Going “Glocal” with Social: Unleash the Content

While ambitions and scopes vary from the home-grown and the regional, to the national and international, social media offers a platform for businesses and organisations of all stripes to make the best of both worlds; connecting with a huge global audience, while staying intimately connected to a local area.

Today we’ll be taking a closer look at how this is possible, why it’s beneficial and how to embrace social content in a way which makes your brand truly “glocal” – that’s both global and local to you and me.Growing a glocal audience

One of the boons of social media is the sheer reach it allows businesses. While investing time in interacting with local users and organisations will help you grow deeper roots, uncover opportunity and grow brand awareness in a specific region, spreading your tentacles outwards to connect with audiences and users all over the world is equally achievable.For businesses with a global mindset, social media provides a platform from which you can connect with key influencers in your industry at the very top of the game, while growing an equally impressive reputation for your own brand. Of course, this type of outcome doesn’t happen in isolation or overnight, and takes plenty of firepower to achieve, but social media is a “land of opportunity”.

The route you choose to pursue in this regard very much depends on the scale of your business and your long-term goals, yet even with a relatively humble social media strategy in place, melding the local and the global can pay off. While localised audiences will be impressed by your international connections and growing global presence, staying “true to your roots” gives authenticity to a business and gives voice to its greatest brand advocates: its local supporters. Blending both global and local content allows you to showcase the best of both worlds.Blended content

In previous posts, we’ve explored the rise of user generated content (UGC). The latest buzzword in digital marketing, UGC (created by followers) is a brilliant resource for businesses keen to entice fresh customers who are increasingly unimpressed by overly promotional brand-created content. Today users are more swayed by content produced by “trusted” sources such as their peers, favourite bloggers and industry influencers.But brands don’t need to be entirely at the mercy of the things users say about them online. In fact, our recent survey revealed that 54% of users prefer to see “a blend of brand-owned and user generated content”. Finding a way to mix UGC with brand-owned fodder allows businesses to entice users with peer-created, trust-triggering content with curated branded content designed to showcase the brand to its best advantage. Curation lies at the heart of this process, which means that tools that allow brands to curate and present this global-and-local, branded-and-UGC blend are on the rise.Enough talk!

It’s time for action. Tools like Miappi allow brands to easily blend UGC from down the road and from the other side of the world with their own brand-owned creations. These carefully curated social walls can then be displayed on any webpage and even on big screens “IRL”.

Many brands have already benefitted from this glocal, blended approach – and from Miappi’s easy-to-use social aggregator:

• Cointreau
  For New York Fashion Week, drinks brand Cointreau created a fabulous Garance Doré pop up Café. Miappi showcased user-generated content using the hashtags #CointreauSoiree and #GarancexCointreau on a social wall embedded on the chic cointreaupopup.com. This local event created tonnes of social buzz both locally in New York and globally via social media.

• British Airways
  A British brand with global reach, British Airways is the perfect example of a local (or at least national) brand with global reach. British Airways selected Miappi to power the digital screens at its ever-popular Explore and Discover event at Heathrow. Guests responded enthusiastically to the hashtag #DiscoverBA, generating fantastic UGC content locally which could make a huge impact globally.