Terrance Barkan, CAE, is chief strategist and business architect with GlobalStrat, providing professional advisory services for the not-for-profit community. Connect with him on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @TBarkan.

In the current economic climate, growth is a rare and highly valued commodity. Forward-looking organizations have long identified “international markets” as one of the most promising ways to maintain or accelerate their growth. However, accessing new global markets was almost always a difficult, expensive and slow process.

The explosion of access to the Internet globally means that your organization now has effective and low cost access to millions of potential customers or members. According to the most recent report from Miniwatts Marketing, there are now more than 1.6 billion unique Internet users worldwide. As large as that number is, it still represents only 24% of the world population.

With Internet penetration in North America above 70% and in Europe at just over 50%, these two markets together account for approximately 650 million users. Yet Asia, with only 18.5% penetration, already exceeds the two most developed markets in sheer numbers with more than 700 million Internet users. But what do these numbers really mean?

For many, it may feel like the social media wave is passing you by and there is an urgency to “catch up.” If you take a longer term perspective however, we see that we are still right at the front end of this evolution and that there is ample continued growth projected going forward.

Social media and the delivery of services online offer a fantastic opportunity for explosive growth, even for small, resource constrained organizations. But this growth requires planning and preparation if you want to unlock the real potential of international markets. Different cultures, languages and how technology developed in different countries means that you must adapt and use multiple platforms if you want to reach your audience.

Facebook and LinkedIn might be the right platform for your organization in the USA, but how do you tap into your community members in Brazil, China or India? Organizations that have considered the international markets and that have developed an open approach to include community members are reaping the benefits of this approach not only with more members or customers, but they are more importantly developing sophisticated and higher quality content and services based on the needs of a richer and more diverse audience.

You may start out pursuing international markets in search of growth, but you may find to your delight that the rewards are a more engaging and stimulating community as an added bonus. If you haven’t already started thinking about how to expand your organization’s reach globally, today is a good time to start.

For more free resources on international and social media strategy, go to Ez.com/GLOBALSTRAT.

Related Posts:

• Are you ready for growth
• How to price your association’s international products and services
• Measure twice, cut once
• Should you share your goals?
• 3 views of volunteering