Everything You Need to Successfully Translate Social Media Marketing Content

Understanding the importance and challenges of social media  translation.

Social media platforms are used by people all over the world, in many different languages. If you want to market your business internationally and be successful, your brand needs a social presence and you need to translate your social media content into all of the relevant languages. 

Social networks are advantageous for companies in many different ways, not least of which is the fact that they are able to communicate, engage and connect with their audience in a way that is usually not possible though corporate websites. It also allows businesses to boost their SEO rankings, increase organic traffic and build a stronger brand authority.

To help make the process of translating your social media content as easy as possible, we’ve created this guide. In this article, we’ll look at the steps you need to take when translating your social media content into different languages, and how to make sure that the translation is accurate, effective and appropriate whether you plan on using language services or not.

How can social media translation services help my business?

There are lots of benefits for companies using social media translation for marketing purposes; here are some of the main ones:

• It allows people from all over the world who speak different languages to understand what it is that you want them to do or think about when they see your post in their native language which increases the reach of your message.
• It allows you to target specific groups of people who speak different languages, so you can promote your business in a way that is most likely to appeal to them.
• Social media translation also allows you to increase the amount of engagement on your posts by making them more interesting and engaging for people, it can will help generating traffic to your website and improve your SEO performance. 

Challenges of brand names and slogans translations.  

Consistency of brand voice and message.

There are many challenges when translating brand names and slogans. In particular, they need to be translated in a way that still maintains the original meaning.

For example, if you’re looking for translations for a company name then it’s important that you choose one that is easy to remember as well as easy to spell. A good translation of ‘Serveur de pâtes’ would be something like “Pasta Server” because pasta is an Italian word and server is also used in other languages such as French, Spanish and Arabic. 

If you’re looking for translations for a slogan then it’s important that you choose something catchy but not too long or complicated. For example, if your product has a slogan called “Fruit Shaped Pizza”, you could translate this into “Pizza Fruit Style”. This will make people understand what your product does while still being able to remember it easily enough so they can use it when searching on Google or some other search engine.

Too many social media channels to cover in too many languages.

The social media landscape is constantly evolving, with new platforms and features emerging all the time. Translating and moderating social media for global audiences is challenging for businesses. Social networks change every other minute and translating or moderating through them is a tricky business. It’s important to stay up to date with these changes and adapt your social media strategy accordingly. But this can be difficult when you also need to consider the language barrier.

There are so many factors to consider, such as cultural differences, idiomatic expressions, and slang terms but also legal restrictions and censorship laws in each target country. And then there’s the issue of getting the translations right – not only do they need to be accurate, but they also need to be appropriate for your brand and target audience. 

Multilingual Posting on Different Social Media Platforms is time consuming.

Automate or delegate your digital marketing translation in order for your business to be successful internationally on social media. it’s important that you are able to post in different languages. However, if you’re a small business or sole proprietor and don’t want to hire an army of translators to do this, then there are other options available.  For example, there are services available that will automatically translate your content from English to another language. These kinds of services can be a cost-effective way to automate the translating process and save time and money.

There are also companies that specialize in digital marketing translation. These companies have cultural experts who will translate your visual content into different languages for you so you don’t have to do it yourself. They can also post your social media messages on multiple social media platforms at once, which saves you time and increases the chance of reaching more people with your message.

How Much Does Social Media Translation Cost?  As you can imagine, it costs money to translate content into different languages. However, the cost of social media translation is usually much less than traditional translations for print or online media. In fact, many companies are able to save thousands of dollars by outsourcing their social media translating and posting needs.

Social Media Translation Costs vary greatly depending on the platform that you’re using and the number of languages that you need to translate your content into.  
This price also varies greatly according to a number of factors such as:
How much content do you need translated?
Do you have any special instructions or requirements for your translations?
How frequently are your posts ging up on different platforms?

The best option to get your message across is to hire a localization service to assist you and manage the translators and the translation of your social media content on your behalf.

Why is it important to translate social media content professionally?

Through social networks, creators of social content are able to communicate, engage and connect with their audience in a way that is typically not possible through their corporate websites.  With the help of social media platforms, marketing professionals, businesses, and their organizations are able to create content and share different types of messaging and information in a simple, fast and cost-efficient manner.

Make sure that you translate your messages correctly and consistently across all platforms so as not to confuse your target audience using social media. This way you will ensure that your message gets through to them as well as being able to improve customer loyalty by helping them understand what you are trying to say about an industry or product they may be interested in buying from you.

Social media translation best practices.

