For companies with a presence in more than one country, multilingual social media marketing presents an additional challenge. Many companies don’t think that social media is very important and worth to manage it in different languages. This is where they go wrong. Let’s see why….
Did you know that there are currently over 3.48 billion active social media users around the world, each of whom spends an average of 135 minutes (almost two and a half hours) on social media sites each and every day?
For many people, social media is where they read the latest news, leave reviews on products and services, ask for recommendations from friends and interact and engage with the companies they want to do business with.
If your brand doesn’t have a strong presence on social media, it goes without saying that you’re missing out on an enormous (and highly affordable) marketing opportunity, as well as the invaluable chance to interact directly with your existing and potential customers.
Understanding the need for multilingual social media marketing
For companies with a presence in more than one country, multilingual social media marketing presents an additional challenge. Aside from speaking various languages, customers in different countries may prefer to use their own unique social media networks.
Here are just a few examples which might surprise you:
- In Japan, local platform LINE is the number one Social Media platform, followed by Twitter
- Reddit is the second most popular social media platform after Facebook in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and Norway
- In China, where sites like Facebook and Instagram aren’t available, QZone, WeChat, and QQ are the most popular social platforms
- Russian-speaking countries prefer sites like VKontakte and Odnoklassniki
In addition, younger demographics are moving away from the well-established social giants you may already be familiar with in favor of platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. With your future customers no longer making use of the social media networks your brand is active on, the time to get proactive is now.
Speaking the language of the people
It’s easy to understand why being active on social media is so valuable for businesses. Social Media Platforms allow businesses to engage directly with their customers, share news and promotional offers, and answer common questions.
If your company has clients from different countries who speak different languages, your social media engagement has to be multilingual. Being able to engage with those customers in their own language and on the social media platforms they are most comfortable with gives you a massive advantage.
Multilingual Social media gives you the added advantage of free publicity courtesy of your happy customers, builds your brand awareness, and makes you more accessible in those markets you work in.
Multilingual Social Media is vital for B2B and B2C businesses
Because they can’t make direct sales on social media, many B2B companies don’t take social media marketing seriously. This is a mistake, as the value of having a presence on social networks with millions of active users is much larger than you might realize. In addition, established platforms like LinkedIn, which are specifically designed for B2B social media marketing, provide boundless networking opportunities.
Social media marketing can help B2B companies:
- Build brand awareness across a multilingual audience
- Boost customer engagement
- Allow for better online reputation management, and
- Improve your website ranking in search engines
How Multilingual Social Media Marketing can positively impact your SEO rankings
Many businesses don’t realize that search engines are more likely to rank your website high in those locations where you show an active online presence. By linking active social media platforms to your website, you are automatically creating greater online awareness in those territories your social media followers come from. The more likes, followers, and engagement you have on social media platforms, the more likely it becomes that your website will be found through searches in that language and region.
Let’s say you’re taking your brand to the Russian market. Your ranking in search engines should improve if you have the most popular Russian social media platforms linked to your website. If you have a large number of likes and followers on those social media networks, search engines use this as a cue that your brand is trustworthy. And because those followers are located in Russia, local search engines like Google.ru and Russian search engine Yandex will also reward you with better rankings.
And while Google’s algorithms are a little different, Search Engine Bing, which handled 24% of all search queries in 2017, uses social likes and shares as a direct ranking factor.
Most important of all, however, is that the content you put out on social media is relevant to your followers. You need to add fresh, engaging, and updated content regularly to keep your rankings high. And that’s where PolyDigital Marketing can help!
Our six-point approach to multilingual social media marketing has been shown to:
- Create and build brand awareness amongst a multilingual audience
- Improve SEO metrics
- Allow businesses of all sizes to engage with their existing multilingual customers
- Boost website traffic, generating more leads and sales
- Generate positive online reviews
- Improve link building and distribution of multilingual content
If you’re ready to take your international social media strategy to the next level, get in touch with us today!