Top 10 Social Media Tips to Build International Brands from Social Media Week London

It’s Social Media Week! From New York to Istanbul and Hong Kong to sunny London people are talking about social media. Very much in the global spirit of the event, this morning three experienced social media experts spoke at the Design Council about how social media can help you build an international brand.

Ash Choudhury, UK Head of Digital Marketing, Nokia UK, Wendy Tan White, Founder of Moonfruit and our own Mel Carson, Community Manager at Microsoft Advertising answered questions from Aleks Krotoski, chair UKTI and the audience. From this conversation the top tips:

1. Have a strategy

Ask yourself why you want to use social media. If you use it as a marketing tool, you ought to have a strategy.  Have clear expectations about what you want to achieve and have a good idea about what success looks like.

2. Take one step at a time

Take small steps when you start using social media as a business. Make sure everyone involved is comfortable and understands it. 

3. There is no better training then trying it out

Training on the use of social media in your business?  Let people engage with social media to understand it fully, training alone isn’t enough.

4. People across the world access information differently

When you take your social media efforts globally it pays to have regional advice on how people access information and what platforms are most popular. This varies from country to country. Use local colleagues to tailor messages to their market.

5. Give your audience a reason to share

Ash Choudhury put it nicely: ‘you have to give people a reason to engage with you. It is like a dinner party, you need lots of interesting things on the menu’.

6.  ‘Be smart’ should be the guidance when using social media on a large scale

You can’t ‘control’ the social media efforts from everyone in a large company or across various countries. Although you can set up mechanisms to inform your social media users on important issues, the main guideline should be ‘be smart’. For example: you wouldn’t pass on competitive information normally, so you don’t do so using social media either.

7. Be transparent

So there was a leak, your servers were down or someone has a problem with your product or service. Just talk to your audience as you would in normal conversation. Be honest and open.

8. Even when your business is small, it makes sense to engage.

Is it worth it to reach out socially for a small business during a downturn?

Your audience is online, their opinions are out there and people are researching your brand online. And it is not only about brand presence. This is where a large part of your audience engages and where your younger (future?) audience can be found.

9. If your social target audience is business to business - don’t get freaked out by numbers

So the amount of followers you have is smaller than those of the top 3 international social media examples. It doesn’t matter as it will allow you to focus on these contacts more and build an online relationship with them that could result in some very profitable deals.

10. Follow  past, current and future Social Media Week events around the globe: http://www.livestream.com/socialmediaweek. View today's pictures on Facebook

Follow us tomorrow

Watch our webcast tomorrow at 15:45 (10^th of February) and follow us on Twitter when Social Media Week events are taking place from Microsoft offices at Cardinal Place in London. The future of Social Search Showcase will be investigating how Search and Social Media fit together and influence one another.

Sign in to adCenter | Need an account? Sign up now

Share your thoughts in the forums | Follow us on Twitter | Become a fan on Facebook