Expanding your business to make it more accessible can feel endless and tiring. You have to look at all aspects of your digital presence and make every part accessible, from your website to your social media. After months, or years, of attempting to attract new customers while keeping your existing ones, it may seem hopeless. But don’t fret; there’s a solution: bilingual social media!
Bilingual, or multilingual, social media is when a company uses different languages to communicate with their audience on social media. Multilingual social media is a necessity for businesses looking to expand their audience. Bilingual copy is accessible to more people and ensures viewers feel accounted for. However multilingual marketing of any kind is not easy.
Top 3 Tips for Bilingual Social Media Marketing
Over the last few months, Colibri Digital Marketing has been posting bilingual content on our social media and we have learned a few things. Below are Colibri’s top three tips for multilingual social media marketing.
1. Look at Your Demographics
The first step is knowing who is following and interacting with you on social media. Look at your demographics outside of social media as well to truly understand your audience. You need to know where they are from, their culture, and their language for bilingual marketing. For example, if your main target audience is in Japan, you wouldn’t want to translate your social content to French instead of Japanese, would you?
Looking at the demographics of your audience is especially helpful when determining which groups you should focus on. Let’s say a third of your audience speaks Japanese, a third speaks English, and a third speaks French. Up until this point, your marketing has been in English, and you want to add in another language. Should it be Japanese or French? How do you decide? You look at who engages with your content the most! But, be careful to make sure you do not leave anyone behind. If you focus solely on one part of your audience and forget the others, you may lose business.
2. Diversify Your Staff
Having employees that understand your target audiences will allow your company to build a stronger connection with them. Understanding and relating to your audience will help form a sense of community.
Additionally, when using bilingual social media marketing, online translation services tend to be faulty. That could lead to misinterpretations of your company’s messaging which can hurt your business big time. Have you ever put a pun into Google Translate? It doesn’t always go well.
Therefore, having employees that come from ethnic groups you are trying to connect with is a must for multiple reasons. One, you can catch any errors because they understand the language. And two, you can have a better understanding of your customers.
Outside of making your brand bilingual, it is important to have diversity among your staff. Why? There are many reasons, most importantly, when people from different backgrounds bring their ideas to the table, a conversation starts that leads to success. Hearing different viewpoints is essential in marketing.
3. Use the Right Social Media Platforms
Knowing your demographics and having perfect translations are useless if you don’t know which platforms to use. In America, we use platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and many others to promote companies. Some of these platforms are not popular in other countries and a few are illegal. For that reason, it’s important to do your research and connect with your audience in a way that works for them.
Takeaways
Our world is growing more diverse every day and it’s important that we all keep up. Implementing changes such as making your social media bilingual are not easy. It takes time and plenty of effort. Remember, spending time to do research and can allow your company to grow and diversify. It’s important to take extra measures with bilingual social media marketing to make your company shine!
Do you have questions about social media? Reach out to Colibri Digital Marketing, a certified B Corp, for a 30-minute complimentary digital strategy session by clicking the button below.
