Multilingual Facebook Page – how to create and manage it?

It is not surprising to see that social media marketing today is the absolute foundation of all marketing activities related to a brand. Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, used by over 1.5 billion people daily. Data regarding Europe is equally as optimistic, with 282 million people accessing Facebook daily, on average. Creating a digital marketing strategy that utilizes a multilingual Facebook page is a way to reach international customers with your offer.

Multilingual Facebook Page? We will translate it.

Before you start – get to know your recipients

Prior to starting any marketing activities, conduct an analysis of your recipients. Despite the fact that this network is the largest one in the world, its popularity varies depending on the country. For instance, in Russia and other former USSR countries, VKontante.ru has the most users, while in China, QZone is the most popular social medium. In India, Facebook is used by over 100 million people daily. Analysing your markets is key when it comes to your decision on which social media platforms should be used in your marketing activities.

Multilingual Facebook page Vs. Regional Facebook pages

If your analyses show that more people use Facebook in the target country, it is worth launching a multilingual Facebook page as part of your Facebook marketing strategy. The practice has shown that the approach to this matter is not the same, even among the top brands. Vodafone has separate regional Facebook pages dedicated to recipients from a given country, such as Vodafone Deutschland, Vodafone IT or Vodafone UK. On the other hand, Adidas has one global Facebook page for all its brands (Adidas, Adidas Original, Adidas Football, etc.).

Multilingual Facebook page

Without a large marketing team at hand, it would be best if you created one multilingual Facebook page. In brief, this involves the management of one Facebook page, while translations into other languages are created when publishing posts. The language of the posts displayed on your page will depend on the language of the web browser used by the person.

How to create a Facebook Business page?

It is easy to create a Facebook page for your business. You can do that after logging into your personal profile. In the menu found in the top right corner, find “Create”. Click on it and choose “Page”.

In the next step, you will have a choice whether to create a brand page, company page, community page or public figure page. When you manage a company, focus on the business option on the left-hand side.

Here, you will need to enter the page name, choose the category and define the location. It is mandatory to specify the address including the city and province. If you manage a business only on the Internet and recipients do not need to know your exact address, you can choose “Do not display my address”. In this case, your recipients will only see the city and province. Now, you have to add the profile and background photos, and you can start promoting your brand.

Publishing Facebook posts in multiple languages

If you wish to publish Facebook multilingual posts, choose “Publishing in other languages”. Due to the above, you can add a translation into various languages to each post. For this purpose, go to your company profile and click “Settings”. In the “General” section, you will find “Publishing in other languages”, which is inactive by default. Click “Edit” and check “Allow people managing this page to write posts in different languages”, and followed by “Save changes”.

If you already manage a Facebook page, you can activate the possibility of publishing in different languages in the same way as for a new Facebook page

If you already manage a Facebook page, you can activate the possibility of publishing in different languages in the same way as for a new Facebook page.

How to add a multilingual Facebook post?

After activating the above option, you can add multilingual posts on the timeline. To do that, start adding a post by writing. In the bottom right corner, you will find “Write post in a different language”. Click on it and choose a language. The possibility of translating one post to many different languages is an interesting option. In practice, this will enable you to reach recipients from different countries at the same time.

In some cases, Facebook will suggest a translation, e.g. when publishing in Norwegian or English but it won’t work for Albanian, etc. Regardless of the above, it is always a good idea to add your own translation because in most cases the automated Facebook translation will not be fully correct. To ensure the highest level of accuracy of Facebook post translation, we encourage you to use services of a translation agency.

Professional Facebook post translations

Configuration of displaying posts for particular countries

Facebook gives you the possibility of displaying posts only to recipients from countries of your choice. This option can be activated by going to “Settings”, and then in the “General” section choosing “News Feed Audience and Visibility for Posts”. After activating this feature posts can be added in the following way:

As you can see, an additional window appeared, where you can specify your recipients precisely. Targeting is possible in two ways: by limiting age and location, as well as targeting in updates. When choosing the first option, you can specify the age and location of recipients you want to reach. This is useful when you want to share information that will only be interesting to people living in a certain country, province, city, etc. You can also choose the targeted users according to postcodes.

