6 Simple Steps to Perfecting Your Social Media Translation Strategy
Have you ever posted a Facebook status about how your day has been, checked Twitter for the latest TV show reactions, or uploaded pictures to Instagram of your weekend away?
Most of us have. In fact, there are over 4.7 billion social media users in the world today — that’s over half of the entire global population!
But, is that really so surprising? We’re a herd species, so we love companionship, and we’re hard-wired to survive as a group. It’s in our nature to want to be connected with other people, and in the digital age, it’s easier than ever.
So, what does that have to do with your business? Well, let’s just say that social media presents an opportunity for you.
Did you know that 26.5% of social media users are using their chosen platforms specifically to find products or services to buy? Social media is an incredible market to tap into for a newly-globalised business, but you have to do it right.
If you’re looking to go international, you’ll need to translate your original content so it’s suitable for each individual audience. That applies to social media content just as much as marketing or website content.
Sounds easy enough, right? Just translate your posts into another language, stick them online, and you’ve got a marketing strategy for a whole new audience in a whole new country. Simple.
Well, not quite.
In this blog post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about social media translation, all through our six steps to success. From how impactful it can be to why you need to do it right, here’s our guide on how to perfect your social media translation strategy.
1. Research and plan
First things first — you’ll need to know who you’re speaking to. As with all marketing, it’s important that you identify the audience for your social media translations in order to personalise your message.
Are you selling a product or service? If so, think about the kinds of people who would need it. What is their likely age range, their occupation, their pain points and desires? What do they value most, and how does your product help them? If you have them available, check your analytics to find out who your average customer is and how they behave.
Next, think about the international market. Which country or group of people would most closely match your audience? You don’t want to target a language that has little or no use for what you’re providing. Their culture and values may be quite different to your original audience, as well as their way of living.
Remember that you’re not just targeting new countries; there are speakers of different languages within almost every country, so you can target communities within the same country but who speak a different language.
For instance, you can consider a Spanish social media strategy within the US, where 13% of the population speak it at home, or a Swedish strategy within Finland, in which Swedish is an official language.
Once you’ve identified your new target language and you know who your audience is, you can move on to researching which platforms are most popular with your new target market.
2. Use different social media accounts for each language
It’s an easy mistake to make, thinking it’s best to keep it all in one place, but the general advice is to always have separate social media accounts for each language that you’re targeting.
Separating the languages into different accounts lets you and your audience keep better track of your content. It will also allow the target audiences to be more engaged with your content, as it’s just for them; they don’t have to sift through posts in a language they don’t understand.
It makes them feel heard, understood, and important when each account is personalised to them.
You can easily display and keep track of which language your account is for with a language tag (like ES for Spanish, JA for Japanese), or the full name of the language or region if you’ve got room.
And if you’re still struggling to juggle the accounts, hiring a social media manager is always an option.
3. Consider character limits
Now let’s talk about character limits. We all know Twitter, right? And we all know that Twitter has a limit of 280 characters when you post? That’s certainly better than the original 140 characters, but it’s still quite tight.
This is why having your social media translation done by a professional is so vital; a lot of languages have longer words on average than English. Text that has been literally translated from English into another language may not meet the character requirements, so you’ll need to get creative.
A social media translation expert can condense and trim your social media content down when translating it, so it retains the same message, but fits into the space.
4. Use social media jargon carefully
‘Like this post’, ‘DM me’, ‘hit subscribe’ — all commonly-known and well-used phrases in English. But how well do they translate?
The truth is that, whilst some languages have adopted common internet colloquialisms, not all have. Translating these phrases literally will probably cause some confusion.
The best way to ensure that your socials make sense internationally is to err on the side of caution and omit jargon when possible. Your translation expert will also know the ins and outs of the target language and culture, so they’ll know how best to adapt what you’re saying.
5. Be patient and measure success
Social media strategies, even for an established company in their original country, take time to reach fruition.
If you want to succeed, you need to put time and effort into posting regularly, and continuously measure reach and engagement for different kinds of posts to see what performs well.
It will take some patience, but by posting regular updates and checking your analytics data often, you’ll move past the ‘new kid on the block’ phase in no time.
However, if you find that none of your posts seem to be performing well — even after some time has passed and you’ve built up a base — there may be a problem with either your content or your translations.
Low engagement from social media posts may be due to the content not being what your audience wants to see, but it could also be that your translations aren’t resonating with them.
This is why analytics data is so important; if you can see that certain posts aren’t performing well, but others are, find out what the better-performing posts are doing differently, and then incorporate that into all of your content.
You should also check to see if any the following could be the issue:
There are grammar or spelling errors
The message isn’t relevant to the audience
There isn’t enough localisation/transcreation involved
The times and dates that you post can also have an impact — remember to research when your target audience is most likely to be online and checking their socials. Most social media platforms will let you schedule posts, so you can add new content even whilst you’re sleeping!
6. Use a professional native speaker for your social media translation
Social media translation is an important part of your international strategy, and it shouldn’t be left to chance.
We’ve walked you through what social media translation is, and why it’s so important. We’ve taught you about character limits, jargon usage, and the importance of having one account per language. But the most valuable tip we can give is to consider using a professional, native speaker for your translation.
Social media translations are an art. They require time, talent, and experience to get right, and only a professional knows the nuances of the language and the platform well enough to craft flawless translations fit for your international company.
At ZippyLingo, we have a collection of expert linguists — all native speakers of their language — who have years of experience and a passion for social media translation. We translate quickly, to a high standard, and for an unbeatable price.
Interested in making your social media translations really stand out from the crowd? Then get in touch with ZippyLingo today.
