Six Expert Tips for the Best Social Media Localization
Localization is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. It lets you personalize your content to users' needs from various geographic areas. As you manage your localization process, it's critical to remember your social media. Not only do you want to translate your content so that it's available for users in various geographic areas, but you also want to make sure you're localizing the content you provide. Follow these six tips for social media localization.
1. Conduct Local Market Research
To localize your content for social media, start by conducting local market research in the various geographic areas where you intend to market your content. You don't just want to get to know a broad general audience that may span the globe. Instead, you want to consider users' needs in those specific geographic areas. Learn more about:
How are customers using your products?
Remember that users may have vastly different approaches depending on where they are located.What pain points do your users have?
While users from your primary geographic area may have one set of pain points, you may discover that users in a different area have another set of pain points entirely.How do users respond to content marketing efforts?
What evokes a response from users in specific demographics? For example, what are they most likely to click on when they visit your social media profile, taking them to your website?
The more you learn about your target market, the better you can gear both your marketing efforts and your products toward the needs of those diverse users. You may find unexpected opportunities to expand your product range or change how you market your products to grow your business.
2. Establish More Than One Social Media Page
To localize your social media content, you need to control which social media profiles your users access. Consider creating specific social media profiles for the various languages or regions you want to target with your brand. Having multiple localized social media platforms can go a long way toward ensuring that you can significantly meet the needs of every segment of your target audience as your geographic reach expands. Even small things like color associations or imagery can have dramatically different interpretations from one geographic area to another. So, creating multiple profiles ensures that you share the right content with each one.
As your social media presence expands, ensuring you're working with the right company to manage your social media presence is critical. You may need a team of experts who can help ensure that all your content goes out to the suitable profiles at the right time, as well as localization specialists who can help ensure that you get all the essential elements of your posts.
3. Connect With Local Personalities
As part of your market research into local areas, you may have gained information about local personalities with a strong presence in your target market. Who do people in a specific geographic area visit locally when they need information about your industry? Who do they consider the "experts?" What about radio personalities or local artists and influencers?
Create a relationship with those local personalities and share their content on your social media pages. You can have them do the following:
Create content, including videos or posts, specifically for your business
Hold interviews
Look for ways to collaborate
Often, the connection members of your target market have with those local personalities will translate to your brand, encouraging them to feel a higher degree of confidence in the services and products you have to offer.
4. Partner With Local Causes
Cause marketing offers many potential benefits for your brand. It shows what and who you care about, including the causes close to your business's mission and heart. You may have many broad causes you focus on that reflect your business's mission. However, consider finding ways to partner with local causes to expand your reach and improve those advantages. Then, share that content on your social media profile. That may include things like:
Raising awareness of local causes
Sharing content about things happening in your target area, including events and news
Raising money or donations for causes that are important to members of your target market
Your market research can come into play here, too, since it can provide you with essential insight into what is important to the members of your target market.
5. Spark Conversations
One of the key benefits of your social media presence is your ability to engage in conversations with your customers. You can answer their questions, learn about their needs and desires when they connect with your business, and participate in the ongoing discussion surrounding your industry. As you localize your social media platforms, look for ways to localize those conversations, too:
Pay attention to local events and news.
When things occur that are relevant to your industry start a conversation on your social media page.Participate in conversations taking place in your industry.
Don't post on your page alone. Instead, become a vital part of the discussion on other platforms, which can help lead customers back to your brand.Post questions or discussion openers relevant to your target market members in a specific geographic area.
Once again, this is where your market research comes in handy. It will give you will have a deeper understanding of their particular needs.
Make sure that you continue the discussion on each localized page. Don't just post questions and step away. Instead, look for ways to be part of the conversation, from answering questions to providing key insights.
6. Engage in a Multimedia Approach
As with any social media content, your localized content should include a variety of media approaches, including images and video. Often, members of your target market are more likely to like, share, and comment on multimedia content like videos, infographics, memes, and images. Take care to localize your images and your other content. Images, especially regarding humor and memes, can have very different meanings across different demographics. If you want to increase engagement and ensure that you are creating the response you want with that content, then make sure it is localized.
Remember the importance of video! Sometimes, video translation services ensure you can put those videos in your target audience's preferred language through subtitles. In other cases, you should record separate content for those different audiences. Work with localization experts or local representatives to ensure your videos are fully localized.
Get Help Localizing Your Social Media Content
A localized approach allows you to personalize your marketing to the needs of multiple geographic areas. As a result, you'll create a more profound sense of connection across your website, social media profiles, emails, and more.