Reaching a global audience is becoming increasingly easier as more people around the world join social media. If you are planning to expand your company and reach international markets, a good way to get in touch with new customers is to go international with your social media accounts as well.
You should remember that audiences change drastically from country to country. Language is not the only thing that changes: you need to be aware of cultural differences and which social media platforms are most popular.
Use a professional to translate your social content
Messages for social media campaigns are often very short – does this make it alright to use automatic services to translate them? Of course not. Brief messages benefit from using idioms or particular forms that Google Translate will never be able to detect.
This does not even take into account that sometimes even countries that speak the same language use different words – for example “ordenador” is the Spanish for computer, but the word is “computadora” in South America.
You should seek the help of a translation agency until you hire a social media manager with the needed language proficiency. Large translation agencies can offer you a huge variety of languages, and recently some companies have started specializing in multilingual social media services.
This will allow you to avoid mistakes that would make your business look bad, whilst making the most of your social media campaign.
Address the right social media
There are some major players in the world of social media, but while Facebook and Twitter are the most popular services almost everywhere in the world, it is important to remember that each country has specific social networking platforms that may be huge players in your campaign.
Tuenti, for example, one of the biggest social networks in Spain. Vkontakte is the Russian Facebook, and even looks like it. XING is much bigger than LinkedIn in Germany, and Viadeo offers a similar service in France, with more than 65 million users worldwide.
You should also consider that some countries have no access to Facebook or Twitter at all: China has banned both websites, so other networks like Renren, Weibo or Qzone are the ones to target.
At least at the beginning, you can stick to the large international social networks for your campaign, but as you refine your social media strategy, you should evaluate the impact that targeting geographically relevant platforms could make.
Country-specific accounts allow you to tailor your content
If you choose to take your social media international, you should consider creating separate accounts for different countries. This is important for several reasons: first of all, no user wants their feed clogged with message in languages they don’t understand. Secondly, content needs to be adjusted so it is clear and relevant to a specific audience.
Big multinational business like Coca-Cola have accounts for many of the countries they sell their products in. This allows them to be understood by users who may not speak English and engage their audience in relevant ways.
A good way to decide if you should create country-specific content is to track how many international users connect with your English-language accounts and how they interact and respond to content. For example, if you have a lot of Italian-speaking followers interacting with you, it may be enough to respond to them in their language; if your Italian is audience is close to none, you might want to create a language-specific account.
Be culturally appropriate
It is essential that you remember that each country has drastically different habits, cultural norms and taboos. This means creating content that, for example, celebrates country-specific holidays such as Children’s Day in Japan.
At the same time, you need to keep track of the social and political climate of a country: designer Kenneth Cole angered Egyptian social media users after he tweeted “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online” during the Arab Spring.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1OtMTND via transformational marketing
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