Social Media Is a Wonderful Way to Reach out To Your Existing and Potential Customers. However, You Need to Be Careful to Ensure that Your Message Is in The Target Audience’s Language. Your Message Needs to Be in The Language Being Used by The Audience You Want to Communicate With. You Should Always Hire a Professional Translator to Translate Your Message. Some Organizations Are Cutting Corners on Their Translation Work and Using Employees Who Say They Are Bilingual. This Is Not a Good Option as It Is Essential to Get the Best Translation from An Experienced Translator Who Knows the Particularities of Both Languages.

If you want to enjoy the full benefits of successful multilingual and cross-cultural social media marketing campaigns, here is our checklist of recommendations:

Ensure that your translation strategy includes native speakers.  This will ensure that your message is translated properly and with the best possible quality. This can be done by hiring a translation agency or by having your own native speakers do the work for you. It’s essential to make sure that you have someone who knows both languages involved in the translation process, as this will help ensure consistency of messaging across all platforms.

Mistranslations can be costly.  Make sure that your translation is accurate and not misleading. Translators should avoid using slang terms or idiomatic expressions that are not common in both languages, this will cause confusion within the target audience.

Don’t Rely on Machine Translation.  Machine translation is never a good option for getting your message across in different languages. You need cultural experts that can deliver high quality posts.  Machine translation is not reliable enough and it doesn’t produce the best results possible for content marketing. There are many case studies that show how machine translations have been wrong or inaccurate, which can be extremely costly or at least make your translations efforts ineffective.

Be Careful of Social Media Sites With Auto-Translate.  It is possible to translate some content within Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. But you have to be careful that the translation doesn’t change the meaning of the post or message at all. It’s best to avoid using auto-translate altogether on these sites unless it’s really necessary.

Always consider the intended audience:  The audience for any content is different in each language. This can be due to cultural differences, political issues or even the way people speak. It’s essential that you take all this into consideration when creating your social media posts and messages.

Be careful when using emojis in social media translations. No matter what language they are written in, emojis have become the universal language in social media. Localization of emojis, like many other cultural issues, should be approached carefully. You might need to look up the meaning of a particular emoji or choose differently coloured emojis. The meaning of emojis differ not only culturally but also emotionally. So, we need to consider the meaning of any symbols a post contains. And this is even more important because the same word can have a completely different meaning in different languages. The fist gesture for instance, in Germany, is used to express fighting, but in the UK, it is a symbol of hope. Peace sign is used in the UK to mean good luck, but in Spain, it is used to mean “the devil is waiting.” Also, localize emojis to fit the culture. A post with the emojis will be more likely to inspire interest in the reader.

Back translate. In a nutshell, back-translation is the process of re-translating a previously translated text into the original source language. It is effective when the original text is short and not very complex. It can be used in social media translations as well, such a post on Facebook or Twitter. When you want to get accurate results from back translating, it’s important that you do so with a professional translator who has experience working with different cultures and language pairs.

Remember to also localize Images.  Images are also an important part of your social media strategy. Images should be localized to reflect the culture, age and language of your audience. 
Change the background to fit the locale. You can use different backgrounds for every market you’re targeting so that you’ll have something unique for each one.
Use different fonts. Different countries have different fonts, so make sure you use them in your translations as well. Localize text within images by using symbols or icons that represent certain words or phrases used in various languages around the world. Culturally appropriate colour schemes will help to create interest among customers in your product/service.

Avoid Translating Hashtags systematically.  The use of the hashtag should be kept to a minimum and only used when it is necessary. Hashtags are used to categorize posts on social media platforms. It’s a good way to make your content more visible and easier for people to find. But it can also be misleading as many hashtags have become so common that they’re no longer useful in directing users to specific content. Make sure your hashtags are consistent and relevant to the post you’re trying to promote. Keep hashtags short in all languages. 

Be wary of Emojis during localization. No matter what language they are written in, emojis have become the universal language in social media. Localization of emojis, like many other cultural issues, should be approached carefully. You might need to look up the meaning of a particular emoji or choose differently coloured emojis. The meaning of emojis differ not only culturally but also emotionally. So we need to consider the meaning of any symbols a post contains. For example, the fist gesture, in Germany, is used to express fighting, but in the UK, it is a symbol of hope.

If you’re not willing to do all the above yourself then entrust the translation process to professional translators for translation of all your social media posts.

Social Marketing Translation FAQs.

What skills are required to translate social media translation specialist?  

The translation of social media posts requires the same skills required to translate any kind of content. It is important that you do not make the mistake of thinking one post will translate into another language well.

