Global brand leaders feel overwhelmed by the challenges posed by social media

For global businesses working across multiple markets and languages, balancing the voices of individual brands and products, and covering cultural and language nuances, has always been a complicated process. Social media has taken this complexity to a whole new level.

According to research by global social media agency, The Social Element, many global brand leaders feel overwhelmed by getting a handle on their social media. When asked to score how in control they felt, on average, they hit a worryingly low 6.5 out of 10. 

When asked about their biggest challenges in this area, over half (55%) of leaders cite a lack of resource vs. the size of the challenge as their biggest concern. A third (33%) are perplexed about controlling and engaging with consumer content and three out of ten (29%) say they have too many channels to manage.

A fifth of brand leaders feel unprepared in the event of a crisis and worry about having a lack of consistent content across markets (22%). Other challenges cited were management buy-in (18%) and the issues posed by ensuring languages (13%) and multi-cultural differences (11%) are localised.

“For many global brands, social media has evolved at such a pace that they don’t know how many accounts they have or what their purpose is, whether accounts are dormant or in use, who’s posting on behalf of the company or what they’re saying. And that’s without the added complexity of ensuring their messaging is working effectively across different cultures, languages and regions. It’s no wonder that beginning the process of disentanglement can feel so overwhelming,” commented Tamara Littleton, Founder and CEO, The Social Element.

“Establishing a global social media strategy that has a clear framework and ownership, while providing enough flexibility to meet the needs of each country, is challenging. But the opportunity for brands that do it well is to connect with their audiences at an intimate level that fosters true engagement and human connections – a simple reason to address this complex issue.”

Source: The Social Element

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