MANAGING IN EUROPE Social media overview and tips An Exporter’sto making yourself Guide heard in Europe to the UK An overview of the UK export environment from the perspective of American SMEs

Share this Ebook @ www.ibtpartners.com An ibt partners presentation© INSIDE YOUR EBOOK ibt partners, the go-to provider for companies seeking an optimal online presence in Europe and the USA.

IS THIS EBOOK RIGHT FOR ME? 3 SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN EUROPE 4 TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS BY COUNTRY 5 MANAGING GLOBAL NETWORKS IN EUROPE 6 MANAGING LOCAL NETWORKS IN EUROPE 7 8 + 9 10 LINKEDIN 11 OPTIMIZE YOUR EUROPEAN ONLINE PRESENCE 12 NEXT STEPS, ABOUT IBT PARTNERS AND USEFUL LINKS 13

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@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.2 IS THIS EBOOK RIGHT FOR ME?

Having an active social media strategy in your main export markets is crucial to European trade development. Together with country specific websites, it is the easiest, quickest and most cost effective route to developing internationally. You should be reading this ebook, if you want to :  Gain an understanding of the most popular social networks in Europe  Effectively manage your social media strategy in Europe  Speak to your target European audience  Generate local demand and sales online  Be easily accessible for clients in Europe  Own your brand in Europe

This ebook is both informative and practical. We will provide you with insight, understanding and most importantly, the capacity to implement and optimize your local online marketing strategy.

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.3 SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN EUROPE Social media users in Europe  In early 2014, Europe had almost 250 million active social media users.  Facebook is a clear leader, followed by Google+ and Twitter  Even though Google+ is the 2nd largest network is in many countries, Twitter (#3), has nearly the same level of active users (see We are social report for details)  #4 and #5 positions were taken by other global (LinkedIn, , , ) and local networks ( in , Copain d’avant and in France, in Spain, and Naszaklasa – #2 in Poland)

Country Social media users Social media penetration Top three networks (% share of total population with social media account) UK 36 million 74% Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Germany 28 million 64% Facebook, Google+, Twitter France 28 million 69% Facebook, Google+, Twitter Italy 26 million 52% Facebook, Google+, Twitter Spain 20 million 66% Facebook, Google+, Twitter Poland 12 million 59% Facebook, Naszaklasa, Google+ See more country data at: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobile-worldwide-2014/

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.4 TOP SOCIAL NETWORKS BY COUNTRY

% of internet users with social media profile

UK Germany France Italy Spain Poland 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Source: http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobile-worldwide-2014/ @ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.5 MANAGING GLOBAL NETWORKS IN EUROPE Social media should be part of every business’ strategy to grow sales in Europe – be it B2C or B2B. But the diversity of languages and networks makes this complex. Global networks Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are the key networks for many European countries, but LinkedIn should not be left behind in your strategy, especially if you are a B2B. Even though the social media penetration on LinkedIn is lower compared to the top three networks, it generates very high quality interactions: discussions, website visits and inbound enquires. So should you create a unique social media account for each country? Not necessarily.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ allow you in different ways to create multilingual posts and target them at a specific audience located in different target countries. So you will only need one account for each network to manage your European social media strategy.

Twitter does not currently have such feature, so ideally you should create a separate account for each target country.

Social media networks continually make advancements and updates to facilitate and improve targeting multilingual audiences, so keep checking for new multilingual features across all platforms.

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.6 MANAGING LOCAL NETWORKS IN EUROPE Being involved in global social networks in European countries is great: they often enable multilingual posts targeting specific countries, and you are already familiar with them from you home market. But what about the local networks – should you penetrate those too? Local networks There is no standard answer as to whether or not you should be involved in local European social networks. If the network you are considering has a substantial base of users, you need to know if you can find your target audience there, and discover what types of interactions are possible. Some of the top local social networks are more focused on matchmaking or finding old friends from high school, and might not be appropriate for brand building. You might not even be able to create a business profile with which to speak to the local audience.

Local networks that allow you to create a company profile or aim to facilitate business exchanges include: Tuenti in Spain Xing in Germany Viadeo in France

When evaluating a local , do not look only at the number of users – find out how many of these users are actively using their account (e.g. in the past month). Some social media profiles are automatically created when a person signs up for an email account. This was the case with Google+, making it the 2nd biggest social network in many European countries. This forced creation of a Google+ account was widely criticized and has been recently abandoned.

