Go Global, Local or Glocal?

National and global brands are faced with two potentially equally appealing options when it comes to managing their brand presence across social channels: have one global presence or create movements at the local level with brand platforms customized by locale.

There really isn’t necessarily a right answer, but there are certainly considerations.

Challenges with an Expanding Social Presence

Brands in the social space are forced to contend with multiple networks, profiles, languages and cultures, even if their presence is only limited to the national level.

One potential solution is establishing a single, unified brand presence across social channels. This helps to keep communication consistent, the team efficient and the look, tone and feel on-brand. However, social media’s greatest opportunity lies in its ability to engage people on their terms and turf online. One unified presence trying to connect with everyone will feel generic at best as the brand is forced to appeal to the lowest common denominator when it comes to communication.

The other option is equally as appealing and imperfect. Brands can mobilize multiple teams to manage their social presence at the local level. This brings the benefit of being able to connect with people on a deeper level while providing more relevant content, leading to higher levels of engagement. The challenge is having different teams, operating independently and potentially fragmenting the brands’ overall social presence.

Go Glocal

The ideal route if a brand can pull it off is a hybrid approach with a single, centralized global team coordinating overarching brand goals, objectives and guidelines, while making local teams responsible for contextualizing content, executing local campaigns and addressing the community.

In order to execute this effectively, among other things brands need:

1. A Style Guide: Create a framework to ensure all teams are able to be flexible with their social media efforts while remaining consistent on tone and message.
2. Profile Consistency: All brand profiles should have the same consistent look and feel and be connected with each other to improve profile SEO. Local teams should have the freedom to customize certain elements based on geography and audience. An overarching social media strategy and voice is needed to act as the filter through which all teams can operate freely while staying on-brand.
3. Workflow/Roles/Responsibilities: Establish a workflow with roles, responsibilities and protocols laid out.
4. Local Freedom to Explore Opportunities: Use local teams to your advantage by asking them to identify social media opportunities at the ground level.

Different platforms require different levels of detail and effort. Facebook, in particular, makes a glocal approach fairly straightforward. Brands can target posts by geography, and the recently launched global pages allow brands to create a centralized global Facebook Page that displays differently depending on which country a user is viewing the page from.

Evaluate your current approach. Is a single presence connecting at the local level like it should? Do you have the necessary framework to execute at the local level? It’s not easy, but moving toward a glocal approach provides a big opportunity for both national and global brands.

Leveraging the Old to Inform the Present

Data… We have access to more than we know what to do with, and one of the most common types of data from a social media marketing perspective is conversation data. The ability to identify who is talking, what is being said, the motivations behind consumer-generated posts and where people are talking is just a report away. Tools like Sysomos, Radian6 and even Twitter Search allow marketers to monitor conversations surrounding their brands, their categories and their competitors.

I know. This is old news, and you already knew that.

We live in a world of real-time information, and marketers who are monitoring online conversations are constantly struggling to be as fast and as reactive to what consumers are saying online as possible. This leads to missed opportunities.

Three Ways to Leverage Conversation Data

The opportunities that can be leveraged from online conversations depend on what you’re trying to get out of them. That will determine your approach to leveraging the data.

Listening to Learn: One of the most common practices for brands, particularly those just getting into the social space, is monitoring online conversations to identify threats, opportunities and insights. Brands can use this information to inform what they can leverage, should avoid and can provide to social consumers.

Listening to Respond: There’s also the opportunity to leverage social conversations to build brand trust by responding to customer complaints, thanking customers for endorsing the brand and providing value to relevant conversations from a brand’s POV.

Leveraging the Old to Inform the New: This is the one I think we as real-time marketers too often forget. We’re so caught up in the day-to-day need to keep up and be responsive that we neglect the data we’ve built up over time.

One of the immediate opportunities for marketers is around the holidays. Conversations from last year and the year before can be used to inform this year.

• What were people saying?
• Who was talking?
• What motivated them to share?
• What were the conversation drivers?
• How were your customers sharing?

We have access to focus groups from last year. They have the potential to tell us something we may have forgotten and can act on.

Old Information is Valuable

Past conversations on social channels can be treasure troves of data, and you can bet Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms know this.

