| How you go about your web marketing to | | | | Social media is growing. And you might want to |
| develop an international market is critical. | | | | choose a social media communication channel to |
| Marketing To Different Cultures | | | | reach your international markets. |
| There are two things you need to research when | | | | There is one key difference though. Social media |
| marketing to different cultures online: | | | | is growing differently in different cultures. |
| 1 - Differences in web maturity, local | | | | As we noted above, this is due to differences in |
| infrastructure and online habits. | | | | country-specific web maturity and cultural |
| This effects: | | | | preferences. |
| - How your foreign users use their computer and | | | | If you want to use social media to develop your |
| how you need to communicate with them | | | | international business, this adds on some more |
| - What they expect to find online and what you | | | | cross-cultural communication difficulties. |
| need to communicate | | | | Live Cross-Cultural Communication |
| 2 - The best marketing channel to use. | | | | When looking at the 5 scales of differences in |
| There is a variety of online communication | | | | cultural behaviors, it is easy to assume that social |
| channels: | | | | media would work very well in countries with high |
| - Websites | | | | Collectivism scores. |
| - Blogs | | | | But a high score on one of these scales does not |
| - Twitter | | | | give you an accurate picture. You need to look at |
| - Forums | | | | the results on all 5 cultural behavior scales to get |
| - Newsletters or ezines | | | | a better picture. |
| - Videos | | | | And even then, no matter what cultural |
| - Audios | | | | measurement scales you use, you still need to |
| Cultural Differences | | | | get direct market intelligence. You need to put |
| This means that you need to look at two | | | | your marketing into the right context. |
| different resources: | | | | And there is another fundamental point to |
| - User statistics in your foreign market | | | | remember with social media. |
| - Cultural behaviors for you foreign market | | | | Social media is a closer communication with real |
| The statistics are fairly easy to find. | | | | people. And cross-cultural communication |
| And a cross-cultural marketer can help you | | | | difficulties flare up faster in close communication. |
| identify the best communication channel to match | | | | In face-to-face cross-cultural communication, the |
| a specific marketing message to a different | | | | non-verbal communication can help you to pick up |
| culture. | | | | on any difficulties. |
| Adding Social Media | | | | Most businesses realize this and hire the right local |
| But there is another factor to take into | | | | staff for these tasks. |
| consideration. | | | | |