Today, marketers can’t get around using social media anymore if they want to see good results of their campaigns in almost every product or service niche. Social media marketing has numerous advantages over other forms of marketing, such as increased brand awareness and brand loyalty, a high lead-to-closure rate, and cost-effectiveness. When you are trying to enter a new market like Japan, social media marketing will be a crucial part of your marketing strategy. This means that it is important to understand the way social media are used in Japan. Knowing this should result in a basic understanding of how social media marketing promotion of a brand in Japan works.

What is Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is finding and connecting with your target audience on the different social media channels. The goal is to build up brand awareness and image, drive traffic to your homepage, and eventually increase your sales. This is done by comprehensive social media management which includes sharing new content regularly, running paid ads on social media, boost engagement with and interaction from your followers, analyzing the results, and incorporating those results in adjusting your strategy. Social listening is also an important part of any social media marketing strategy, which means that you will monitor social media channels for mentions about your brand or industry and try to positively influence people’s perception of your brand.

Social Media Promotion Types

There are several ways in which you can promote your brand through social media. When you are building your marketing strategy, you should let the different types of social media promotion work together to create the strongest marketing mix. Let’s go over the most important types of social media promotion:

1. Having good company profiles: a simple and clear company profile on several social media platforms will help brand awareness and trust in your brand. You have to have a consistent company and message across different platforms. Good graphics and a house style contribute heavily to how your company is perceived.
2. Content creation: posting content on your social media profiles that is useful and interesting for your target audience helps you find your customers and gives you a direct line of communication where you can, for example, introduce new products. It is important to have good content publication planning that’s optimized for your audience. Posting too little or too often can both have a negative impact on your following.
3. Customer interaction: the moment a customer contacts you on social media is a great moment to show them what you are made of. Positive interactions, also after a customer complained about your brand, service, or product, can greatly improve positive perceptions about your brand and customer loyalty. 
4. Reviews: one of the strongest ways to promote your brand is to (organically) gather positive customer reviews. These days, the majority of consumers look at online reviews before they make a purchase. Having many reviews and having overwhelmingly positive reviews with the very occasional negative one (with a good company response below it) looks most trustworthy to potential buyers.
5. Paid social media advertisements: because of an ever-increasing amount of content on all social media channels, it has become harder to reach your audience organically. The good news is that paid advertisements are very effective in helping your content show up in your target audience’s news feeds for a low price. 
6. Influencer marketing: besides paid ads you should also consider influencer marketing if you want to reach your audience instantly and effectively. Especially if you are trying to break into a new market, a trusted influencer in your niche can give a larger boost for your brand awareness in a short time that you could ever do yourself. Don’t just consider the pricey (semi) celebrity influencers, but also think about smaller niche influencers who tend to be more affordable and able to match your brand very well.

For all types of social media promotion, localization for the Japanese market is of utmost importance if you want to have a chance in Japan. If you have no experience with marketing in Japan and/or are not fluent in Japanese, you may want to consider hiring a digital marketing agency that is specialized in helping foreign companies break into the Japanese market.

Digital Content Creation for Japan

A large part of your social media promotion strategy will consist of content creation. As mentioned before, posting regularly (without posting too often) will make your followers stick around and keep them coming back to your company pages. Several important points need to be kept in mind when you write these posts for your target audience in Japan; 

• Content needs to be interesting to your audience: if you are selling old Hollywood movies with Japanese subtitles, Japanese language content about actors from those days, nostalgic music, American products (like cars) you often see in old movies, or upbeat historic information about the time the movies were made can all appeal to your target audience. 
• Adjust your language: simply writing in Japanese isn’t enough, just like if you’d write content for English-speaking audiences, you have to adjust your language to your audience. You’d write a passage aimed at baby boomers differently than content for Gen Z, and text for motorcycle fans will have a different feel to it than content that is written for people who are into obscure French cartoons. You need a deep knowledge of the Japanese language to get this right.
• Short and simple is best: social media is usually not used for reading long texts, and shorter texts that get to the point are better received. Every word counts, so knowing how to capture a Japanese audience’s attention with (buzz) words is essential.
• Use images and video: people are visual creatures, and it is easier to grab the attention with good-looking images than with only text. Video is a great medium to explain a slightly more complicated concept to an audience whose attention span is short. Which images and videos work in Japan is different from what works in the West, likely because of the way visual information is scanned in a different way. 

It is easy to get overwhelmed by the different demands of the Japanese market if you are new to it. This is when a bil-lingual digital media agency in Japan can be of great value for your social media campaign. They have the experience and know-how of how to reach your target audience in Japan and interact with them in a constructive way.

Your Digital Media Partner in Japan

Hashi Media is Japan’s go-to content 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.