How social media localisation can help you grow your business
To be a truly international company you’ll need much more than a multilingual website. And much more than a culturally adapted website. To engage with users and customers across the world, you’ll need to be present in the social media world, but not just in one language and on one platform, but in multiple languages and in platforms that are used by your target consumers in every single market. This is where social media localisation comes in. How exactly can this process help you expand your activity and raise your brand awareness? Have a look at these five key benefits of social media localisation.
1. You can engage with users across the world in their native language
If your website is already localised and available in several languages, a natural next step is to localise your social media profiles to get closer to your potential and regular customers. Not everyone feels comfortable to interact and engage with brands in English or any other non-native language. If your users don’t understand what you share, they won’t react. If they have a passive or poor knowledge of the language you use on your social profiles, they might be following you passively, i.e. only liking and sometimes sharing your updates. But to get the most out of the social features, you’d ideally need your users to regularly comment, share or retweet your posts. Localising your social profiles to the language and culture of your target users will help you achieve this goal. The more your users understand, the more they can participate in your conversations and keep liking, adding to favourites, sharing, retweeting or repinning your posts.
2. You can increase your website traffic
Localising and adapting your website for every language and market is the first step to social media localisation. After all, you want your users to visit your website at some point and order your products or services. If your social channels in every language are linked to the relevant language version of your website, your users will discover it eventually. Adding more links in your posts, e.g. when you share an update of your new blog post or invite users to visit your e-store, will further encourage your followers to open your site. In this way, you’ll drive more traffic to your multilingual website and ensure that your users don’t stop at interacting with your brand via social channels only, but take their engagement, comments and feedback to your localised website as well.
3. You can achieve a better local presence in your target market
From a localised website and localised social profile there’s just a small step to a better online and offline presence in your target market. By creating posts, Tweets, snaps or pins in the language and with the cultural context of your target users, you can prove that your business really knows and respects the reality, tradition and habits of consumers from the specific country. You users will also get the impression that your brand is within their reach. This, of course, can be supported by events that your brand organises in your target markets to further increase the presence and make your consumer feel that your business really is around the corner.
4. You can create customised promotions and offers for separate markets
The best way to engage and attract your target customers across the world is to talk specifically to them. General posts targeted at everyone might not be as powerful as customised messages that are addressed to the specific group, speaking specific language and immersed in their specific cultural context. You can do it on your localised website and wait for people to discover your content or you can go where your users hang out in the online world and craft updates, offers and promotions specifically for them, be it on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or LinkedIn. In this way, your localised social profile will help you develop a strong bond and meaningful connection with your target customers.
5. You can understand the needs and expectations of your customers better
With your users from different countries interacting, exchanging comments and opinions on your localised social medial profiles, you’ll be more likely to recognise what are the specific needs and preferences of every single market. Maybe you’ll discover some tendencies common in some countries, but not really present in all your markets. This will help you to design better promotions, offers and marketing campaigns for every single market. Expectations and behaviours of your target users might differ from what you expect as a typical pattern in the specific country. Through engagement with your users and followers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat or Pinterest you’ll be able to become more familiar with the profile and taste of your potential and regular customers.
Social media localisation isn’t of course a magic wand that will help you quickly reach for the stars. As in all walks of life, you’ll have to invest money, time and effort. You’ll need to invest in market research to make sure your social channels are fully adapted to your target users in each and every market you want to conquer. But once you do it, you’ll open the door to countless benefits that come together with proper social media localisation.
Dorota Pawlak is a localization consultant for digital and Web 3.0 brands. She enjoys helping businesses enter new markets and is passionate about cultures, languages, and technology.
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