Social media is one of the most powerful, yet also most frustrating tools available to an expat marketeer. For every success story there are countless firms (especially small businesses) that utterly fail to develop a social media presence.
So what separates the successes from failures? Expat Marketing talked to Anne Lutgerink, Communications Officer at the Netherlands Organization for Cooperation in International Education (NUFFIC).
If somebody tells you he is both “busy,” and that there are “not enough resources to deal with all the leads we’re getting,” you know he’s doing something right. Such is the case with Michael Lamb, Online Marketing Manager at Pacific Prime.
Michael–how do you manage SEO internally?
We tend to run SEO and SEM in one team, which is part of our IT department. A lot of the things we do rely on programmers, designers and writers. We manage all technology internally, ranging from SEO to on-site contact forms to client management.
As most expat marketers know, Google has caught plenty of flak for having launched Google+ without support for business profiles. Is it in for more now that the pay-for-SEO business is eyeing the site’s +1s?
Incredibly, the Plussem.com Social Media Shop is already poised to cash in.
In Plussem’s own words:
Google are [sic] now striking back at Facebook with there [sic] version of the Like button. This will be used to judge contents [sic] worth by using real people to rate it rather than there [sic] own bots. To cheat the searching algorithm be sure to get the ball rolling for your site by purchasing Plus Ones.
The recent report that claimed that Internet Explorer
(IE) usersscored lower on IQ tests than users of other Web browsers turns out to have been a hoax.
The ‘report,’ which was published as being from AptiQuant (a fictitious company), took the news world by storm, and was covered on influential websites like CNN, BBC, CNET and Forbes.
In reality, the AptiQuant website was setup by Tarandeep Gill, a web entrepreneur, to create awareness about the incompatibilities of IE6.
Update: The following news turned out to be a hoax – covered by news websites worldwide. We’ll leave our original story online – enjoy!
“Some marketers have long suspected Internet Explorer users may not be the brightest folk–especially those using antiquated and outdated versions. But now it’s official: a study of web users’ IQs found IE users are the least intelligent of all browser users. Those using IE6 had an average IQ of 80, just short of mental disability (the cut-off is 70).
IBM has launched a new cloud-based Web analytics and digital marketing suite, which can help businesses automate their expat marketing campaigns across online channels.
The IBM Coremetrics Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Optimization Suite will help companies understand their customers’ buying preferences and patterns across digital media, including web sites, social media networks, mobile phones, and tablets. Its goal is to aid companies in designing and delivering tailored online experiences and marketing promotions through real-time, personalized recommendations and email ad targeting.
Any business targeting expats–whether it’s a huge multinational or a web start-up–faces the hurdle of multiple languages. Chances are your customer base reads at least a little English, but it probably isn’t their language of choice.
Consider the findings of the 2006 book Can’t Read, Won’t Buy, which showed 90% of shoppers wanted access to online information in their native languages. A 2011 EU survey found the same holds true today: 90% of Europeans prefer to browse the web in their mother tongue.
In the wake of survey results showing dissatisfied Facebook users and a sharp rise in advertising costs on Facebook, it would not surprise if many expat marketers were hoping for alternatives to Facebook’s monopoly. There are high hopes for Google+, which–despite being the product of a monopolist in another market–seems to offer at least a supplement to a Facebook-dominated social world.
David Mercer tackled the question of whether it’s better to blog or run a forum on Business Insider. Blogs and forums are like bread and butter to the expat business, allowing companies to target expat communities with highly specific information and build business by word-of-mouth. They also help boost visibility in the SEO rankings:
conventional wisdom dictates that a blog is the best way to build up a decent body of highly engaging, relevant and SEO enhanced content, over time. This is certainly true and blogs have proven their worth time and time again.
The cost of advertising on Facebook is rising fast, according to marketing firm TBG Ditigal’s Global Facebook Advertising Report for Q2 2011, with cost-per-click (CPC) rates up an average 74% across the US, UK, France and Germany. The figures could raise eyebrows among companies marketing to expats, many of whom leverage heavily on social media to build connections with the online expat community. Said the report: