Are you a global business that sells to customers on an international scale? Have you struggled with the agonizing question of whether to set up multiple social media accounts on each social network to better support your various marketing initiatives geared toward different international markets? Well as it turns out, Facebook feels your pain.
Yesterday, Facebook announced the launch of Global Pages, a new structure to business pages for global brands aimed to provide a better, localized experience for international brands' prospects and customers. The new structure consolidates a business' global Facebook presence into one place while still providing a localized experience.
How Facebook's New Global Structure Works
The idea is, rather than a global brand maintaining one general, broadly targeted Facebook page -- or juggling multiple Facebook Pages set up for each different international market -- that brand can instead maintain and promote one centralized Facebook Page URL. Visitors to that page will then get routed to the most appropriate version of a page based on their home country, where they will see a localized version of the page, which the administrator can customize to include different cover photos, profile photos, applications, milestones, 'About' information, and news feed stories.
The global marketer can set up their Global Pages structure to create localized pages for the specific markets (i.e. single or multicountry regions) they're targeting. They can also set up a default page that all other users outside of these specific markets get directed to. If you're familiar with LinkedIn's targeted Product and Services Page variations within their Company Pages, Facebook is implementing a similar idea: Users get redirected to the version of the page that's best suited for them based on their geographic location.
Okay -- so what's the difference between a global marketer just setting up and customizing different Facebook Pages? In one word: centralization.
3 Key Benefits of Global Pages
- A Centralized Facebook Presence: No matter which version of the page a visitor gets routed to, all visitors will see the same page name (translated into their local language), fan count, and 'People Talking About This' counts.
- A Single URL: Rather than having to promote a different page URL for each localized page, global brands will be able to promote one single URL in all of their marketing efforts to promote their Facebook presence, since page visitors will be automatically be redirected to the appropriate version of the Page based on their goegraphic information.
- A Centralized Global Insights Dashboard: Rather than having to check the Facebook Insights for multiple pages, administrators of the main Global Page will be able to check Insights for all page variations in one centralized dashboard.
But What if I Already Have Multiple Pages Set Up?
It's easy to see how this new feature can help global social media marketers who already manage one general page, eliminating the pain of geo-targeting every status update and page post -- but what about the marketers who have already set up completely separate, country-specific Facebook Pages for each of their target international markets?
According to Facebook, it is possible for admins of multiple pages to transition to the new Global Pages structure, citing examples such as the global Walt Disney Studios team working on Frankenweenie, who were easily able to migrate their country-specific pages for France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States to the Global Pages framework. Other brands, including the Holiday Inn and the Kit Kat team from Nestle have also successfully transitioned their various localized pages from regions around the globe to the new structure.
And that's not all ...
Facebook Also Promises Improved Global Benchmarking Data in the Future
Within Facebook's announcement, the social network also mentioned they're working on ways to make it easier for global marketers to measure their specific, localized audiences in each country -- which will include country-level fan counts for both Global Pages as well as pages not yet transitioned to the new framework (coming later this year in its public API).
In addition, Facebook is working to provide a way for marketers to benchmark their brand against competitors, enabling global marketers to measure and analyze how each localized market is performing and compare that data on a country-specific level with other Facebook pages via Facebook's API.
Great News for International Marketers
This seems like a no-brainer for businesses who cater to a global audience. No more agonizing over whether to divide their Facebook presence in order to appropriately cater their content and updates to their inidividual, localized segments of their audience. No more time spent fiddling with geo-targeting every single status update. No more splitting up the overall reach and impact of their Facebook presence.
To get started with Global Pages, Facebook indicates you'll need to get in touch with your Facebook client partner or account manager to discuss. If you're not already working with Facebook, you can contact Facebook marketing solutions here.
To learn more about how to effectively implement a global social media marketing strategy, download our free ebook, The Complete Guide to Global Social Media Marketing.
If you're a global marketer, will you explore Facebook's new Global Pages offering?
Image Credit: Sudhamshu
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Iczel 1:27 PM on October 18, 2012
How can small businesses that operate in more than one geographic area, and have less than $2,000 / month in their advertising budget get this new feature?
As you pointed out in your article, this new feature would definitely improve our social media presence. We would only have to promote one Facebook page, which would automatically lead the viewer to different posts depending on their location. Allowing more time to be dedicated on producing great content, and not adjusting settings, or managing multiple pages.
So far, it seems that Facebook only wants to offer this to larger "global" businesses, assuming small businesses, and non-profits don't participate in the global market. Hopefully this will change soon.
Michael Rock 2:56 PM on October 18, 2012
@Iczel I agree with you about small businesses.
But it is a start!
Hopefully, once Facebook works out the bugs it will be offered to small businesses as well.
The growth of social media can be quite daunting to small business owners. Having the ability to manage your business from one spot is a BIG improvement.
Matthew C Murphy 3:14 PM on October 18, 2012
Being an owner of a 2 small business in 3 countries this is going to come in handy. We are small, we dont have a huge advertising budget and the only reason we are in 3 countries is because thats where all the owners are. We all have specific skills and make a great team.
test 3:52 PM on October 18, 2012
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Silvia 2:53 PM on October 19, 2012
This is in fact a great thing for companies that operate in more than one country but as it stands most small businesses will be excluded. My company operates in Portugal and UK mainly and this would be ideal but as it stands, at least in Europe and in face of the economical crisis with everyone cutting on resources/budgets, there is no way I can see companies going for this. And it's a shame, because it would be a great thing to have.
Mary Green 7:05 PM on October 19, 2012
I'm glad Facebook is making it easier for businesses, even though many don't like the pay to promote feature, this is useful for businesses that still use FB to stay in touch.
Nnenna Lovette 7:14 PM on October 19, 2012
This is fantastic! In fact this will change the social media engagement and analysis significantly for many brands! If you currently have several facebook pages you can "merge them as one" first and then begin to adjust the settings towards the new global marketing feature suggested in this article.
Gary Stockton 5:52 PM on October 21, 2012
This is a step in the right direction. We are doing business in about 40 countries, however, we have a very small advertising budget. If only 6% of people who like Brand pages actually engage with them, why would I go to all of that trouble in setting this up?
Gary Stockton 5:53 PM on October 21, 2012
This is a step in the right direction. We are doing business in about 40 countries, however, we have a very small advertising budget. If only 6 percent of people who like Brand pages actually engage with them, why would I go to all of that trouble in setting this up?
Lucy Tyerman 4:19 AM on October 22, 2012
Adapting social media pages to different geographical locations is a great idea as it allows followers to feel more connected to the brand.
Introducing personalised Facebook pages with the same URL will also make things much easier for employees to manage their Facebook account.
Lucy
Sentimentmetrics.com
Nazmul Alam 4:24 AM on October 22, 2012
This is a great news that Facebook rolls out a new service for the international marketers. New Facebook global page very important for the companies and they can easily create marketing strategies according to their global presence and earn more social recognition and online traffic and generate leads.
RealEstateDealStreet.com 5:01 AM on October 22, 2012
Does site like www.RealEstateDealStreet.com needs to have global page or till now local will do?
Bhavana 8:13 AM on October 22, 2012
Hi, thanks for this useful info