Localizing Social Media Marketing
One of the most important issues to consider when creating a web presence for the purpose of marketing is to make sure that the content speaks to the audience. This can mean that the style of the language and terminology used are familiar to the target audience, like using slang when marketing to a younger audience. It can also refer to the need for adapted content for specific countries or regions.
A major part of a successful social media marketing campaign is the creation of good content that people will want to share with their online networks. So considering the need to translate content, one may think that translating pieces of content or communications like
Twitter “tweets” and
Facebook status updates into the relevant languages is enough to make your activity relevant around the world. With translation, there is more to it than directly translating text word-for-word, so too with social media marketing.
Which social network rules?
The big daddy of social networks is, of course, Facebook, with over 500 million users spending over 700 billion minutes per month on the network. As this network grows, it manages to outdo local social networks in many countries. For example, Facebook has grabbed users from
iWiW in Hungary,
Nasza – Klasa in Poland,
Hi5 in Mongolia, and
Orkut (Google’s social networking site) in Paraguay and India.
With impressive numbers like those, we might think that Facebook is the network of choice for social internet users around the world. Surprisingly, that is not the case, and this is a good demonstration of how people interact differently with social media channels depending on geographical location, language and culture. Orkut still rules in Brazil; Russia’s largest social network is
VKontakte with around 75 million registered users, making it one of the most visited sites in Europe; and the Japanese prefer
Mixi.
And then there are countries where focusing on Facebook as a marketing platform is not just a bad choice, but disastrous, like China. In China, Facebook is mostly inaccessible due to the country’s “Great Firewall.” Instead, China has its own set of social networks:
Qzone rules in China with a reported 388 million registered users; then comes 51.com with 160 million users;
Renren with 130 million users, also known as the most active network; and
Kaixin001 with 75 million. (Data on the Chinese networks is inconsistent since every network claims they are the biggest). Facebook is trying to break into the country by making a deal with local search leader
Baidu to launch a new social network, but even if that pans out, it could be a while before they are a serious contender.
Who comes in second in the social network competition?
The second most popular social network in many countries is Twitter. However, in some countries Twitter has not captured people’s attention. For example, in France,
Skyrock is the most popular after Facebook, and Twitter comes in third. In Russia, Twitter doesn’t even register on the country’s radar, with
Odnoklassniki being the second most popular network, and
LiveJournal coming in third place. Spaniards also don’t like Twitter:
Tuenti is the second preference, and then
Badoo. In Jordan, people like a natively developed network that is similar to Twitter called Watwet. At one point in 2009, it had double the number of registered users in the Middle East as Twitter.
Social networking habits differ in different countries
Even social networking habits differ from country to country. Alan Belniak of
Subjectively Speaking spent about a month researching the social space around the world.
He found that sharing isn’t common in Germany (likely due to fear of reprisal), France has many spectators and not as many sharers, and in Japan information is often guarded due to a need to respect anonymity.
Questions to ask when marketing socially around the world
As we can see, social media marketing takes different forms around the world – different platforms, languages, and habits. Therefore, before embarking on social media activity in regions you are not familiar with, it is important to conduct some research to try to answer the following questions:
How does your target audience engage in social networks?
What is their “language,” i.e. slang and terminology?
Which network is their favorite?
Are there trends in their region that you can latch on to?
By being aware of the differing nature of social networking around the world, you can increase your chances of success when trying to engage users with social media marketing by localizing your efforts.
