Having a strong social media strategy is important for almost every brand nowadays. It can help greatly with spreading brand awareness, finding your target audience, and getting potential customers to visit your website to eventually close the sale. When you are trying to enter a new market like Japan, making sure that your social media management is up to the latest standards and localized for the Japanese market is even more paramount. Social media usage in Japan currently stands at 72% and is projected to grow to a whopping 91% in 2026, giving you ample opportunities to reach your target audience in Japan. If you want to hit the ground running in this interesting but infamously hard to crack market, hiring a digital marketing agency can give you a good head start. Here are 5 reasons for outsourcing social media management in Japan!

Social Media Management

Robust social media management will maximize your results, and getting this right in Japan requires in-depth knowledge of and experience with the Japanese market. Social media management comprises of the following facets:

1. Choosing social media channels: because social media is used a bit differently in Japan it is important to understand how the channels can work for your brand. 
2. Content creation: creating posts with text, images, and/or video is a large part of social media management. Posts need to be properly localized.
3. Advertising: as organic reach is in decline because of an abundance of posts, advertising became an important part of social media management. Ads have to be localized and aimed at the right audience for good results.
4. Customer engagement approach: customers will leave comments and reviews on social media, which need to be dealt with in a positive way. In these interactions, a good understanding of local language and culture is indispensable.

A digital media agency can take care of all aspects of social media management for you. All you have to do is make sure that your company’s infrastructure is in order and that you have a good idea of what you want to do with your products and services in Japan. As long as you come prepared and can let the agency know what you want to reach in Japan, they will be able to manage your social media with maximum results.

Social Media Software

An important part of any social media strategy is checking results and statistics. You should set clear goals before publishing content and ads, and check if you received the number of views and interactions that you were looking for. If the results are below expectations, the marketing strategy can be tweaked and then checked again until the best strategy is found.

This means that you will need to experiment with slightly different audiences and with different texts and images. Digital marketing companies have access to higher-grade professional software to help them with these tasks, so this means that partnering up with an agency can make your strategy and campaigns benefit from their software. Plus, you don’t have to do the sometimes tedious work of checking the numbers consistently.

Digital Content Creation

In order to be found, followed, and not unfollowed, you have to create new content regularly on all your active social media channels. This content has to be interesting to your (potential) followers and preferably have a strong connection to your brand, services and/or products. Scheduling your posts and advertisements while keeping the local market in mind is also part of good social media management. This means that, for example, posts will be scheduled to coincide with local events and holidays that would fit the content.

A Japan-specialized digital marketing company can take this time-consuming task off your hands and create high-quality content that is geared towards your target audience in Japan. Whether it is text, images, illustrations, or videos, most agencies are able to create compelling content that fits your brand, products, and services. Of course, all of this is done in consultation with you to give you the results you are looking for.

Japanese Localization

One of the most important keys to success in the Japanese market is making sure that your website, social media profiles, content and advertisements, and interactions are properly localized. This doesn’t only mean translation if necessary, but it also means that text, images, and videos need to make sense to people who live in Japan. In order to hit the right tone, being up to date about what is going on in your industry in Japan, your Japanese competitors, the national news, and trends in general is going to be important.

It is the daily work of digital marketing agencies in Japan to be on top of all this, so you will be sure to have all the right information at your disposal through them. Even if you are going to market your brand to English-speaking foreigners living in Japan, while the language won’t be an issue your content will still benefit from localization.

Social Media Listening and Customer Engagement

A very effective way to tell what people are thinking and feeling about your brand, products, and industry in general is to practice social media listening. This means that software crawls through social media channels to find mentions of your brand and collect data. You then have to interpret the results to see if perceptions are positive, neutral, or negative. Sometimes you will get negative feedback that needs a response, and it is important that you get the response right the first time.

In Japan, people tend to share their honest opinions especially on Twitter, as this can be done anonymously. A digital media agency will give professional responses in Japanese that will leave a good impression of your brand, of course with your previous input. It will save you a lot of stress knowing that any negative ‘press’ in Japan will be mitigated by the agency.

Your Social Media Marketing Partner in Japan

Hashi Media is Japan’s go-to influencer marketing and social media company. If you are planning on entering the Japanese market and don’t know where to start, we’ve got you covered.

• Content creation
• Social media management
• Digital marketing strategy
• Brand localization

If you enjoyed what you read today and found it valuable, contact us today and let’s talk about your project.