leveraging Twitter in your Localisation Strategy
Twitter is a microblogging social networking site. It’s called a microblogging website because one can post a message using only 280 characters, though you can share pictures, videos, and website links as well. It was launched in the USA in 2006, and as of 2020, it is one of the most prominent social websites with a current net worth of USD 24.6 billion. Twitter boasts 330 million users worldwide and even though, being an American company, 79% of accounts are from outside the US.
Due to its international popularity, Twitter has localized its website in 34 different languages: English (default), Arabic, Bengali, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, Persian, Finnish, Filipino, French, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.
Twitter and Localization
Since 93% of the Twitter community members are open to brands promoting themselves on the platform, it is a no brainer for these brands to utilize Twitter to its maximum potential, albeit if you use it right!!
Business Localization is essential to get successful on a global level. It is first important to understand that Localization is much more than just generating leads and revenue; it involves extensive campaigning to connect with the local consumers at a personal level and building the brand’s goodwill. It is not enough to only localize the language; you have to keep in mind the cultural aspects as well. To derive maximum benefit from your localisation strategy, you have to invest in social media localization along with internationalization. Social media is a part of every brand’s marketing campaign as it is a viable source to reach today’s generation. It can become a great marketing tool to penetrate any global market. Twitter is already famous in many countries and has localized numerous languages. According to Statista, after the USA, Japan, UK, and Saudi Arabia are in the second, third, and fourth spots respectively.
Most of the countries in the top ten do not have English as their official language; hence localization is vital to reach these audiences.
How to Localize using Twitter
- Twitter already has options to choose from multiple languages, all that the brand has to do is to study the relevant markets, and publish content in the native languages according to the market research.
- Personalize your interaction with the customers using their native languages. Answer their query, run campaigns and polls, and provide swift customer service. The more active you are, the more positive will be your brand value.
- Increase the traffic on your brand page by staying active and posting relevant content. Use the native language, culturally relevant content to increase consumers’ interaction. According to Twitter, 80% of users have mentioned a brand name in their tweet.
- Make precise ads for the target audience. An advertisement made in English won’t generate as much interest in Japan as an ad in the Japanese language would. Upload precise ads on twitter to engage the consumers. According to Twitter, 54% of users had taken action (searching their website, retweeting content, etc.) after seeing a brand mentioned in Tweets.
- Improve your brand’s reputation by posting content in the local languages. Big corporations like Netflix are active on twitter and have localized handles for different countries where they post content in the local languages. For example, Netflix US, Netflix MENA, and Netflix Japan.
- Most of the customers like when the customer service replies directly using twitter, it increases the positive brand sentiment by 14%. Brands can increase their presence by staying culturally relevant on twitter and using trending hashtags(#).
World of Warcraft: Localization using Twitter
World of Warcraft(WoW) has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide. It is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that has created an online interactive community as well. WoW decided to turn to Twitter to increase its footprint online even more. To accomplish their goals, Twitter created a sharing feature that lets users share their screenshots or selfies directly to Twitter. They also gave the option to promote the gamers’ accomplishments and acquisition of the new items on Twitter. They rolled out this feature in 11 different languages worldwide. They saw fresh tweets every few minutes, making the campaign a massive success!
By Pooja Srivastava
Team Loc-N-Apps
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