and the content of the post needs to be relevant to your target audience. If you need any help defining your social media strategy in multiple markets or managing your social media accounts, get in touch with us! We’d love to help you out.