ANALYSIS
social—whether on its own or as part of a traditional
marketing mix.
For example, in the town where I live, most all of the
parents are on Facebook and Pinterest. Many belong
to groups within these social networks. If I were to
open a children’s play area in my town, I would not
use any traditional marketing but rather post pictures of the play area on Pinterest and use Facebook
to connect with local moms. I’d also buy Facebook
ads targeted to my local neighborhood. In contrast,
my sister runs a local accounting firm and she relies
on traditional marketing (newspapers, billboards) to
connect with small business owners in town.
EM: How important is the localization of a corporation’s social media strategy for each market they
operate in? What does it looks like in terms of effort
and impact?
Wion: Localization is extremely important. Social
media is worthless if it is not culturally relevant for
your audience. For example, in most of the United
States, having ketchup on a hot dog is the most common and logical way to eat. However, in Chicago,
people sneer at ketchup on a hot dog as an indicator
of being uncultured.
To make the most of localization, a company must
think locally both in terms of what platforms they
Emerging Macedonia Fall 2014 Issue 43
use and what content they create. This can create a
very complex organization with a lot of work, however, it is essential to be relevant and welcomed by
your customers.
EM: Tell us a bit about your background. It was a
while ago, but tell us what attracted you to a career
in social media and digital marketing? What keeps
you interested?
Wion: I love working in social media because it is a
mixture of writing, design, storytelling, technology
and meeting people.
Despite social media
being a relatively new To make the most of
tool for most busi- localization, a company
nesses, it continues to must think locally both in
evolve rapidly so that terms of what platforms
my job today is differ- they use and what
ent from what it was
content they create.
last year and next year
will be different as well.
My career has not been in a straight line but I feel
that every job that I’ve had has been in a complete
logical order and helped me grow as a professional.
I studied journalism in school
and worked as a reporter for
a few newspapers and magazines. This helped me become
a good writer and a good storyteller. Next, I worked as
a graphic designer which
helped develop my eye for
imagery. I then worked for a
consulting firm working with
dozens of different companies to build e-commerce,
online learning and digital
conversation tools such as
discussion forums. Next, I
worked for a PR firm building
web sites but also developing
blogs and social strategies for
a wide variety of companies.
At that company, I worked on
food brands, pharmaceutical
and finance companies. I also
worked for McDonald’s and then joined the company
to become their first-ever Director of Social Media.
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