There are numerous advantages of having a multilingual Facebook page. This is something that is bound to always revolutionize your marketing and enable you to reach many more people and get a higher response rate at the end of the day.
In fact going multilingual will also have an enormous impact on your rankings in Google search which should bring you plenty of extra traffic that you would otherwise not have gotten using only English.
Still, the problem for most people is how exactly to go about it. There are a number of things you need to keep close tabs on when going multilingual with your existing content and fan base.
Target your content
It is easy to turn this great initiative into a disaster by quickly annoying the audience that you have already worked so hard to build. Imagine suddenly having your news feed clogged up by content in a language you do not understand. And so you will need to be very careful about ensuring that the each post or status update is seen by the right audience. Fortunately Facebook has tools that help you easily control who sees your posts and who doesn’t. Work on the settings so that people see your posts according to their language preferences.
The Facebook tool is fairly easy to use. For every piece of content you post start by clicking on the public button and then selecting the target audience by location and language. And then simply enter the language spoken by those who should see the particular post you are working on.
Ideally what you will be doing most of the time is the same post but for different audiences and languages.
Cultural differences should not be ignored
In any social interaction cultural differences can never be ignored. Again it is so easy to offend. And so you will need to be sensitive to the differences and tweak your content accordingly for each audience if you are to achieve maximum effect. There are more cheeky folks and there are more conservative societies.
Quite often you may find that you have to leave out certain posts when dealing with some communities. You need to do this because if you are not careful you could easily have hordes of your fans hitting the unlike button. It is also important to remember that most people will be much more interested in something that they can identify with locally. Therefore always make the effort to localize your content as much as possible.
It sounds like a lot of hard work but it really isn’t when you get the hang of it.
Translate and adapt content
Translations can be tricky because there are words that do not quite mean the same thing when translated directly. Or there are better words that are in vogue that will communicate more effectively. This is one reason why it is so critical to ensure that your translator is also familiar with the community they are translating for and can keep an eye on the numerous linguistic and cultural intricacies and small details that will always come into play or can even contact some transcription company.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Phil Sexton
