We asked Rebecca Lieb, Research Analyst, Keleido Insights, and Chad Pollitt, Cofounder, Relevance.com, their thoughts on global content marketing. Here’s what they told us:
Transcript:
Rebecca Lieb: “One of the reasons my next report is going to be on global content marketing (I’m going to publish it in late November/early December), is that what my clients have been wanting to hear about. I have been working with global tech companies and helping them with their global content. I’ve been working with a non-profit helping to scale their content operations across ninety-three countries…if you ever find a conference bridge that works for ninety-three countries let me know!
A lot of these problems are (come from) effectively sharing assets; deciding how much autonomy local territories or regions…you know, deciding what has to come from the top down…but also what bubbles up locally that relates to local politics or the local regulatory environment, even local holidays or traditions. It is how to share content and tag content so there can be a shared repository of content so that you aren’t reinventing the wheel across continents and across countries. There’s a marvelous case study of UniLever unifying their content marketing initiatives around one single tool and saved over one billion dollars in the first year by not re-duplicating efforts, or not getting approval on art-work or product shots. It is translation initiatives, it’s also understanding the needs and the cultures of other countries. I was working with a client where their U.S. headquarters acquired rights to NFL football and said, ‘Guess what everybody? We get to use these assets across the globe!’ Well tell me one other country in the world where football means in their language what football means in our language (they use a round ball, we use an oval ball). They pretty much made a culturally tone-deaf decision when you’re investing a lot of money in a content initiative that is supposed to work globally, rather than just in the United States.
It is also that tradition of collaborating; how do you regularly touch base with people and get their input across regions, across time-zones, how do you share best practices? The telephone is helpful, in person meetings are helpful but so to is (as Nestle` has done) setting up an internal social network for content and social media marketing so that rapid deployment and rapid sharing can be effective. So lots of considerations on a global level that just don’t happen with organizations that are only operating in the just U.S. and CA with similar languages (I know CA has French!), or you know, are similarly contained in culturally similar regions.”
Transcript:
Chad Pollitt: “First, read Pam Didner’s book, ‘Global Content Marketing’, it’s an excellent read.
There’s basically (two) things you need to consider; decide whether or not you are going to empower those local geos to take your content and adjust it culturally (and not just ‘translation’). That’s a gauge, so you can slide that gauge of how much freedom you are going to give to do that.”
For more answers to the biggest content challenges, visit https://ceralytics.com/content-answers.
