In the beginning (i.e. the days of Friendster), social networking was denounced as a one way street to a society defined by isolationism and devoid of meaningful relationships. As time has passed social networking has not only matured but altogether reinvented itself. Where once there was MySpace, there is now Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Vine, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vimeo, and other sites that have taken social media far beyond anybody could imagine – a place where social networking doesn’t lock users in isolation but, in fact, leads them out of it.
As for this article, it would be absolutely shocking if not significant percentage of the people reading this weren’t guided here via a social network.
For private individuals social media has matured into a universal access portal to the world around us. Presently over 30% of the U.S. population get at least some of their news from Facebook, Twitter users send over 400 million tweets daily and just performed a $28 billion IPO, and Pinterest has over 70 million users who share their life in images.
While the advantages of social media use are quiet obvious from an individual’s perspective businesses still struggle to effectively employ social media. Of course, analyzing social media patterns in search of new clients and sales strategies can provide insights about customers and their perception of products and campaigns. But to employ social media in a way so that it helps a company to reach a not only larger but also more appropriate audience in a more intimate way than traditional advertising globally is the true challenge of social media outreach. The question how to reach potential customers then becomes a question of how to communicate your businesses message in languages other than English in an effort to reach the billions of social media users who are just now joining the movement. Consider for instance that:
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Brazil alone has 76 million monthly Facebook users, the rest of Latin America adds another 100+ million users.
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Even without data from Israel, Turkey, and Iran, the Middle East currently produces approximately 11 million tweets per day. Next years this number is projected to have tripled.
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VK.com, Facebook’s largest competitor in Russia, has over 200 million accounts and over 40 million daily users in Russian, Ukrainian, and English.
In essence these numbers translate into a sizeable growth market for any business that is willing to address it.
Given, many businesses employ (or purchase) IT and/or marketing services that can also deal with social media; however, this does not necessarily mean that they deal in foreign languages as well. In order to comfortably establish a presence in foreign language social networking circles it is essential that a business employ the services of a translation company that is familiar with business needs and also tech savvy enough to apply its services to the ever-expanding and increasingly diverse world of social media.
EVS Translations is the ideal translation expert – based in Atlanta – with the technical expertise for any social media translation and localisation project.
Get in touch to discuss your latest translation challenges or to get a free quote. Call us today at +1 404-523-5560 or send us an email: quoteusa(at)evs-translations.com.
