In the present era, social media is a primary means to connect with customers. Without social media localization, brands cannot link to global customers. Globally, 3.6 billion people were reportedly actively using social media in 2020, and by 2025, that number is expected to reach over 4 billion. Social media marketing offers numerous opportunities to connect with a sizable worldwide audience. 

The language barrier makes it difficult for you to connect with your target audience on social media. Brands shouldn’t ignore social media translation because only approximately 19% of people around the globe speak English as a first or second language. Asia and South America are two continents with the fastest internet growth. The languages most extensively spoken in these areas also happen to be expanding the quickest worldwide. Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, and Portuguese have all seen significant increases in speaker numbers recently.

Localization entails modifying components other than words into a culturally relevant structure. In this post, we’ll go over the best tips for social media localization and demonstrate how to use them for your company.

• Choosing the right platforms to be localized: The first point to consider before social media localization is selecting the right platform. Every country has a different platform that is popular and used by people. Despite being the world’s largest social media market, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are banned in China, so localizing these platforms to attract Chinese customers will be unfruitful. To target Chinese customers, a company should localize Douyin, WeChat, and Weibo. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube are not banned in Russia, but most Russian people have accounts on VK. So, to connect with most Russian people, VK should be localized. 
• Choose the right content to be localized: All your content will not work for local people, so choosing the right content is crucial for social media localization. The social media content that should be localized for local customers includes content relevant to local festivals, local holidays, seasonal items, local news, and relevant social issues. For example, Australia prepares for winter in April, while the US prepares for Spring and India is already facing hot summers. So, the social media localization content should be relevant to the locality. 
• Create separate social media pages for each country: Separate social media pages will help post culturally and geography-relevant content. The specifically curated content on country-specific social media pages will increase customer engagement. 
• Use geo-targeting: Geo-targeting allows social media content personalization for the customers of a particular geographical area, including a specific country, city or even a zip code. For example, a cricket match between two countries is going on, and people of these two countries are busy watching the game and do not have time to cook. In that case, a food delivery service company can tag people from those countries to order online food and can even provide some offers to attract more customers. 
• Use influencers to localize social media content: Most people buy products recommended by influencers they like. An influencer can be an actor, player, singer, blogger, YouTuber, and others. Local influencers can effectively localize social media content to run a marketing campaign. 
• Work with experienced linguistic experts: Accurate translation is the first requirement for the efficient localization of social media localization. Skilled and experienced translators are essential in targeting local markets and native speakers. A translator must understand a particular region’s idioms, phrases and cultural nuances. White Globe has more than 3000+ translators who can deliver a translation in more than 350+ languages. 
• Use innovative translation tools: Manual translation can be time-consuming and expensive when translating content on a large scale. It is wise to use computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools in such instances. White Globe has AI and human intervention-powered translation tools which deliver quality translation with speed and scale.
• Be mindful of text expansion: When the text is translated from one language to another, then the text can either shrink or expand. When the text of English is translated into Russian, then text translation goes up to 300%. A localization expert should be mindful of it. The expansion is true for voice overs, also. Sometimes the voiceovers are longer than the video, and in such instances, the video needs to be edited again. 
• Content tone adaptation: Every culture has a distinct tone. Interacting with locals would be impactful in adapting to a particular culture. Every culture has a different way of communication between youngsters and older people. There are various norms for communicating with separate sexes. Young people use jargon, slang, and colloquial expressions in their communications, so if a product is for youngsters, social media content should also be dedicated to youngsters. Implementing all this will attract a larger section of the target audience. 
• Accommodate users’ experience: All the aspects of social media content should be localized as per the target audience. Every country follows a different time and date format, units of measurement, currency symbol, and address format. All these points should be accommodated during social media localization. These small details make significant differences, and customers get a personalized experience. 
• Localize appearance: Social media posts should feature your target audience’s people, places, and cultural allusions. A clear geographic giveaway can be the incorrect national flag flying in the distance, a well-known structure from another nation, or a vehicle travelling on the “wrong” side of the road.
  
  

Conclusion: 

The secret to entering a new market is localizing social media material, which entails more than just translating text and using the same materials across all locales. Instead, it necessitates conducting in-depth audience analysis, working with local influencers and translators, and employing highly effective translation technology.

White Globe is Asias’ one of the best localization service providers, and our services help businesses understand customers, remove language barriers to entering a new market, expand the customer base, expand revenue and sales, improve brand loyalty, and enhance success in advertising campaigns. 

Ready to create social media content that resonates? Connect with White Globe.