Translation

10 Ways To Build A Multilingual Social Media Presence

Team Pepper
Posted on 20/02/236 min read
10 Ways To Build A Multilingual Social Media Presence
All brands are doing social media, but to improve your brand’s reach, it is time now to focus on improving your multilingual social media presence.

Multilingual social media can target huge audience groups at the same time. According to a study, the internet has an average of three billion active users, and every person has at least five social media accounts. However, many small and large companies underestimate the power of social media and use only one language to build their social media presence.

In this digital age, audience engagement is important and crucial to your brand’s success. Building a multilingual social media presence will help you reach a larger audience and boost engagement and customer trust. Nothing conveys more trust than seeing content in your language!

Source

Social media platforms are not only for sharing your vacation pictures but also make it easy for people to connect across time zones and national borders. However, the language barrier is still very prevalent. More than 50% of the social media content that lives online is in English, yet less than 1/3 of internet users speak English. To cover the language gap that prevails throughout the globe, it is always better to build a multilingual social media presence for your brand.

People on the internet use different languages to search for certain content online, and only when you create that content in the language they are looking for can they find your page. The internet is growing at a very fast pace and to grow your business in today’s time, having a multilingual social media account is a must.

Why Have a Multilingual Social Media Presence?

Regardless of the language preferred by the brand, consumers like to read posts and various other content from businesses in their language. Consumers don’t have the time to translate your content into their language. By using the languages consumers prefer, brands can establish and grow trust, respect, and interest in every demographic zona. Social media is all about building relationships and is crucial to expanding the customer base.

Brands that publish social media content exclusively in English miss out on their chance to establish their brand name globally. Most English native speakers are found in parts of America; however, if you want to create a global customer base, you need to start creating and publishing brand content in various other languages.

Connecting with a global audience is impossible using only the English language. Building a multilingual social media is necessary if you want to grow your brand’s presence. Here are some key guidelines you can follow:

Source

1. Know your audience

Before creating social media content in any particular language, you must know your target customer group. You can use various analytics tools available on the internet for your research. The aim is to narrow your target audience’s interests as much as possible.

Gather knowledge about the language spoken by your target audience, their age group, cultural preferences, geographic locations, and social media habits.

2. Goal Setting

We cannot stress this enough. As easy as it looks to maintain a social media account, it is a very time-consuming task. Not only does it involves posting regular content, but it also involves studying various algorithms to grow a social media account in the long run. Setting your goals is important as it helps plan your future social media actions. As a brand owner, you should not ignore goal setting as it helps improve your social media presence.

3. Selecting the right platform

Most companies make the mistake of creating social media accounts on various platforms without even realizing that it is unnecessary. Before creating a social media account, research your target audience’s most used social media platform, especially if you are planning on creating multilingual social media accounts for different regions.

For instance, in some countries, users may prefer Instagram, whereas, in others, users may prefer using Pinterest or any other social media platform. Additionally, in some countries, some social media platforms are banned.

4. Do not use Google Translate

One of the major mistakes that most companies tend to make while creating a multilingual social media account is using Google translate. Free translators available online are only good for emails or messages. These translators have certain limitations and cannot bridge the cultural context for your various social media posts. You can get in touch with professionals to get the social media content translated into a different language, but never use Google or any other translator available online.

5. Multilingual Keyword Research

Carry out keyword searches on the languages you are working on and use the selected terms to translate your social networks. Keywords and their search volume vary by country, so consider the countries you target and do your homework before creating your multilingual social media campaign. Use the appropriate hashtags in each language and decide in advance which keywords to use in your hashtag.

6. Make use of Social Media Tools and Trends

You will find various tools online that help in improving your online presence. These tools make your life a lot easier. To grow on social media, staying updated regarding the latest trends and content marketing strategies is important. However, not everything will work out for your company, but it’s best to stay updated and try various strategies to see which one works for your social media accounts.

7. Customized content

When you are targetting an audience from a specific geographical area, it is always advised to add a local touch. Creating multilingual content does not only mean creating content in several languages but also adding emotions and ideas that the local people can relate to. This is essential if you want to improve your social media presence.

8. Finding the right SEO keywords and Hashtags

SEO is fundamental for social media and everything on the internet. The same hashtag cannot be used for all social media accounts. Hashtags and SEO also depend on geographic locations. The wrong choice of keywords or hashtags can result in low traffic to your website and social media accounts.

9. Be Authentic

Content is King! It is important to stay authentic to make a human connection with your target audience. Social media is all about building and maintaining a relationship with customers. Social media is about your target audience; it is not about bombarding you with non-relatable content.

To build and maintain that trust, it is necessary to curate each post and campaign very carefully.

10. Collaborate with top-notch multilingual content agencies

Collaborating with a top-notch content agency is best if you are trying to build multilingual social media accounts from scratch. These agencies have professionals doing this for years and have successfully contributed to the growth of several multilingual social media accounts.

These agencies have the right amount of knowledge regarding a particular geographical location and can translate content without losing its actual meaning. As mentioned above, one should never rely on Google translate for building multilingual social media accounts.

It is safe to say that social media runs our lives, and to establish your brand from scratch; you will require social media’s help today. However, not everybody speaks the same language. Hence, it is always advised to use various languages to reach a large customer base.

FAQs

1. Why is it important to create social media accounts in different languages?

Not everybody speaks English. Only people residing in certain parts of the world have English as their first language. Companies that create content in the English language cannot sustain themselves in the long run. Social media is all about building a relationship with your customers, and when you are only creating content in English, not everybody on the internet can relate to it. Audiences find content in their mother tongue more relatable as compared to English.

2. How to decide on the language for a campaign?

While selecting the language for any campaign, conduct thorough research on the culture and language spoken by locals. You can use the sources available on the internet and various analytical tools for your research.

3. Why is social media important for brand growth?

The usage of the internet is now not only confined to reading articles or watching movies online, with the introduction of social media, but the internet has also become a lot more accessible and as well as an important part of our daily lives. Since 99.9% of people are on social media, using a social media channel to build brand trust has become crucial.