This is a minimalist guide to regional social media expansion, based on my experience creating social media presence in several regions around the world.

1. We have to set our mind on the 3 main key drivers

To have a local social media presence we first have to see what we need to succeed locally. There are 3 main key drivers to consider:

  • Brand Awareness
  • The User-base
  • The Engagement

Each of those 3 drives the other one. If you have a high brand awareness you can easier create user-base and if you engage people they will create brand awareness which again creates user-base.

2. Identify the Social media phase in which the region/country is

The local strategy is different based on how advanced you are in that region. We can split the phase of the region in New Regions, Intermediate Regions and Developed Regions.

The New Regions are those in which you have absolutely no social presence. For those regions you start with the creation of profiles in the official languages, you connect your local websites to those profiles and you do actions to attract your current customers to those platforms which later on will help you to attract new customers.

The Intermediate Regions are those regions where you already have your customers on the social platforms and you use them to acquire new customers. At this stage it is very important to keep your current user-base on the social platforms engaged. In the same time, social media managers are present at regional social media conferences where they create new contacts, trough those they can attract potential new partners which help for the acquisition of new customers.

The Developed Regions are those regions where your brand is very well-known by social network users. It is very important to have a continuous interaction with the brand’s fans at this stage. The regions which got to this stage have customers that are very passionate about the products and company services, they are the brand ambassadors and help to increase the user base. At events related to Social Media or the Industry where the company activates, there should be a person from the company present or the event should be sponsored. At such events it is also important to implement as much social activities as possible.

3. Expand on the local strategy depending on the phase the region/country is in

Expand on the strategy, make it more detailed and then start working on precise activities you will do. Here is a scheme based on the phase in which each of your targeted countries is located in. This scheme is an overview of what you should do in each of the phases.

 

 

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