How to Manage your multilingual social media account?

Everybody is on social media these days. A recent survey done by Hootsuite found there are over 3 billion active social media users around the world. That’s almost half the world’s population and a large customer base that your business should be targeting.

But are you? A study Adweek published showed 88% of companies are on social media. Most of them have some social media marketing plans. They use various platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram to promote their brands and interact with existing and potential customers.

However, they only do this in one language, English. Most use English as the lingua franca. But social media in different languages like Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Indian are also used but in very low numbers.

When you use English only you’re are neglecting the majority of people who don’t speak this language and would prefer to interact with your brand in their native language. So developing a multilingual social media strategy is a must if you want to have an edge over your international competitors on social media marketing and not lose out on potential clients.

Already LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are multilingual and you should follow their example. The likes and retweets you get from your multilingual social media engagement could give your business the boost it needs to be profitable and visible. Here is how to build your multilingual social media presence.

Hire professional translators

When companies decide to do multilingual social media content marketing they often do this using automated translators or a novice translator. That’s a wrong move that could cost you dearly. There is a wide range of machines and people offering translation online but most of these are incompetent and can confuse the audience you’re trying to reach.

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have exciting tools you can use in auto-translation, but they are no match to humans.

You need to make an effort to properly communicate with your audience in their mother tongue otherwise you’ll be wasting both yours and their time. Hiring a multilingual social media expert who knows the complexities and nuances of the language you’re introducing is a big first step.

Are you looking for professionals to translate your Social Media Content?

Be sensitive to cultural realities

Once you hire someone to do your translation they should easily transpose your original content and give insights into cultural norms. When you don’t work with a professional translator your multilingual campaigns will be bogged down in utter incoherence with slogans clumsily translated. Avoid getting into an embarrassing situation like Coors Brewing Company who translated their slogan ‘Turn it loose’ into ‘Suffer from diarrhoea’ in Spanish.

Be active on your social media

Social media is all about interactions, so do just that. Try to post every day or several times a day. Start a social media campaign such as put up engaging content and share viral videos. Drive the conversation in the industry that you operate. Be prompt to respond to queries asked about your product or service.

And it’s not all about business. Have some fun doing it, you could try post some memes. Doing all this will make your brand known and in time you should see this translate into sales which is definitely your end goal.

Multilingual Social Media? We will take care of it!