Launch Your International Social Media

Even though Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google are American companies, social media doesn’t begin and end at the shores of the USA. If your company operates multi-nationally, creating and perpetuating a social media presence globally will eventually become a consideration – if it’s not already. In some countries, locally grown social networks hold the majority of users’ attention, so you’ll need to do your research on each marketing by social media foreign market before launching your campaign, to ensure you’re targeting the network(s) with the largest portion of your potential audience. Depending on your budget, you have two options when it comes to your social media content strategy – you can either do it yourself, or hire in-country social media managers. Doing it yourself has the benefit of being theoretically more affordable: you can get your content translated by a professional service and use free tools like Google Translate to get the gist of comments from followers, etc. However, it has the downside of limiting your responsiveness, and also has a distinct chance of ineffective localization (more on that next). Hiring in-country copywriters to manage your social media channels is undeniably the best option, if you can afford it – it means your profiles will be effectively social media marketing localized. You probably will be able to respond more quickly, as well. This is the most important part of any social media plan, and it’s where in-country social media managers can potentially make the biggest difference. Just as in the USA, sending uni-directional, offer-laden messages day after day will curtail your results. But if you can engage followers, you have a better chance of successfully turning your brand into a living, breathing entity.

Developing a Powerful Social Networking Strategy

A 2008 UMass-Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research study states that colleges and universities are adopting social media tactics faster than Fortune 500 companies. More than 700 institutional Facebook pages were launched by December 2007 shortly after the site opened its doors to corporations and nonprofits. But the review of eduStyle’s Gallery of Social Sites reveals a strong similarity among Facebook school pages. They typically social media marketing strategy include the kinds of photography and images available from campus marketing sources, don’t necessarily make the best use of outside applications and other robust Facebook features, and sometimes have startlingly few friends. To gain any benefit from the social web, institutional social networks need to build sustainable communities that grow and significantly expand their reach. Simply throwing a page up on Facebook or pulling together your own online network is no guarantee of success. If you build it, they may or may not come. Colleges and universities would be wise to develop networks that have the same kind of power that commercial networks like Twitter or MySpace do—the power to attract members who will broadcast network benefits throughout the digital ecosystem, attract other members, social media marketing plan and create an ongoing community that feeds marketing and recruiting efforts. These steps can help you establish a powerful institutional social network. Social networks can strengthen a marketing campaign even in a secondary role. So far, they seem to work best as campaign feeders, though they are now taking the lead role in many corporate efforts. Because of its relationship-building power, social networking could become a brave new tool to help achieve a number of significant goals for a higher ed institution.

What is a social media marketing plan?

A social media marketing plan is the summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve for your business using social networks. This plan should comprise an audit of where your accounts are today, goals for where you want them to be in the near future, and all the tools you want to use to get there. In general, the more specific you can get with your plan, the more effective you’ll be in its implementation. Try and keep it concise and don’t make your social media marketing strategy so lofty and broad that it’s unattainable. This plan will guide your actions, but it will also be a measure by which you social media marketing companies determine whether you’re succeeding or failing at social media. You don’t want to set yourself up for failure from the outset. Having these objectives also allows you to quickly react when social media campaigns are not meeting your expectations. Without these goals, you have no means of gauging your success and no means of proving your return on investment. These goals should be aligned with your broader marketing strategy, so that your social media efforts all drive towards business objectives. If your social media marketing strategy is shown to drive business goals forward, you’re more likely to get executive buy-in social media marketing services and investment. They should also go beyond vanity metrics like retweets or Likes, in favour of more advanced metrics like leads generated, sentiment or website traffic referred. Strive to approach these goals using the SMART approach, meaning they should all be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.