The guide to global

social media
The ins and outs of multilingual social marketing

Social is for everyone

Social media is one of your most powerful tools for
growth. Low-cost and highly targeted, the worlds
many social platforms have seen rapid adoption by
marketers of the smallest businesses and largest
brands alike. Its one of the most cost-effective ways
to reach your audiences, segment by interest and
keep them engaged, both in your primary market
and overseas.
Of all of the places online where people spend their
time, youll find that your target audience is likely
on socialas of 2015, three billion people worldwide
were active internet users, and two billion of them
were active on social media. Your job? Make it easy
for them to find you. Put content in their language,
share relevant information and join the conversation.

SOCIAL IS FOR EVERYONE

SOCIAL MEDIA FACTS

NETWORK

MICRO/BLOGGING

Social media is a broad concept, comprising every-

A website or app where users communicate by

Microblogs function like network-style activity

thing from networks to micro/blogging platforms

sharing information, comments, images, messages

feeds (one update after another in a single stream).

and messaging services. Heres whats what.

and more. Updates from all users, brands and

Traditional blogs are built for longer-form content,

pages appear in a single feed.

similar to digital newspapers and magazines.

Examples

Examples

Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn

Twitter, Medium, Sina Weibo

Brand Tip

Brand Tip

Brands on these networks, like individuals, create

A communication form all its own, many microblogs

dedicated pages where users can go to subscribe

give brands the opportunity to purchase ad

to updates, interact with content and share their

space, although usually at a higher premium than

thoughts. Networks also have increasingly

networks. Blogs are the perfect way to share

sophisticated post and ad targeting.

thought leadership and grow a larger audience.

1/3
2.8

internet users are on

social media
billion active social network
accounts worldwide

MESSAGING
Sometimes a component of networks or micro/
blogs, these apps are dedicated to 1-to-1
or group chat, often lacking a feed component.
They include a mix of text, voice and multimedia
messaging features.
Examples
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat,
WeChat, LINE
Brand Tip
Brands can get playful with these ephemeral
formats, and best practices are already emerging
for advertising on these platforms. Our advice?
Have fun with it.

SOCIAL IS FOR EVERYONE

WHICH NETWORK TOPS THE LIST

NETWORK SPOTLIGHT

apps in history, with over one billion users in 80+

countries. QQ now features built-in translation and

Ranked in absolute terms by worldwide user

Topping the list alongside worldwide networks are

numbers, Facebook and Twitter are the worlds top

a few lesser-known players worldwide that have

two networks, followed by Google+, Baidu and

significant users in the countries and regions they

Instagram. Of the three kinds of social media,

were created in.

ties into popular Chinese social platform Qzone.

VKONTAKTE (VK)

messaging apps comprise a significant chunk of

the worlds social media usage. See the top social
platforms below, by country.

WEIBO

Social network, launched in 2007

Hot with Russian speakers worldwide, VK is
Europes largest social network and is the second

Microblogging platform, launched in 2009

most visited website in Russia. On VK, users

15%

21%

Sina Weibo is a visual blogging service with features

share text updates, video, audio and images and

40%

14%

13%

like ecommerce, chat and brand-user conversation

can also play browser-based games

Brazil

25%

11%

13%

capabilities. With a huge user base in China,

Canada

47%

23%

15%

its used regularly by individuals, celebrities, media

France

32%

09%

10%

outlets, businesses and government agencies.

Germany

28%

07%

07%

Hong Kong

33%

10%

12%

COUNTRIES

FACEBOOK

Argentina

35%

Australia

TWITTER

GOOGLE+

QQ

LINE

Messaging app, launched in 2011

Japans LINE, popular as much for its unique stickers

India

08%

06%

07%

Indonesia

14%

11%

09%

Italy

24%

10%

10%

Messaging app, launched in 1999

video chat, text and call one another through a single

Japan

13%

16%

02%

Ever-evolving, Tencent QQs modern chat app is

app. LINE also promotes brand-exclusive news

Malaysia

32%

18%

21%

among the most popular personal communications

and coupon opportunities.

Mexico

26%

15%

17%

Philippines

21%

13%

13%

Poland

35%

10%

19%

Russia

18%

10%

15%

Saudi Arabia

21%

Singapore

39%

15%

14%

South Africa

26%

13%

15%

South Korea

26%

13%

08%

Spain

32%

17%

11%

Turkey

26%

17%

14%

UK

43%

19%

12%

USA

42%

19%

14%

Graph Top social platforms, by country We Are Social,

Digital, Social and Mobile Compendium (2015)

19%

15%

and brand characters as its platform, lets users

How to translate
social media content
Social is a means, not an end. Fueled by your
content marketing, it should drive traffic
back to your site, establish a strong community
and enhance your companys visibility. Before
diving into social, its therefore important
to regularly create shareable content in your
target language. Heres how.

HOW TO TRANSLATE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

THE PRE-SOCIAL TRANSLATION FLOW

PRODUCT

CONTENT-BASED MARKETING

When is it time to start looking at social?

