Social media marketing is endorsing one’s brand, products, and services through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. As a brand, social media marketing entails launching a new product or service on social media platforms and running Ads on existing products on social media platforms. Creating the medium of interacting with customers and potential client’s on social media. Curating and posting great Content for your brand advertisement about its products, services, values, policies, stories, etc.

Social media marketing offers and compels a brand to use social media management tools and skills. In addition, it is imperative to set out a plan for social media marketing of your brand. Now you understand what social media marketing is all about, we will proceed to highlight the five steps for achieving social media International marketing expansion.

Before embarking on a marketing crusade, it’s essential to research and take note of your target audience first. This is your first and most crucial marketing strategy in a marketing campaign, even when you can connect with different audiences nowadays, thanks to modern-day technology.

International social media marketing is an influential tool used wisely by a brand. In setting up your marketing strategies for social marketing for international expansion, there are a series of questions you must note and answer. For instance, how to target a global audience? What steps should you take as an African brand looking to branch out in European or Asian markets and scale? What effect can a language barrier have on your brand? To mention but a few. This article will guide you on steps for successful international market expansion.

However, here is a little secret for you; strategizing.

Why is it essential to strategize?

We all understand social media as being a unique and straightforward platform. But to achieve your objectives to the highest maximum, there is a need for a solid social media strategy to begin with.

Some brands can appear voluntary and calm, while for some, the reverse will be the case. You can analyze your international campaign’s success with a good plan and strategy. This gives room for adjustments to maximize your expected results.

5 Social Media Marketing Steps For International Expansion;

Research, Understand, And Define Your Audience

This is the first step for a brand that wants to carry out a social media marketing strategy for international expansion.

Before formulating your marketing strategy, ensure to identify the answer to these questions;

• What is your target country or region?
• Where is the exact location of your primary customer base?
• Where is the location of your non-domestic customers?

As your plan is for international expansion through social media marketing, what are your expectations from the global market?

It is important to note that this first step will guide you with your marketing strategies. You must search your target locations to learn about the group of people who will be identified as your audience. Every product, brand, and organization has a unique and specific audience. It is your duty as a brand to discover who your audiences are before proceeding with the next step.

Set your goals for social media

Once your audience has been identified and defined, the preceding step is to establish and define your goals. You must ensure to have reasonable goals set for your International expansion campaign.

For someone who might be wondering about what these goals might be. Here are some examples of the things you hope to achieve using social media marketing for international marketing expansion:

• An increase in web traffic, engagements, and followers to your website.
• Brand exposure.
• The opportunity of tapping into current markets.
• Opportunity to carry customer service functions on social media platforms. To mention but a few.

Select Your Prefered Languages;

At this point, you will understand the importance of researching to know your audience. This also means you have your target audiences’ information and data such as region, languages, preferences, etc. Because it is an international marketing campaign on social media, you must understand how to use different languages to communicate effectively. Having your audience in a multiple-language-speaking country will lead you to provide solutions to these questions;

• Should your blogging be done in different languages?
• Is there any need to open various social media profiles for each language?
• And if there is any need for other language monitoring for your content promotion.

Typically there are thousands of millions of English users of Social media. However, many of this population prefer to communicate in their local languages. Hence the need to know and understand your intending audiences’ preferred languages.

Understanding Cultural Differences

Investing in blog translation or a non English social media account can be considered insufficient for creating an international market presence with social media. You must ensure to put into consideration some cultural differences.

This will help your brand and marketing campaign to get grounded quickly in highly culturally sensitive markets and countries. In simpler terms, understand and consider the differences in culture, beliefs, etc., and incorporate them into your campaign strategies.

Select Your Social Media Platforms

You must select your most preferred top social media marketing company for your international expansion marketing strategy. It is usually advised that you implore the use of relevant platforms for each country. However, this will largely depend on specific demographics.

You may not need profiles across all social media platforms at once. However, start with a particular platform and concentrate on massive growth and presence before proceeding to another platform. In addition, continuously monitor your data once you start. This will help measure your growth and guide your decision on whether to maintain your presence on the platform or not.

Also Read Ten Social Media Services You Need

Now, you may begin to think about how to choose a suitable social media platform to use.

Henceforth, the first step is to evaluate your resources at hand. What this means is this; for example, with a simple Facebook page, you can quickly grow the page, and its fan base, build a reputation, and maintain the accelerating traffic with your given resources within a short period. At the same time, this would be difficult to achieve while handling about 4 to 5 Facebook pages simultaneously.

Looking at another angle, a brand that desires German, French, or Latin-speaking audiences can achieve successful social media marketing by allocating separate languages on their social media platforms. This means that as a brand, you can create an English Facebook page with Content and posts in English.