Twitter’s already sold access to its database to data resellers like Gnip and Topsy. This is information marketers will be ready to buy soon if they aren’t already.

You can save yourself a bit of cash by starting to build up your own trove of information and start leveraging old conversations to inform actions taken today.

Where’s the Switch?

Social media marketing requires brands to be quick, act in real-time and think on their feet, but moving from planning to execution with very tangible results isn’t quite so quick. It’s a deliberate process of building the foundation of a community that can then be leveraged for greater returns.

Marketers can’t think of their social presence as something with an on/off switch that instantly mobilizes consumers. You can’t have a Facebook Page launch at the same time as another initiative and expect it to offer much support. Bloggers can’t be contacted the same week as a product launch with the expectation that their content will be posted in conjunction with the launch.

Social media marketing takes time, and like any marketing initiative, you have to invest the time upfront for it to pay off on the other side.

Invest in the Foundation

Social media marketing builds to a crescendo, and the key word is build. In the beginning, marketers can’t expect to have the same results as a brand that’s invested the time to build a presence.

Social media gives marketers the ability to curate a community of passionate advocates who can then be mobilized on behalf of the brand by encouraging them to tell their friends and generate word of mouth. It takes time and support to get that community built unless you’re lucky enough to inherit a community that’s already been created for you.

Consumers haven’t been waiting with bated breath for your brand to have a social presence. If you build it, they won’t come. Social media marketing is a 401k investment. A brand needs to invest by inviting people to the community before it can harness it.

It’s really no different than other marketing channels. They all require an investment in something that can be leveraged. A TV spot needs to be created before it can run. A print ad needs to be concepted and finalized before it shows up anywhere. All of these require time and resources to build. Once they’re built, they can be mobilized.

It's Worth It

Having an established community changes the game for a brand in the social space. The brand can use a community to get in front of their extended social connections and have access to a ready and willing group of people who are receptive to the brand’s message.

Taking the time to build opens doors for what objectives a brand can achieve. You don’t hear the stories, but blood, sweat, tears and time went into building the Starbucks, Zappos and Red Bulls of social media marketing. In the beginning, it was slow. Returns were small just like an investment.

Social media is not the lottery. It’s a long-term investment. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. There isn’t an on/off switch, but if you plan ahead and understand what you’re building toward, you’ll be able to look back very happy you built the foundation.

OMG! I Want That.

Social media tools are changing. New platforms are being developed. Competitors are leveraging new social platforms every moment. All of this makes it difficult to maintain a strategic direction as detours slap us in the face at every moment, and we find ourselves saying, “OMG! This could be huge for us.” The truth is… it probably won’t be.

Every day we are faced with the decision of where resources are devoted, and jumping from platform to platform and tool to tool is the easiest way to appear very busy without ever doing anything.

Success in the social space doesn’t come down to what brand is using a new tool first. It comes from taking a deliberate approach of testing the waters, determining resources and investing with care. That’s how you separate the real deal from a meaningless distraction for your business.

Test the Waters

Every tool is different. The communities come with their own cultures, the rules differ across platforms and the ultimate payoff for the end user is never the same. So learn the lay of the land. Jump in and participate... as a user. Talk to the users, and determine the emotional benefit of the platform. Is this something that your brand can be a part of? Is this an environment your brand can bring value in.

While you’re there… you may only be testing, but it’s usually a good idea to claim your brand’s username. For some platforms this is easy. For others, it’s more cumbersome and may not even be possible. Claim your brand’s name. Whether the platform will be used or not, you at least have the proper username.

Determine Resources

When the platform starts to feel like a viable opportunity, prove it. Use your audience and/or brand prospects to justify an investment in the platform. Do they use it? Will they? What does the platform offer them that they can’t get elsewhere? Basically, find information to justify a recommendation and clearly articulate the brand benefits.

That information will be critical for determining just how important of a role this platform can play for the business because the danger with moving from tool to tool is never investing enough in a single platform to make a difference. A new platform doesn’t always come with more time, money or people, so it’s important to determine if the new tool will replace some efforts that aren’t necessarily delivering or will be in addition to efforts that are. But those aren’t the only options.

