Posted by Charlotte
in Digital PR | 0 Comments
"Swedish site owners love to work with agencies like us, but they do like to do business in a very formal way."
As you may already know if you’ve read our previous blogs on search in Poland and search in Italy, this year has seen us team up with Citation Labs in the USA to make international prospecting easier and more efficient than ever before.
As part of this quest, we wanted to put together a few tips that we’ve amassed during our many years of digital marketing in international territories. This week, we turn our attention to understanding SEO and outreach in Sweden.
Keep things formal
Swedish site owners are happy to work with agencies like us (Sweden is one of Europe’s leading internet societies in terms of widespread internet usage), but they do like to do business in a very formal way. They’re happy to promote brands and companies that have relevance to them, but they are always exceptionally wary of making any statements or comments that aren’t 100% accurate.
Obviously this is fair enough and misleading content and copy isn’t something we’d ever want to promote for any of our Swedish clients, but it does have a knock-on effect on the kind of content we create for our Swedish site owner contacts.
Whereas opinionated, highly subjective and controversial content that intentionally stirs debate can do very well in the UK for British brands, Swedish site owners prefer receiving content that is more factual, informative, and authoritative, with stats and facts properly checked and verified. For this reason, infographic-led content, which relies heavily on statistics and figures presented in a visual way, can do very well in Sweden.
Language barrier nowhere to be seen in Sweden
English-language sites such as Facebook have a strong hold in Sweden, due to the widespread use of English as a prevalent language, especially online. This makes social media marketing simpler than with certain other languages/territories. Facebook, for instance, is used by around 4.4. million individuals in Sweden.
Data released on Google searches in Sweden consistently shows “Facebook” and “Twitter” as the top two search queries, so it’s really important to make sure a viable social media strategy is set right from the start as part of your marketing strategy in Sweden.
It also means that if you can’t afford to translate all your marketing material, it isn’t the end of the world; when we work with Swedish clients, we always make sure our content is written in high-quality Swedish, but for some agencies and businesses this simply isn’t an option.
Google Is King
Google leads search engine market share in Sweden, with over a 97% share, followed by Bing.
This means that if you’re used to making Google the priority in terms of search engines to target with your British digital marketing strategy, it isn’t too huge a leap when you start working in Sweden.
This contrasts with, for instance, setting up a digital marketing campaign in Russia or in China where other search engines with different algorithms dominate.
Nothing to fear with Swedish search
Hopefully you can see from these quick tips that there’s absolutely nothing to be scared of when it comes to digital marketing in Sweden. Sometimes the expense of the Scandinavian region and the conceived complexity of the Swedish language can be ever so slightly offputting, but if you approach your strategy in a logical manner, there really is nothing to fear!
Charlotte is chief whip when it comes to making sure words are in order at ICS-digital. You can get in touch with her directly at charlotte.green@ics-digital.com