Your product should be one of the first things that

Blogs. Articles. White papers. Now were getting

Your translation flow should backwards from your

you localize. Product localization includes your

closer to social territory. The decision behind if

marketing goals, whether its increasing your

primary product interface (a dashboard? an admin

and how youll translate this information is a big

number of users or having shoppers convert into

console? a feed?), including transactioal elements

one, and adds another layer of complexity

customers. To get the most out of your inter-

like email (welcome! sign in, forgot password).

to your marketing efforts. If this is your first time

national social marketing, your entire user funnel

For an ecommerce company, for example, this is

tackling international marketing, take a minute

should be localized. Follow our flowchart

the shopping cart and checkout experience.

to define these workflows and choose flexible

to see what you need to translate to be successful.

translation tools that will let you regularly create

WEBSITE

This is usually intertwined with your product

and promote multilingual content.

4
5

PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS

translation, especially for ecommerce companies,

but not always. The pages that follow your

Campaigns, landing pages, email, social media.

product localization include things like catalogues,

Its time. After creating an airtight, multilingual

how-to pages, about pages, press pages, career

digital foundation for your company, double-check

pages and other information that isnt essential to

that every stage of your customers experience

the core product experience.

is localized and start exploring ways to get your

content out to reach international users, including

OPS

Because many customer inquiries come in through

social media, social plays an important role in
offering full international customer support. On the
ops side, its important to lock down processes
for handling inquiries about your website, product
or service before building out your social media
marketing.

via social media.

HOW TO TRANSLATE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE

CREATE A PLAN, WITH

CALENDAR AND ROLES

Social media has a lot of moving parts. When sharing

experience your social page or feed, take a look

at where it makes sense to use targeting and where
its better to set up a separate account and feed

content, you have to optimize images, post times,

Who is in charge of social media? Do you have

for a new language. If creating language-specific

copy and more, across several networks, while

a single Social Media Manager? Or several

feeds, link to these from your localized home-

engaging with your followers in a brand-friendly

country-specific managers? If he or she is receiving

pages and communications and make it easy for

help from other members of the team, who is

multilingual users to find these pages.

and meaningful manner.

responsible for which steps in the promotion proOne common fear is that adding a second language

cess? Will you create content in one language

will naturally double or triple the amount of

and translate it, or create and curate content for

time you spend on social, depending on how many

all of your individual target regions? How will

languages you offer. In reality, its simple to

you measure success?

44

SCHEDULING

Youll soon get into a rhythm of publishing your

streamline your social marketing with proper plan-

multilingual content. Now its time to schedule

ning, keeping Social Media Managers from over-

everything in advance, optimizing post times to

heating and marketing leadership pleased with your

progress.

BUILD A COMMAND CENTER

WITH LOGINS AND FILES

match your target audiences time zones to

stock their feed with quality branded content.
Congrats! But, the job isnt quite done...

Put everything in one place. Emerging translation

platforms help you fully automate social posting,
so that when you publish in one language it triggers

4
55

INTERACT

translation (and publication, if you want) to all

associated feeds, and will manage all of these logins

Social isnt about shouting into the abyss. Just as

through a single page for you. Research what

you should engage users on your primary networks,

might be best for your company.

listening to feedback and responding to comments, you should do the same for your foreign

3
3

CLEAN UP YOUR HANDLES AND

SETUP MULTILINGUAL ACCOUNTS

language handles. Its worth taking the time to

reach out to users who interact with your pages,
crafting a nice, short response and translating it
with a quick, quality method.

How you approach creating accounts will vary

by social network. Facebook, for example, allows
for you to target users by language and location.
Twitter doesnt, and will require that you set up new
language-specific feeds. Guided by how customers

HOW TO TRANSLATE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

CHALLENGES

LANGUAGE ALONE ISNT LOCAL

As with other types of marketing content, when

Make sure your language choice matches your

it comes to translation, social media has its quirks.

target location. If youre targeting German speakers,

While youre preparing content for translation,

which German do you use? German is spoken

notify your translator of the following so that you

in several countries, as are other languages, like

can move quickly from writing content to publishing

Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian. The best

it, in every language.

localization zeroes in on a specific dialect and

region, especially if there are significant variations

LENGTH RESTRICTIONS

Character counts are a hallmark of networks like

Twitter. Relative to a language like English,
tweets in Spanish and German, for example, will
be dramatically longer due to their grammar
and word structure. On the other hand, relative to
English, youd have significant flexibility with characterbased languages like Chinese and Japanese.

FOREIGN SOCIAL JARGON

Many social media platforms have their own

vocabularies. As an American platform, for example,
Twitter has its own specialized American English
terms. How do you tweet in Hindi? What about
posting to someones wallhow do you say
that in Tagalog? Often, translators can refer to how
that social network itself translates its lexicon,
but you must provide that context to ensure your
translation is natural, not literal.

in vocabulary, and sticks with it. Document your

language and dialect preferences, and be consistent.

About Gengo
Gengo is a people-powered translation platform
with tens of thousands of translators worldwide working across all major languages. Gengo
delivers fast, affordable, high-quality translation
at scale and is perfect for companies in travel,
ecommerce, media and more.
Learn more at gengo.com, or chat with us at
gengo.com/contact-us.

About Fliplingo
Fliplingo is an all-in-one social media translation
service that manages your multilingual
accounts from a single dashboard. Fueled by
Gengo, Fliplingo offers popular integrations
for major social networks like Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, Instagram, Sina Weibo and more.
Learn more about using Fliplingos social media
translation platform on fliplingo.com .