The Following post is part of the Mindjumpers Network series and written by our CEO, Jonas Klit Nielsen. Mindjumpers Network is a global network of local country community managers enabling international companies to execute and maintain brand communities in a structured, quality assured and cost effective way across markets with the aim of creating effect and value.
Yesterday, the yearly Facebook IQ icon brand report came out on Facebook focusing on the value for brands on Facebook and how 100 iconic brands are doing. The report is developed by Scott Galloway, NYU Stern and L2ThinkTank and is focused on the performance of 100 icon brands across beauty, fashion, specialty retail and watches and jewelry.
The ranking of the brands is based on their performance within size and growth (35%), engagement (35%), programming (20%) and integration (10%). There are a lot of interesting insights in the report and I have chosen to point out two of these, which will be of focus in the following.
Creating social content is a struggle
Brands still don’t seem to fully understand how to create engagement / NOT one-way dialogue. Creating conversational touch points and developing social content is still something a lot of the largest global brands are struggling with.
I think that one of the keys for brands is to acknowledge that creating social content is a professional task, it’s not rocket science but it is a science.
I am working with some really talented social designers at Mindjumpers and besides looking at the key to create involvement with the content and creating great stories, it’s through structured development process, analyzing content performance and a constant learning process that enables us to increase the engagement with consumers for all brands we start working with.
Local activation for global brands is on the rise
The report states that throughout the last year, a clear increase has been seen in maintaining local presences for prestige brands – and now more then 41% is maintaining a local presence on Facebook. Being based in Europe, this is something we have witnessed first hand; global brands have found the value in local activation on Facebook. We have experienced a lot of the challenges that the brands have struggled with, when they wanted to roll out their presence on Facebook from a local point of view.
Some brands think it’s just a question of translating into a local language, but two main factors are at play to understand what a strong local presence is: culture and responsiveness – so NO, you can’t just handle 10 local countries in Europe through a mix of Google Translate and the copy guy who once lived in the given country directly from your UK office.
For a global brand to create or increase the monetizing value through a presence on Facebook, the only way is to leverage local community management, connecting and engaging with your local consumers/customers in a way that is authentic from a local market point of view.
I have witnessed global brands that have for instance 200K Swedish fans on their global page, but don’t interact with them on local level (language, topics, real time). Are we then going to sell more products to the Swedish fans? Probably not. But hey, we have 200.000 fans on our page fan counter!
If you have any experience with local market activation of one or more global brands on Facebook from the brand or an agency side, please leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Further insights from the report, please go to l2thinktank.com.
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