Social Media Marketing Across Cultures

Cross-Cultural Social Media

Earlier this week I posted a list of my 301 Twitter culture tips and international links.  This list gives you quite a few interesting links to help you develop your international and cross-cultural skills.

A Social Media Marketing Plan

But there is something even more interesting about these 301 tweets.  These tweets are what really started my social media marketing.

Just after I published this post, Michael Stelzner published an article on Copyblogger mentioning my twitter strategy for business.

When you look closely at this list of 301 tweets you can actually see the thread of my 5 daily scheduled tweets and the increase in third party links.

And remember, I am based in France… this is international web marketing for my business.

International Marketing On Social Media

Social media marketing can build relationships with your clients.  And this includes your international clients.

But for international markets there is one big first step:

• You need to identify the right social media to develop your business in each target country

And this takes a little bit of investigation… and also a trial run.

• Different cultures use social media differently.
• Different web channels are used at different degrees of maturity and with different degrees of sophistication
• And, the intricacies of cross-cultural communication also come into play

I recently re-tweeted an article about Facebook increasing it’s number of users dramatically in Germany and Italy

Navigating The Different International Trends

In addition to learning how to use Twitter for business, there are two other trends to watch:

1. Customers all over the world are changing, taking control of sales processes… but at different degrees and with different nuances.  It is a little like how “polite” can mean different things to different cultures.
2. Users in different countries are at different stages in the adoption curve of social media.  And you do not market to people with different levels of sophistication or expertise in the same way.

For some cultures the cultural implications represent more than others…

“In China, blogs enable millions of citizens to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old ideological machine starts to crumble.”  – Xiao Qiang

What this means is…

• It can be hard to evaluate which social media to use in which foreign market.
• Today you still need to use educated guesses and thorough testing methods.
• Trial runs are needed to get to know people, and this is even more true in  foreign markets.

More about social media marketing for international business development  in the next post.

My social media marketing started last September when I joined Chris Garrett’s Authority Blogger course.

The main reason why I chose Chris above any other blogger was because of his superior social communication skills.  Just follow his tweets and you will see what I mean.

A few lucky people are gifted in knowing how to bring people together and Chris is one of these people.  It is this type of skill that sets you apart in social media.

More on Cross-Cultural Social Media

• How to Connect Globally With Social Media
• Choice Of Social Media For International Markets
• The Cultural Divide In The Social Media Evolution
• Cultural Differences In Social Media Marketing
• How Cultural Differences Impact International Social Media
• 7 Cross-Cultural Skills For Businesses To Master Social Media
• Cross-Cultural Blunder On Latest Facebook Change
• Guerrilla Marketing With Social Media To Enter New International Markets
• Understanding Social Media For Stronger International Web Marketing
• Ethnic Origins On Social Media

Tagged as: business, global, global marketing, international, International Social Media, International Web Marketing, Internet Marketing, social media, twitter business strategy, web marketing