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.7 FACEBOOK

Facebook provides a number of localization features that make it possible to use only one page for your entire European audience instead of a page for each language or region you’re targeting.

Targeted timeline updates  By language or by geographic location (country, state, city)  Only targeted people will see that update in their newsfeed  Targeted updates will be visible to everyone when they look at the Timeline, but fewer than 2% of fans do that  Updates targeted at specific regions can be directly interacted with (liked, commented on, shared) from a user’s newsfeed Localized paid ads  Ads can be targeted at people within specific geographic regions via Ad Manager

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.8 GOOGLE+ Targeting different audiences on Google+ is possible through use of Circles. Create circles for your followers in different countries and post to them individually.

Targeted updates  Group your followers into Circles by their geographic regions or by the language they speak  Create multilingual posts, each targeted at the appropriate country/language Circle. No one else will be able to see the update in their newsfeed, not even on your Google+ Page.  This approach is more manual compared to Facebook and Twitter, but it is still a better solution than the creation of multiple Google+ accounts Multilingual subtitles on YouTube  Google+ is closely linked to YouTube. Create and embed subtitles as captions in different languages to your video

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.9 TWITTER

Twitter has very limited localization features at the moment, and you will need to set up a separate profile for each country to be able to target your multilingual posts appropriately. By not doing so, you risk people unfollowing you due to seeing tweets in languages they do not understand.

Localized paid ads  Ads can be targeted at people within specific geographic regions  Small business advertisers are currently limited to targeting European users in: Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and the UK

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.10 LINKEDIN

LinkedIn provides a number of localization features that make it possible to use only one page for your entire European audience instead of a page for each language or region you’re targeting.

Targeted shared content  By geographic location  Only targeted people will see that content update in their newsfeed  Updates targeted at specific regions can be directly interacted with (liked, commented on, shared) from user’s newsfeed Localized company product page  Products listed on your Company Page can be restrictedYour to a target audience by defining their geographic location. ideal Localizedkeywords paid ads  Ads in different languages can be targeted at people within specific geographic regions

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.11 OPTIMIZE YOUR EUROPEAN ONLINE PRESENCE Become local  Localize text content: language, spelling, vocabulary, dates, units of measurement, shortcuts, figures, currencies…  Localize design content: images, color schemes, symbols Be found locally  Use local hosting and URLs  Optimize your keywords for local search engines Generate local demand  Develop a social media strategy  Create formsClick to turn visitorshere into for leads anand customers Online Make Presence use of web analytics Diagnosis!

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.12 NEXT STEPS Our recommended next step is to obtain an Online in Europe Proposal from ibt partners! Europe has moved online. Get visible in Europe with online presence. Speak to Europe with online marketing. If you’d like to learn more about building country specific websites in Europe, download our ebook below! Your exports and business development are at the heart of our scalable services to build and market your business Online in Europe

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD GET YOUR ONLINE IN EUROPE COUNTRY SPECIFIC WEBSITES PROPOSAL! IN THE UK, GERMANY AND FRANCE

Please see our website for more information and help on international business development: www.ibtpartners.com

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.13 ABOUT IBT PARTNERS We help grow your European exports and business by developing country specific websites and online marketing in your target markets. Our vision is to provide international business and trade development through the application of online technologies and services. ibt partners is a team of experienced and professional web-savvy European business developers, based in the USA, the UK, Germany and France. Our clients are European and American mid-cap corporates and Economic Development Agencies supporting those corporates.

Get in touch! Email: [email protected] You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.14 USEFUL LINKS

Hubspot: in Europe https://library.hubspot.com/complete-guide-to-social-media-marketing-in-europe

We are social: European digital landscape 2014 http://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/social-digital-mobile-in-europe

ibt partners: Online in Europe resources http://ibtpartners.com/us/resources/

Econsultancy: Research, case studies, blog and more …. http://econsultancy.com/

@ Managing social media in Europe www.ibtpartners.com p.15 www.ibtpartners.com Share this eBook! @