Social Media | The Global Connect

How the challenges of multilingual tweeting are being overcome

The evolution of blogs from posts comparable to short essays in length to much shortened variations called microblogs has been positively adapted by web users. Microblogging services like Twitter have achieved widespread popularity with their use transcending most major language groups online. Twitter is rapidly implementing multilingual support to harness user generated content in foreign languages to appeal to the linguistically diverse web audience. However, with the post restrictions that limit text to 140 characters, some languages present a challenge for users due to their verbose linguistic structure.

Twitter’s 140 character limit is based upon the 160 character limit that was in place for text messages on mobile phones. The number was chosen by a German named Friedhelm Hillebrand who worked for German Telecom. In 1985, Friedhelm decided to count the number of characters in a large sample of sentences and he found that almost all of them clocked in fewer than 160 characters. This set the standard for text messaging and Twitter’s character limit is derived from this, it reserves 20 characters for the user’s address and leaves the rest for the tweet. For text messages, user inventiveness resulted in the creation of SMS language, which is now used on microblogs too.

Twitter users in English have furthered the evolution of a shortened form by making shorthand more widespread. As a global, many-to-many communication platform, new shorthand expressions have had the chance to spread and be adopted as a standard more quickly than a one-to-one or one-to-many communication method like SMS. Shorthand such as b/c for because and b4 for before already existed in text language but are now more widely known because of Twitter. A unique to Twitter trend has been the use of memes with a hashtag to encapsulate a concept or idea that has spread online. For instance, #fail is used to indicate disapproval or contempt and #ff, which stands for follow Friday, is a recommendation to follow users referenced in the message.

While English has had to be morphed into a shortened variation for communication tools where character limits are enforced, other languages are ideally suited for microblogs. Chinese, for instance, is a very concise language in terms of character length because single characters can represent whole words. Users tweeting in Chinese are able to convey messages of a few sentences long without having to exceed the maximum limit. Languages like Arabic and Korean are also well suited for use on Twitter as vowels can be omitted in these languages.

Twitter users who communicate in languages that are very verbose have also started to use shortened and informal abbreviated English to communicate. Text in languages like Spanish and Portuguese typically expands in length when translated from English. Native language speakers of these languages therefore have to find ways to convey their message in as few characters as possible. One such way has been to mix languages such as English into their tweets opting for the more concise of the two for particular expressions.

The continued expansion of language support on Twitter has been positively embraced by communities worldwide. Due to its mass appeal, language speakers have been brought together by a shared language and adapted their use of language to meet the needs of the platform and the community. Microblogging showcases not just how languages evolve but also how they can be preserved in an interconnected global community.

Getting your international social media strategy right

Social media is still a learning curve for many brands as they transition to a new paradigm of engagement and interaction with their customer communities. What is evident is that social media is experiencing global growth on a phenomenal scale. The recently published Wave 5 of UM’s social media tracker study* shows that the proportion of internet users managing a social network profile has grown on average globally by 35% over 2 years with users in all countries surveyed using social media more.

But this fast-changing landscape means that many brands are confused about exactly what they should be doing on social sites beyond customer listening and building a community of ‘+1’s’, ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. Mistakes are often fertile breeding ground for new ideas and developments that then path the way for future success. In the UK recently, Snickers publicity campaign to showcase its product ended up being brandished a Twitter #fail after Katie Price, a celebrity known for glamour modelling, tweeted about quantitative easing and China’s GDP numbers. She later published a photo of herself holding the chocolate bar on her feed saying that she wasn’t feeling herself because she was hungry.

What’s clear from the research is that consumers do want to engage with brands even in a social context amongst friends. UM’s study shows a near tripling in the numbers of people who have become fans with brands on their social networking platform over the last year. People want to join brand communities to learn about products as well as find exclusive news and free content about them. There are local nuances to consider too. In Latin America brand followers are driven by the desire to be associated with something but in Asia they are more likely influenced by peers.

For brands this means that more than ever before content is king. The social need of customers is satisfied by high quality, locally adapted content that is relevant to the brand. Once people can identify with a brand’s messaging in their cultural context then engagement, endorsement and ultimately sales will follow.

*Wave 5 – The Socialization of Brands

Getting Social On 2012: Social Media Marketing Is Here To Stay

If you’re a blogger or website owner and don’t realize by now that social media marketing makes a great impact on search engine optimization, then your site is doomed to failure. Social media marketing is indeed here to stay, which makes 2012 look so promising for all online marketers. This year is going to be very exciting for all web users, techies, and experts. That’s why it’s worth knowing what lies ahead for all of us.

This incredibly advanced digital age makes it possible for all people to acquire all kinds of information, whether they need them or not. With the advent of current and popular social media sites coupled with the availability of different smart phones, it’s not hard to catch up with the latest trends in news, business, fashion, lifestyle, and sports, anymore. The convergence of social media and mobile marketing makes it easy for everyone, especially marketers to do their thing and reap amazing benefits.

Here are some social media marketing trends worth knowing. Take note of these and start adapting to the seemingly prolific ways to do business online:

1. More social media sites will become greatly popular.
If you have been enjoying traffic from popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, then it’s time to improve your game and take advantage of the perks that social-media-site-dwarfs-turned-giants offer. Sites like Google+, Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon are just some of the social media sites to watch out for. You might want to take note of new but steadily rising sites like Pinterest as they are about to take the social media scene by storm too!

2. User preference for rich media like video and images will grow further.
This is one of the reasons for website owners to reinforce the video and image content in their sites. Users’ craving for visually entertaining and stimulating content prompts these social media giants to improve their site features that aim to accommodate this particular need. Why else would YouTube be this popular?

3. On-time, real-time is the way to go.
And because people want to get informed in the soonest possible time, they go for anything and everything that can give them immediate updates. Thus, it would be wise to tap social media sites that allow you to get such perks. It would also be a good idea to add features in your own site that enables your target audience to and current information which will keep them interested and thus a loyal patron of your site and services.

4. Be aware of the many upcoming apps.
Applications on social media giants like Facebook will keep on coming. It will be wise to be on the loop when it happens. Of course, you need to watch out for other websites’ apps too. The trick here is to find the social media sites that best match your needs and maximize the apps they offer.

I told you 2012 will be exciting! This is as good a time as any to start making changes in your site or blog if you haven’t taken advantage of social media marketing yet. Embrace the marketing package that these sites offer. Be ready to work hard towards making this the year of social media marketing victory!

Amanda Dean is an expert for an e-commerce promotional products business and loves reading books and novels. Visit her Twitter page at http://twitter.com/amanda_dean.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives