As with any social network there are plenty of tips and tricks to help utilise the platform to its best advantage. As a global marketer this becomes an essential thing to master with the increase of new potential audiences and market share they have. Any way you can get more out of a social network for less time is the magic formulae to achieve maximum impact. In the global arena this is made harder by the fact you need to cover wide audiences but also a wide number of languages as well.
Below are some of my best tips for using twitter in international markets.
Hashtag conversations
Over the years a lot of twitter conversations have been created by interested parties and have become a great source of learning and information. In principal these are very simplistic – the creator selects a hashtag, sets a time/date and encourages their network to join in the conversation sharing ideas, photos, and make new connections. Simply put this is networking, it is just all online. This can be a great place to ask particular questions about any digital marketing topics and tap into country/language specific information from the right hashtag conversations.
These conversations can be found in a few ways, some more straight forward than others. The easiest would be to simple carry out a search engine search using the key phrases “International Marketing Twitter Chats” or “International #Hashtag conversations” etc. This normally produces a number of directories listing Hashtag conversations. Its then up to you to explore the ones which seem the most appropriate and attend online when they are happening. Be aware these lists can sometimes be out of date.
Another way is simply talking to others and asking them directly if they know of any useful chats to watch out for, often agencies will organise conversations around the topics they work with.
Figure 1: Example of a Twitter Chat
So, if you are looking for information on French content localisation, then watch a French media agency. The key is to keep your eyes open and most of the times these opportunities will arise from simply being involved and present on the social network.
A few generic and useful conversations to get you started:
WHAT #B2Bchat
WHO Covers range of topics including social media
WHEN Thursdays 8-9 pm ET
WHAT #CMWorld
WHO Chat all about content marketing
WHEN Tuesdays 11am to 12pm CT
The more you get involved in these types of conversations, the more you learn. This is also a great arena to meet new contacts to add to your lists and see what conversations they are joining in on.
Influencers
Twitter is a fantastic network for reaching out to the world. As such, some users have become particularly influential on the network. Most influencers can be described as people with large amount of followers who are invested and deeply engaged with what they saying and sharing. In recent years, these influencers have become a vital part of social media marketing. Connecting with your users through an influencer can help you reach new audiences, as well as introducing credibility into your marketing by having someone trusted recommend your brand/product.
Using influencers in your marketing can be carried out in a number of ways, but first you need to identify which countries you want to target with your content; as this will affect what kind of influencers you search for. At this point you have two options for your outreach:
You can either contact a marketing agency to help you carry out specific influencer research. They will be able to help you determine your influencer requirements i.e. position, interests, chosen languages and carry out a quality assessment of the influencers ensuring they have an up to date account and a reasonable amount of followers.
Or you can manually search for suitable users using your own twitter accounts (or tools you have) to find people who have a good amount of followers and meet your other search requirements.
These influencers can then be used for either of these activities:
- Content outreach – Twitter users are a fantastic way to share your content directly with your audience, and especially easy to share with influential twitter users. However, it is essential to remember whatever you are asking them to share must be interesting to them and in the language they understand.
- For example if you had a Portuguese blog about the effect of climate change in South America you would contact influencers who speak and tweet in Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese though!) and also who are interested in climate change issues.
- Partnering outreach – The other type of outreach is creating partnerships. This kind of outreach allows you to find influential people you can work with on specific projects i.e. promoting something of yours by writing a blog post, or creating a video. Relevance to interests and to the interests of their audience is key. For example, if you were launching a new dog product in Italy, you would not want to work with a German Tweeter who preferred cats, would you?
Figure 2: Social Outreach Pre-Quality Assessment
Lists
Lists are one of the best things twitter has to offer and are still under used. Lists allow any twitter user to categorize accounts into subjects or areas. This can be essential for separating out your interests into sections by user such as marketing outreach to PPC to content resources. Lists allow you to group people/content in one place. This can make searches for people and content easier and more time efficient. This can also be language or country focused, providing content from the right people for the right market any time you need it (with a bit of searching of course).
For example if you were targeting the Spanish market and were looking for some content around the special Christmas holiday in Spain “Día de los Reyes Magos”, you could create a list following accounts who specifically talk about this holiday in Spanish.
In general if you wanted to target a particular country like Spain, you could begin creating a few basic lists like below which would cover more general Spanish accounts in your chosen topic area. You could then create new, more specific lists as you notice topics/themes you want to monitor more closely and find content from.
- List full of any Spanish individuals accounts in your chosen market/general topic
- This will help you see what the Spanish users are talking about and tap into the trending topics for that market. This is essential for localisation in your social strategy.
- List of any Spanish companies you follow/like
- Help you assess what the industry is talking about and to keep on top of any market developments.
- List of Spanish news and/or Spanish resources
- This will help round out your marketing with non-branded content.
Figure 3: Example of Spanish Focused Twitter List
Language options
Twitter has developed into a global social network over the past 5 years alone, with expansion into many new countries. Even though it is banned in China, Twitter’s own reach is now 288 million monthly active accounts. This is not something to be ignored, and Twitter is definitely making sure it can get as many users on-board as possible. Twitter now works in over 40 languages and continues to drive towards more, even asking for help within their translation centre.
It is essential for international marketers to recognise these expanding markets on Twitter and to start creating conversations in these languages, if they are markets they are targeting. Users are currently able to search for content in their chosen language using the advanced search option, meaning more users can look for content in their own language and avoid English content completely.
Figure 4: Languages available for search in Twitter
This has high implications for creating content in multiple languages, if you do not want to be missed. As always, one size does not fit all and will continue to produce worse results. Two suggested options for content creation in multiple language can be:
- Create content in English first to understand the general tone and direction the posts should be in, then localise the content into Language taking into account local phrases, terminology and hashtags etc
- Create content directly in language and be very responsive to the market
Either way is fine, option 2 is ideal as you then avoid issues relating to things sounding unnatural. However option 1 can help with streamlining content is good for a larger company needing to simpler processes. You should always have the main content assets in language if possible and create language guides for branded terms and phrases. This all enables the content to not sound the same but maintain a consistent brand tone.
Localised content in the correct language with the right topics is always best practice.
Conclusion
As more of the world joins in online, social networks are becoming a fantastic data resource. Using these tips and tricks can help guide your social strategy into the future, not only for Twitter but for all your social platforms and marketing strategies.
We would love to hear about any of the tips you have for international markets on Twitter!
Emily Milsom
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Twitter is upgrading and you have to follow the trend to be able to stay in the lead. You must know everything about Twitter first before using it as part of your social media marketing. Yes, social media nowadays can help a lot of online marketers to promote their brand. But you have to use it effectively to see positive result as well. Thanks for sharing your post.