Language barriers

There is one thing that seems to thwart a good social media strategy more than any other…language. If you happen to be developing and implementing strategy for somewhere with just one mother tongue, then fantastic ideas appear to be relatively simple to operationalise. Engagement sans alienation.

However, if your territory happens to be mainland Europe, you can easily be looking at upwards of 34 languages just to cover the major destinations-with a number of countries operating multiple languages in themselves. Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this might be a bit of a dampener where your plans for sparking conversation are concerned. I know that’s certainly how I’ve felt. The best laid plans, ultimately shaken by linguistics.

But there are ‘solutions’. A number of big players (receiving investment from the biggest players-we’re looking at you WPP) are developing platforms which allow for central control (with regional permissions) on social media platforms, in order to create regional satellite profiles in local language.

However, no one has really cracked that translation nut yet. It remains hugely time consuming and manual to translate content in this way – with a central composer and numerous local translators. Even the mighty google can’t configure a translation tool that is accurate or reliable enough to deal with the huge number of variables in that particular situation. So ‘pushing’ central content isn’t flawless and it involves a massive human resource component, it’s a step forward but it’s not quite there.

An alternative in the form of a separate presence per locale on all the social media platforms you frequent just spells fragmentation (and if you read between the lines ‘loads and loads of work’). So is there another solution on the horizon? Not as far as I can see…currently we’re in a ‘leaves on the track’ situation, we know where we want to go but, despite all of the available technology and the fact that this could have been anticipated, we’re not quite there yet (and we mat be waiting a while).

Tags: europe, linguistics, social media, strategy, Twitter

Twitter Promoted Tweets

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets as a media opportunity is still embryonic enough to remain an enigma-even to those who have tried it. If you are talking/tweeting about something which doesn’t have enough organic traction to become a trending topic on it’s own, then will ‘sponsoring’ the trend (for the pleasure of which Twitter adds a big ‘sponsored’ badge, which might as well say PAID FOR) generate genuinely curious traffic that don’t receive your message already through a lens of scepticism? Doubtful. But then, show me a media buy that does deliver that and I’ll plough all my available budget straight in (albeit this is not an astounding sum, let me assure you!)

But this is what makes the learnings from Twitter so vital. Buying media on social platforms is a solid business model for companies whose lack of profit-driving mechanisms have been tirelessly trawled through in the press. And for some, take a bow Facebook, it’s working. But we have to learn and I admit it is easy to forget, you can’t buy engagement. Promoted or not, a trending topic must display valuable content, opinions, new stuff, a frenzied debate even.

I learnt that it would be advantageous

Tags: social media, Twitter

Long time no blog

It’s been a while since my last post but this was always supposed to be a blog about social media and digital marketing and my thoughts and experiences with both…and to be honest, in recent times I haven’t done a lot of either.

However, I am back from Africa, i have emigrated (if semi-permanently) and have a new digital/social role with a pan-European perspective (which is an interesting one) and this cocktail of new experiences is throwing up enough challenges and opportunities to make writing my blog both interesting and cathartic. Hopefully you, whoever you are, will feel the same, otherwise I guess me and my blog will just be digital therapy for one another!

So, posts away!

Tags: career, social media, Twitter

YouTube [Broadcast yourself]

How it works:

YouTube is online video, online video is YouTube.  Newer sites are popping up and growing in popularity, such as Vimeo, Viddler and VideoJug, as the web becomes more and more closely linked to video production, but YouTube is still a good place to start.  However, don’t be fooled into thinking if it’s on YouTube it’s found an audience, millions (literally multiples of millions) of videos are uploaded just to YouTube every day.  You now have to work harder to carve out a viewership and the best way to do this is to aggregate.

Use it to:

Err…aggregate.  Create your own YouTube channel, brand it, set your status as a Comedian, Musician, Director, or – my personal favourite – a Guru; and then assume the mantle of expert, collecting and sharing content about your area of expertise.  Yep, that’s right, you don’t even need to be creating video content to be a sharer of video news.  A good tactic is to create Playlists.  Organise similar videos, or those that tell a story, teach parts of a process or give a rounded view on a subject together into playlists that form specific watching for a viewer.

What you could get:

A direct feed of engaging and noteworthy video content, maximized for usability by your clever organising and streaming of content into relevant lists – making you a valuable source of information to friends, colleagues, contacts, followers and fans.

Engaging is worth repeating, in an environment when everyone has a web presence and your website is your single biggest marketing asset and communicator of your brand values, differentiation is often elusive.  Although your site might be brimming with goodness, getting someone to browse around for long enough to find it is a challenge in itself, so streams of watchable, specific, engaging rich media is invaluable to making your site stickier than a jam doughnut on the beach.

Tags: broadcast, film, social media, UGC, user generated content, video, video jug, vimeo, YouTube