LocWorld Session on Global Social Media: What Works, What Doesn’t . . .
Global Social Media: What Works, What Doesn’t . . .
Panelists: Lucy Allen (LEWIS PR), Matt Sanford (Twitter), Adam Singer (LEWIS PR)
Moderator: Kathleen Bostick
Kathleen’s intro:
- Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest
- YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
- 93% of marketers use social media
- 60% of tweets are not in English
- Facebook has 400+ million users
- YouTube hit 3 billion views per day
- renren (China) has 160+ million users
- 71% of companies are using social media
- It’s not about doing it ALL – but doing it RIGHT!
- Financial performance correlates with engagement (in social media)
- Dell employs 40 social media strategists and has a sophisticated Social Media Command Center
Matt on Twitter:
- Global social media: it’s still local
- Hugo Chavez joined Twitter three months after he stated that it was a tool of terrorists
Tips from Matt:
- Be ready for a quick response to feedback
- Some topics transcend borders. Most don’t.
- Per-locale accounts can be very successful (multiple account for multiple languages)
- Know your limits
- Tone is just as important as correctness
- Choose your social media outlet carefully
- Central communications management can hinder localization
Lucy on the global social media challenge:
- There is no such thing as “location” in social media; but location is still a reality
- Social media is global, but societies are local
- Consideration for Global Media Strategy:
- Research first!
- Establish organizational model (e.g., hub and spoke)
- Define messaging and content strategy
- Allocate sufficient resources
- Establish processes/policies at global level
- Create ‘center of excellence’ at corporate level
- Manage rogue team members
- Encouraging collaboration:
- Make sure you have a two-way process
- Share goal and the strategy
- Have a healthy respect for process
Adam on segmentation:
- Don’t create more channels that can manage effectively
- Protect your brand if you plan to step up participation in the future
- Avoid outposts becoming ghost towns
- Less = more
- Integrate with other digital initiatives (SEO, PR, etc.)
- All social assets should be optimized for search
- Integration should also consider, e-mail, PPC, website, etc.
- Integrate search and social through corporate blog
Adam on metrics:
- Assign KPI and outcome metrics for each market
- Track all the way to conversion
- Integrate social, web, search, e-mail, PR and other tactics for each market together
- Present in dashboard to key stakeholders, use data to iterate tactics
What do you think? How do you use social media in your global business?
