Social Media Optimization Strategies for Establishing a Global Reach

The great thing about the internet is that no matter where anybody is, you have that golden opportunity to reach out to them.

Even if your business is based in the United states, you can easily expand your reach across the pond and effectively break into the international market, simply because you have a well thought out online global strategy.

We talk a lot about content and how it can benefit you in terms of being found worldwide in our ebook “How To Be The King Of Content Marketing”, but there are other things that you can do to make sure that your each as much of your market as possible across the globe.  If you're looking to broaden your horizons, then here are some tips on how you can really fine tune your social media techniques so you can engage more of the global marketplace:

I Want YOU: Segment Your Online Audience

As with all things involved in inbound marketing, segmenting your audience is what can make or break you business. We talk a lot about segmentation in our eBook “The Immediate Solution For Lead Generation”, and one of the things we talk about is generating leads through social media.

Fortunately, sites like LinkedIn and Facebook have fantastic localization features that you can start taking advantage of today.  With these features, you're able to limit you status updates and posts so that they only appear on the newsfeeds of individuals within specific segment groups.  You can segment your posts by aspects such as geography, language, or both.

Multiple Personalities: Create Multiple Social Media Accounts

The biggest mistake that businesses make is that they stick to using only Facebook and Twitter for their social media marketing campaign.

Depending on the market that you're trying to get at, a particular social media site may be more popular than the next.

For instance, Google+ may be huge in one country, but in others Facebook or the “new” MySpace that's coming out may be the most popular social media site.

Translation Please: Translate Your Content

It doesn't matter if it's text, image, or video.  If you really want to reach out on a global scale, then you need to start providing native translations of your content.  Even if you don't know Spanish, French, Mandarin or Russian, you can use one of several translations services to get a native translation of you content.

Note how we specify “native translation”.  This doesn't mean hopping onto “Google Translated” or any other type of free translation service online and trying to “translate” your English copy to Spanish.  If you do that, then any native speaker will read it exactly as that: a translation.

It may be worth your while to invest in a translation service like Lingo24 or Translations.com to get the best and most regionally accurate translations possible.

Post Regionally Relevant Content

What’s happening in Australia likely isn't of any interest to your American customers (unless you're like me and are a huge Simon Baker -- aka 'The Mentalist' -- fan).  So when you post content to your “global” blog, you want to make sure that you're choosing content that's of interest to everyone, worldwide.  Not sure if an idea or news story is “globally” acceptable?  Then consider the following topics:

• Educational guides are global-friendly

• Any sort of thought-leadership pieces will appeal to all cultures

• Hot product and/or service updates

• News from within your industry or niche

Worth a 1K Words: Be Image-Driven

That old saying that a picture is worth “a thousand words” is true. And those words can be in any language, from English to Japanese to Tagalog.  Not only are visuals easier for audiences from any culture or background to understand, but they also increase engagement.

Simply Measured took a recent survey in which they found that visual content in Facebook Timeline saw a 65% increase in engagement for brands.  Now that's a big leap in customer engagement.

Live in a Colorful World: Understand Culture

A color in one culture may mean one thing, while in another it may mean something else.  In the United States, for example, the color white is usually associated with purity and cleanliness.  Across the water in Japan and China, however, white is the color of mourning (whereas in America it's black – so if you’re ever in China, remember this so that you don’t get funerals and weddings mixed up).

In all seriousness though, color is a great example of why it's important to familiarize yourself and really submerse yourself in the culture of the individuals you're trying to appeal to so that you can make the biggest impact with your global marketing strategy.