International Social Marketing

Recently, a new report was released on the numbers of small businesses in the US using social marketing.  Access Markets International (AMI) says that 5% of small business, or 300,000, are using social websites and strategies to promote their names, brands, and services.  They expect that in the next 12 months, that number will rise to approximately 600,000 small businesses.  Obviously, this is a great trend to be a part of in the US, but if, for example, you’re a US company looking to reach users in other countries through social marketing, how do you do it?

I’ve touched this subject a bit before, but let’s revisit some of the basics and how you can cross cultures and languages to reach clients directly.

First, find the social networks your customers and prospects are actually using.  Although American sites like Facebook and MySpace are popular abroad as well, there are a host of other sites that are more popular in other countries, usually because they’re designed with those users in mind and have content, for instance, that would appeal to Russian, Chinese, or British users.  Even in the US, MySpace has launched MySpace Latino to bring in Hispanic and Latino users.  A visit to it shows that content is very different from the regular MySpace, with news, features, and musicians from Spanish-speaking areas promoted.

Of course, how can you make social marketing abroad work for you if you don’t speak the language?  My suggestion would be to set up profiles on websites where you can be an active presence and publish content.  For other sites, set up a profile with some basic information (in that language) on what you do, who you are, and, most importantly, be sure to include links to your other profiles and your website.  If you’ve got the resources, for example, to be actively involved in Russian social networking sites, take that ball and run with it.

Bookmarking websites can also be a great spot to be active in.  Their simple functionalities give them very international appeals, and there are some bookmarking sites, like Mr. Wong, that are targeted towards audiences outside the US.

There’s no magic formula to social marketing, as each small business has unique needs and unique audiences.  The sheer number of social marketing websites gives small businesses many options to explore and to develop a stragegy and set of profiles that works best for them.

To get you started with, here’s a very, very small sampling of social marketing websites around the world:

Bebo (Primarily UK, but with US and Canada audiences as well)

Orkut (Google’s social marketing site is extremely popular in Brazil)

Xiaonei (China’s very popular Facebook-like site)

Kaixin001 (China’s most poupular social marketing and media website)

Odnoklassniki (the Russian Facebook)

SkyRock (More popular in France than Facebook and MySpace combined – SR targets francophone areas, but is also available in English, German, and Spanish)

StudiVZ (The German Facebook, they’ve been sued by Facebook for copying design and features)

Sonico (This site is only a year old, but is now one of the biggest websites of all in Latin America.  A new Portugese version will make sure Sonico has all of Central and South America covered)

Wamba (This Spanish website targets all of Europe, and they’re hoping to reach Latin America as well)

And hundreds more websites.  Check out Wikipedia’s small list of social marketing websites as well.