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Global social management

  • 21 March 2023
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hannah.jean
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Hi everyone,

Right now I lead the social program for a global company. Our strategy and focus is mostly North America focused, but we have some content sprinkled throughout for other regions in Latin America and EMEA. The content comes from team members in those regions and geotargeted to those specific regions in their language. But those regions also see the English version of our content that goes out globally.

We’ve been getting requests to create pages dedicated to each of the regions (ex: ABC Company - Europe, ABC Company - Italy, ABC Company - Brazil) vs. using a global profile. I’ve seen this done before but haven’t done it myself, and I’m not sure what the pros/cons are.

Does anybody manage a global social program? If so, what’s your approach and what have been the benefits and challenges of that approach?

Thanks!

Hannah Jean

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahajean/

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Best answer by lisa.frame 21 March 2023, 21:27

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Hannah Jean, Sr. Social Media Marketing Specialist

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hannah.jean
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Oh - and if you are from a region outside of North America, I’d LOVE your input on what really works best with your company/culture/region! 

Hannah Jean, Sr. Social Media Marketing Specialist
lisa.frame
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That’s … complicated. While I have seen it done, do you have a team the size it would take to develop original content for each of those regions based on what’s popular, complete with translations? I realize team members from those regions provide you with content, but is it enough to develop an individual social program for each area - and are those areas part of the greater focus of the company you work for for growth? My concern is that without the appropriate team to manage each region in alignment with your strategy, it will cause you to water down the content you’re already publishing on your North American channels (due to lack of time) and your social program will suffer across the board. 

Lisa M. Frame / Writer. Reader. Coffee Drinker.
hannah.jean
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That’s … complicated. While I have seen it done, do you have a team the size it would take to develop original content for each of those regions based on what’s popular, complete with translations? I realize team members from those regions provide you with content, but is it enough to develop an individual social program for each area - and are those areas part of the greater focus of the company you work for for growth? My concern is that without the appropriate team to manage each region in alignment with your strategy, it will cause you to water down the content you’re already publishing on your North American channels (due to lack of time) and your social program will suffer across the board. 

It’s definitely complicated and for all the reasons you listed! It’s just me, so I worry about exactly what you said with our main part of the program suffering. We’ve started to develop an intake process for this content, but again, it takes up extra time too. One thing that grounds me is our organization’s overall focus - if it ever shifts to one of those regions, it’ll give me the angle I need to direct my resources there. Trying to please everyone and provide content in regions’ native languages and all that jazz is difficult. 😁 

Thanks for your input! 

Hannah Jean, Sr. Social Media Marketing Specialist
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That’s … complicated. While I have seen it done, do you have a team the size it would take to develop original content for each of those regions based on what’s popular, complete with translations? I realize team members from those regions provide you with content, but is it enough to develop an individual social program for each area - and are those areas part of the greater focus of the company you work for for growth? My concern is that without the appropriate team to manage each region in alignment with your strategy, it will cause you to water down the content you’re already publishing on your North American channels (due to lack of time) and your social program will suffer across the board. 

Well… I’m a freelance french content translator, and I help many clients to exactly that: I translate/adapt existing content into french (I have colleagues who work in other languages), and then all you have to do is publish it on various platforms. As a french copywriter, I can also work from a brief to create exclusive content for a specific market or trend. So you don’t really need a specific team, just a small budget for your freelance translators (which can easily be justified by the extra engagement/trafic/lead generation). And because i’m a freelancer, it’s all done on an as-needed basis.


feel free to pm me if you want to chat about content localisation.

or www.french-marketing.com

virginia.rios
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I agree with everything above and I’ll add it’ll depend on the nature of your company and target audience.

In our case, we have vertical pages per sector we work with. Still, we avoid creating local pages because our value lies in being global, so a customer from Japan will benefit from the success stories of other locations such as Germany.

How your pages will cannibalize and therefore affect your general KPIs? also, you will need to build these audience from scratch so the experiment takes a long time to see results


In recent conversations, our leadership has been asking to re-think this strategy because they think customers in certain locations prefer to be approached in their languages. This is a valid concern, but does not necessarily have to be solved with a new LinkedIn presence. Suggestions could be to build a mailing list for the country, do PR, attend events, appear in local press, etc.

Virginia Rios - Social Media Manager at Plug and Play Tech Center

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