You can stop. Some brands decide that now isn’t the right time for this particular platform, which is the right decision more often than not.

Invest with Care

When you do decide to invest, determining what to invest and how much can be a bit tricky because you have to give the platform a fair shot, but you also need to make sure it’s a viable tactic. Start with a trial plan with short-term objectives, invest a reasonable amount to achieve objectives and then measure against those KPIs.

An Opportunity to Be Tested

There will never be a shortage of opportunities for brands in the social space, but they should all be viewed with tempered enthusiasm and as opportunities that need to prove themselves. Brands that jump from tactic to tactic will never go anywhere, but brands that follow a strategy and evaluate platforms through that strategic lens will end up on top.

Industry trades and blog posts don’t make platforms great for businesses. Businesses do that. So don’t give into the hype. Be deliberate and be strategic.

What's In It for Them?

62% of consumers identify product news and information, 47% identify customer comments and reviews and 43% identify direct response to my questions when asked what type of information they find most important when connecting with brands, according to eMarketer. Consumers seek information they can learn from, feedback they can act on and community they can be part of.

In short, consumers want value. They want their relationship with a brand to pay off.

You’re Present, but Why Should I Care?

Being present isn’t enough. Social consumers aren’t looking for a brand that’s a good listener, and most brands aren’t even that. They’re loud self-promoters. Consumers want brands to take action to earn their business.

Social media can do just that as it has the potential be part of what your brand sells. Online customer service, exclusive brand information and improved relationship management allow brands to leverage social media as added value for their customers. Brands can go beyond their customers’ expectations.

At the end of the day, a brand’s social media followers aren’t there to serve the brand. They’re there to be served by the brand, and brands that deliver earn social currency that generates consumer trust and word of mouth referrals.

What Do We Do That Social Can Amplify?

Thriving brands deliver something their customers seek. Social media shouldn’t cause brands to try to do something different. 90% of the time they can deliver that same value. It’s just in a different way.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Identify what your brand can do to improve consumer’s lives, deliver it online and invite your customers to join you. And remember to back up your words with actions. If you promise your customers value, make sure you deliver it without being confusing, slow or inefficient. Any trust gained will quickly be lost.

Focus on others to benefit your brand.

Social Media IS Risky!

Most organizations have two kinds of people when it comes to social media: the believers who are enthusiastic about the potential for social media to help solve business problems and the detractors who see the risks associated with social media and would rather steer clear.

Both groups are right.

The enthusiasts see the potential for social media to benefit the business in a variety of areas from product innovation and customer service to branding and advertising amplification.

The detractors, on the other hand, have legitimate concerns. An August 2012 study from the Altimeter Group found that 35% of respondents cited reputation or brand damage as a critical risk. Other concerns included release of confidential information, compliance issues, identity theft and others.

The Concerns are Justified…

Social media brings an unprecedented level of transparency, and brands don’t have a lot of control when it comes to what employees share. The platforms haven’t done a lot to alleviate fears with password leaks and questionable privacy practices.

The playing field has leveled and lines have blurred. Information moves quickly and can easily get out of control and cause issues for a brand.

The concerns are legit.

…But Overblown and Can Be Overcome

People don’t start discussing a company once it sets out with a social media program. They started discussing it long before that, but the brand at that time had no opportunity to make its voice heard, join the conversation, correct misinformation, embrace advocates and convert detractors. The bottom line is it’s just as risky (or even less risky) to have a brand presence in the social space than it is not to.

But that’s not exactly comforting news to those concerned with the risks of social media.

It’s important for pro- and anti-social media organization members to come together. Risk will never be nullified, but the two sides can come together to mitigate risk by:

• Establishing a solid social media org chart and work flow with roles and responsibilities clearly articulated and aligned upon
• Making social media part of your crisis and response plan protocol, so you aren’t forced to make it up when a crisis occurs
• Establishing a corporate social media policy to protect the business and employees
• Monitoring online conversations for potential threats
• Working closely with customer service to quickly work with online detractors to offer support before a problem grows worse

Both voices are important. But it’s important for those voices to come together and find solutions.