Businesses are missing international opportunities due to challenges of global social media

Social Media offers businesses a wealth of opportunities to reach new audiences and engage with customers, but the challenges of running international social media campaigns are preventing many organisations from capitalising on them.

Many companies are falling into the trap of believing that they can take their English campaigns and just translate them into other languages however this approach is ineffective as users in other markets will not relate to them – or understand them if automated translation is used.

Employing a global social media strategy from the outset is essential when targeting multiple markets, advises multilingual search marketing agency WebCertain. Researching each target market individually to understand the language they use, the subjects that interest them, as well as the social media tools they prefer, will enable organisations to achieve international interaction with customers and to develop relationships with users all over the world.

Andy Atkins-Krüger, MD of WebCertain says, “The only way of running successful multilingual social media campaigns is to ensure that native speakers of each target language are providing the content as well as monitoring the campaigns. Without understanding the conversations that are happening, knowing what is being said about your brand and responding appropriately, your social media campaign will fail.

“It is also vital that social media marketers use the most appropriate social media platforms in each market – it isn’t one size fits all! While Facebook might be a major player in many markets, it loses out to local offerings in many countries such as Russia, China and Brazil.”

A range of social media topics, including global social network advertising, international Twitter strategies and mobile search in Europe will be covered at the International Search Summit on 13th May in London. The Summit is the only conference to focus entirely on international and multilingual search and online marketing and is aimed at anybody involved in global search and social media campaigns.

Tickets are available an early bird rate of £250 throughout March and more information on speakers and sessions can be found on the website.

About WebCertain

WebCertain is the one stop shop for all international search marketing needs.

Operating from just one location, WebCertain’s team of native speakers from around the globe works together to create bespoke multilingual online campaigns for its clients.

Combining local cultural and linguistic knowledge with search marketing expertise leads to accurate, effective, relevant campaigns which are guaranteed to improve online performance.

From SEO to PPC, Social Media to Usability, Online PR to Web Development, WebCertain offers the full range of online services. In addition to its online services, WebCertain’s translation arm, WebCertain Translates, provides professional translations nd localisation for both on- and offline projects.

For more information on WebCertain’s services, visit www.webcertain.com

The International Search Summit is a series of conferences dedicated to international and multilingual search marketing. It started in London in May 2008 and has covered a range of online marketing topics – SEO, PPC, Online PR and Social Media.

The conference brings together some of the leading search marketing experts from around the globe, who provide advice on running successful international campaigns.