Professional translation services specialized in social media presence should be familiar with each language pair and able to apply native language skills effectively in order for their translations to be accurate, readable and make sense in both languages and appealing for the intended audience.

The translators should be familiar with social media acronyms. They should have a good familiarity with keywords, hashtags, emojis and other relevant symbols that are commonly used on social media platforms.

What are some good resources for free translation?

There are a lot of tools available online these days which can aid translators at all stages of the process: 

• Google Translate: Google has made it easy for anyone around the world who wants to use its products, such as translating text from one language into another or translating web pages from one language into another. This tool is particularly handy when people need a quick bit of help with a translation but don’t have time to go through a full-blown website translation service.
• Deepl translator:  Deepl is a brilliant and free online translation service that aims to make translating easier for everyone. 

What are good examples of brands that have had success thanks to social media translation services?

The English breakfast tea company PG Tips managed to successfully translate their social media posts into 50 different languages, resulting in a brand awareness increase.

IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, with over 11,000 stores worldwide uses social media translation to communicate in different languages.

T-Mobile and its global team were able to translate their posts into more than 100 languages resulting in increased brand awareness across all countries. 

The company Unilever has used a variety of online tools including Google Translate and Facebook’s chat interface for translating its content from English into multiple languages. By doing so it has successfully managed to reach an international audience without any language barrier.

The Coca Cola Company has been using Social Media Translation for several years now resulting in a significant increase in sales for many products, especially overseas where most consumers do not speak English.

How can you tell if your social media marketing translation has been successful? 

To ensure your social media translation is successful, you will need to monitor the results of your efforts and measure performance. You can do this by tracking social marketing engagement and conversion goals on social media platforms. In order to track, you will need to use a number of different tools such as:

• Google Analytics: This tool tracks all activity across your website.  It can be used to track your social media conversion rates. 
• Facebook Audience Insights: This tool allows you to view all posts, likes and shares of your page on Facebook. It also allows you to see which countries are most engaged with the content you have posted on your page.
• Social Blade: This tool tracks engagement across multiple platforms including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and it is free to use.  It will provide a breakdown of where each post has been shared in real-time. You can then use this information as evidence that your social media translation was successful.

What should I look for when choosing an online translator for social media campaigns?

You need to make sure that the online translator has adequate experience in digital marketing and whether they have enough knowledge about your industry and subject matter before using them. You also want to make sure that they understand how social media works, intended audiences and how different social media channels will help increase awareness of your product or service. They also need to know how best to communicate with global audiences via social media campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc to raise brand awareness You should make them aware of your conversion goals.

Do you have tips for people who want to start using social media translation services?

• Ensure that you post a lot of relevant, original content during your creative process to describe your products or services. As a marketing strategy, the more original and relevant the content is, the better chance you have at getting your message across to people all over the world!
• Make sure that you’re using hashtags where appropriate, especially if your posts are being translated into other languages by translation companies.
• Use images because text alone cannot convey everything. Social marketing is all about engagement and higher rates of conversion, then having images related to these posts helps boost engagement levels even further. The key here is make sure the image or video has something interesting going on in it and doesn’t just consist of still photos with text written on them like a typical Facebook status update or tweet would have, otherwise people will simply skip over them when they see them appear in their news feed.

How much does social-media-translation cost? 

As you can imagine, it costs money to translate content into different languages. However, the cost of social media translation is usually much less than traditional translations for print or online media. In fact, many companies are able to save thousands of dollars by outsourcing their social media translating and posting needs to professional translation services.

Social Media Translation Costs vary greatly depending on the platform that you’re using and the number of languages that you need to translate your content into.  
This price also varies greatly according to a number of factors such as:
How much content marketing do you need translated?
Do you have any special instructions or requirements for your translations?
How frequently are your posts going up on different platforms?

The key to successful social media translation.

Social media translation services have become increasingly popular over the past few years mainly because they allow small businesses and professionals alike to reach out to a much wider audience than ever before. If you consider all of the recommendations above before choosing a social media translation provider then you will have an easier time when using them and generating more business as a result.

The takeaway.  

Social Media translation for Thailand and other Asian markets:   If you have a business in Thailand or other Asian markets, then you should be aware that there are some serious differences between the way companies use social media to communicate with their customers and users. There are also some things that need to be done differently from those used by Western businesses. If you’re looking for social media translation services for Asia or Thailand, then please contact us at www.social-translation.com so we can help you achieve your objectives!

Start by researching the best translation services and make sure you do your homework before choosing one. Then, use them to your advantage! If your looking for a professional translation service in Asia to localize your marketing content in your target markets, then you contact us today