As the social media phenomenon continues to grow, awareness is taking hold at all levels of business of its potential benefits, including customer intelligence, stakeholder engagement, and interactive marketing.
But it remains a new area. While many brands are localizing their own websites in pursuit of foreign consumers, they are still gaining confidence in using social media in their principal markets – and native languages.
Global, social dialogue
Yet social networking knows no boundaries. Uptake is higher in Brazil, Italy and Japan than in the US, Britain or Australia (The Nielsen Company). China alone is reckoned to be home to 1.1 billion social networking accounts.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that for global brand Coca Cola, social media has leapt from 3% to 20% of their total media spend in just five years – and is still growing apace (Harvard Business Review). Worldwide, social network ad spending is set to reach $5.54 billion this year, according to eMarketer estimates; by 2013, it will hit almost $10 billion.
Across, the world, then, social network sites have become a key terrain where conversations take place, and loyalties are forged. For brands seeking a passport to lucrative overseas markets, it’s looking increasingly necessary to establish a social media presence.
So what are the difficulties? In fact, with a little thought, integrating social media into a global marketing strategy needn’t present a headache.
Network sites around the world
The first issue to consider is what networking sites people prefer in the target market. Facebook – pre-eminent in the Anglosphere – commands more than 20 million followers respectively, in markets as diverse as Indonesia, Italy and India (Pingdom, 2010).
But in Brazil – the country where social media reach is highest– Orkut is the most popular platform. In Japan, meanwhile, FC2 Blog was visited by more than half of the local active internet users in May 2011, according to Nielsen’s Social Media Report.
While Facebook is the most popular Spanish site in terms of number of users, more time is spent per person on Tuenti. Nearly a quarter of active internet users in France visited the country’s number two site, Overblog.
Indeed, networking sites proliferate in different regions according to whether they emphasize business or consumers, text communication or multimedia, and so on. This sample is obviously just a taste – but for forward-looking brands, it’s not too difficult to find the market-specific information necessary to inform sound, strategic planning.
Networks and clients
The spread of different client devices – tablets, PDAs and mobiles – adds a further dimension. For example, it is reckoned there will be 593 million mobile internet subscribers in China by 2013 (Nielsen). Mobile devices are particularly important for accessing the internet in many developing countries, where notebooks and other computers are beyond the reach of much of the population.
Fortunately, the complexity is mitigated by factors specific to your target markets. A little research into the style and format of networking sites, and the possibilities they afford – as well as the traffic they command in your target markets – will naturally direct your approach.
Selection will also depend the priorities of your campaign: whether advertising, consumer insight and intelligence, or interactive engagement.
Language barriers
This raises the issue of language and translation. A key attraction of social media is the prospect of keeping abreast of your brand profile, and that of your competitors. For these purposes, machine translation engines –Google Translate, Babel Fish, and so on – are free, and may be adequate to get the gist of foreign language content about your brand or industry.
But machine translations of foreign text into your own language should serve as a warning against using the same method for translating your own marketing communications into other languages. The outcome is more likely to provoke ridicule than bring sales!
Finding a voice
Having identified the appropriate platforms for engaging with consumers overseas, then, you still need to find your voice. Even Facebook operates across dozens of languages – and other platforms can seem unfamiliar environments in which to strike up a conversation in a foreign language.
For this reason, when it comes to translating your content, it is vital to use the services of those who are not only native speakers, but also based in the country in question. To craft a compelling message and establish an effective, virtual presence abroad, it’s necessary to address consumers in their native idiom – with all that implies in terms of command of cultural references, allusion, and phraseology.
Depending on the nature of the campaign, it may be less a matter of translation than “transcreation” – transposing your message in a way that speaks directly to consumers in a culturally literate way.
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About
Christian Arno is the founder of professional a translation services provider Lingo24, experts in the foreign language internet. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 150 employees spanning three continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over forty million words for businesses in every industry sector, including the likes of MTV and World Bank. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.
Social media has become so powerful that it has become impossible to stay away from it, the influence and impact of social networking sites is massive. Business owners also benefit a lot from the social media, doing business has become more effective, faster and even more efficient than before due to social networking sites. You’ve posted a very important topic.
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