Targeting in the updates section is a slightly more advanced option. You can configure the interests, age, location and even languages of recipients you want to reach. With proper settings, you will achieve significantly better results. For instance: you want to post information about a special deal for sports footwear but it only applies in Germany. The first thing you need to do is think about who will be most interested in such information. In this case, the target group will most likely include people aged 15-40 who do sports and are fans of sports. For this purpose, go to “News Feed Targeting” to set the following:

·        Interests: sports, fitness, basketball, football, tennis and other related categories;

·        Age: e.g. 15-40;

·        Optionally, you can choose the gender;

·        Locations: Germany;

·        Languages: you can leave this empty so the information will reach everyone living in Germany without focusing on different nationalities and people who are only visiting Germany.

Is narrowing down groups of recipients a good idea?

Keep in mind that whatever you post on your Facebook page will not always reach all people who liked it. The use of the targeting option will limit the recipient group and you will only reach those people, who may be most interested in such information. This will increase their engagement and will contribute to acquiring more post likes. It will also increase the chances of your post being shared, which will enable your Facebook page to get more likes.

How to manage a multilingual Facebook page?

Managing a multilingual Facebook page requires you to focus on several aspects. First of all, you need to ensure consistent identity and specify the strategy of communication with recipients. It is equally as important to specify the goal you want to reach through your Facebook presence.

Consistent identity

The basic activity you need to take care of is consistent visual identity. As much as for Facebook pages targeted at one local market this will not be a big problem, managing a Facebook multilingual page will require you to look after several details. Firstly, you have to be aware that the appearance of your page will be the same, regardless of the recipient’s country. This is why your profile and background photos should be universal, presenting the character of your brand.

The biggest problem with retaining such consistent identity is constituted by descriptions in such sections as “About” or “Information”. Unfortunately, Facebook did not allow the possibility of entering different language versions of such descriptions so they will not match the language of the browser (as the case is for multilingual posts). A global Facebook page will be an exception here but not everyone can set one up. Entering descriptions in English seems to be the best solution. This will make it more probable for the deciding target audience to understand the above descriptions.

Specifying the goal of the Facebook page

Appearance is not all that matters. What’s also important (if not the most important) are the goals you want to reach with your presence on social media. It is assumed that they should be used to establish and maintain a relationship with customers. Nevertheless, the practice has shown that you can use Facebook in many different ways.

As we have already mentioned, a multilingual Facebook page will mainly be used to reinforce customer relationships. In such a case, it is a good idea to publish photos showing normal company life, introducing employees or describing completed projects. You can also reward your most loyal fans by notifying them about special deals available only to people who liked your brand.

Facebook also makes it possible to manage a page for other purposes. Using Facebook’s features, you can publish offers on your company profiles, configure ads to acquire contacts, improve your brand recognition or build reactions of recipients to your activities. Effective use of this portal requires goals to be set clearly. This way, you will be able to determine whether your activity generates the desired results.

Using Facebook Ads

You can improve your Facebook page’s performance by launching paid ads on Facebook using Facebook Business Manager. There are huge possibilities in this scope, while the method of their configuration depends only on the goals you wish to achieve. When you use only the basic advertisement, you can increase traffic on a given website (page with an offer, landing page, etc.), acquire contacts, notify users about special deals, reach a given group of recipients with information or acquire new likes.

Business Manager on Facebook

When you manage several Facebook pages, it is a good idea to check out the “Facebook Business Manager” service. When you decide to choose this solution, you will be able to monitor updates on your pages, manage ads, assign employee accounts, cooperate with business partners, etc. All of this can be done from one place. It is also a good method for monitoring the effectiveness of activities of an external company if you have outsourced the service of managing your Facebook page. You can also access the key statistics regarding your recipients, e.g. location, demographics as well as other data that will be useful in your marketing activities.

Automated moderation of comments on Facebook and other features

Facebook makes it possible to automate multiple tasks. When you go to “Settings” of your Facebook page, you will have access to numerous interesting features. If you want to be in control over the quality of comments, you can activate their automated moderation, blocking those which contain coarse language. You also have the possibility of integrating Messenger with a chat on your website as well as configuring an assistant that will respond to queries.

A multilingual Facebook page will give you access to a bigger market

Proper configuration and management of a multilingual Facebook page will give you the possibility of your offer reaching recipients abroad. Presence in social media is the key component of marketing activities today but their effectiveness depends on how you run your account. An equally important aspect is to use all the possibilities and settings with full awareness as well as ensuring the highest level of care about consistent visual identity and communication. When you use this social network, you will simplify the international expansion of your company significantly. Create your Facebook social media marketing strategy today.

Need a translator for your Facebook page? We will take care of it!