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Is social media too American for British B2B tech buyers?

Is tech B2B social media marketing too American for us Brits?  That’s one of the ideas put forward by Forrester analyst Peter O’Neill in his report ‘B2B Tech Marketers Must Tune Their Social Media Campaigns For Europe’.

The report, which is based on Forrester’s annual North American And European B2B Social Technographics Online Survey of tech buyers, explains that tech buyers’ adoption of social media in the buying cycle has accelerated since last year. But there are regional differences and one of those is that UK buyers lag behind US, Germany and France. One explanation given in the report is that “British buyers’ patience is tried by US-centric English language Web sites and engagements”.

This makes sense to me. There are many tech vendors that rely almost completely on US produced content for their web sites, blogs, podcasts and virals – which is obviously about conserving resources and wanting to put out a consistent  message. But while some vendors might have gotten away with driving traditional media relations using US produced content, I wonder if it is going a step too far to do this with social media.

As O’Neill puts it “experienced international marketers know that the US and the UK are separated by their common language, not joined”.

The report also points out that French buyers are very big on the use of their own language within social media, while German buyers love to share opinions about technology adoption using social media.

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