Social media has broken down international barriers and borders. Networks like Facebook, Twitter and Weibo enable us to reach out and listen to conversations overseas. But while these networks are the glue that connects the world today, it is the language, culture and content that shapes how reputations are built and destroyed.

Technology and globalization have brought countries and cultures closer to our front doors. They have made the world a smaller place. Distances that separated us 25 years ago no longer feel that great. And thanks to the internet and mobile phones, today we can connect to people, brands and causes wherever they might be.

Social media has broken down the barrier of distance and time. Have a look at your Facebook or Twitter account and you will see that your friends and those you follow are spread out across the globe. The world today is your marketplace.

According to Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King, globalization²²⁹ is the concept “by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society”. Social media has accelerated globalization.

Social media has empowered people around the world. It has enabled the sharing of comment and collateral in real time. It has fuelled the “Arab Spring”, outed corrupt government officials in China and given the world K-pop sensation Psy.

Each of these events has gained notoriety not so much because of the social networks themselves, but because of what people around the world shared on these platforms. It is about people, about individuals and how they identify with content and the conversations that are taking place online. It is also about journalists and bloggers who listen and amplify those conversations. It is this that is challenging public relations.

Social media and globalization

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations describes PR as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics”. To achieve this “mutual understanding” what is important for PRs are not the networks themselves, but the people on them, their culture, lifestyle and behaviours. Because, while the networks bring people together, it is the PR's skill to understand behaviour, culture and lifestyle that enables organizations to better engage with their audiences.

But what do you need to consider if you want to build your brand or reputation overseas? What are the differences in culture that could stop you in your tracks if you ignore them?

To position your brand, organization or individual internationally there are some essential points to remember. There is no template solution. Above all, the most important point that you need to focus on in international social media is people and what makes them unique in the countries in which you are trying to build a reputation.

Networks by countries

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world. But while it is an “Anglo-Saxon” network, the statistics show that four out of the top five countries with the most active accounts include Brazil, India, Indonesia and Mexico – nations with healthy economic growth figures.

Let it be Facebook, Twitter, Mixi or QQ, always look at the numbers to consider which is the best platform to reach your audiences. Do not just look at the number of users in each country. Consider the penetration rate – the number of active accounts v. the total population or users online today.

Indonesia, for example, has an impressive 50 million active accounts, but a population of 237 million. While in India there are 62 million users, giving Facebook a penetration of just over 5% of 1.2 billion!

China, which blocks international networks, has Weibo, QQ and RenRen. Together these three dominate social media in the country. And international companies with operations in China have not ignored these fast-growing networks.

The CME Group (@CMEGroup), owner of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Jones Indexes, is one international company that has taken to international social media. CME Group's Executive Director for Corporate Communications, Allan Schoenberg (@AllanSchoenberg), says that the company took to Facebook five years ago “as an experiment”. They found that customers were talking about them, the exchange and what was happening in the marketplace.

The company now has a presence on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and even Pinterest. With Asia being a target market, the group decided to set itself up on China's micro-blogging service Weibo, a network with over 360 million registered users that is seen as a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. The attraction to Weibo for CME Group was that this social network gave it access to “roughly 36.5 million active users daily”, an identified group of which were interested in the financial markets.

Since it set up its Weibo account in November 2011, CME Group has built a strong presence in the country, reaching out to over 24,000 individuals, with 17.9% of its followers in the southern economic heartland of Guangzhou, while followers from Beijing and Shanghai represent 8.1 and 7.4% respectively.

At the same time, rather than take to YouTube to reach stakeholders in China, CME Group set up two channels on China's popular YouKu video sharing site. The company uses one channel to promote corporate videos and the other to share twice-daily market commentary videos.

The move to use popular local social networks was made not just because of the Chinese shift ban of Western social networking sites, but because it made sense to have a presence on the networks in which its target audiences were spending their time.

Language and culture

Social networks are just that, networks. They are a hub for people, who speak different languages and dialects, and whose cultures shape their individual behaviour.

Such has been the adoption of Twitter in the Arab world that the micro-blogging giant decided to release an Arabic interface.²³⁰ Since this release, and according to Dubai School of Government's influential Arab Social Media Report,²³¹ Arabic is now “the fastest growing language ever on Twitter”.

The same report confirms that while “English and Arabic are the dominant languages in the Arab region,” tweets in Arabic almost doubled those in English by March 2012 (62.1% and 32.6% respectively). Tweets made in Arabic in the United Arab Emirates showed the greatest jump, from 17% in March 2011 to 26% in 2012.

The same survey found that in Gulf Cooperation Countries social media has helped to enforce national identities. Eighty five per cent of people in Egypt, 83% in Bahrain and 78 and 73% respectively in Saudi Arabia and the UAE said that social networking has made them feel they have stronger social links with fellow citizens.

While your audience might understand English, never rely on this fact. After all, if your audience mother tongue is Arabic, Farsi, Bahasa Melayu or Indonesian, then why not communicate in their own language? After all, international public relations is about engagement on their terms and in their language.

And do not consider using translation tools. Language is individual and technology-based translators can create embarrassment for you and your brand. And with the speed of retweets, that dodgy translation can trend and create issues where there should have been none.

Take Westfield Stratford City Shopping Centre, which, during the London 2012 Olympics, displayed huge banners in Arabic to welcome visitors from around the world. The words on the signs were completely incoherent. Speaking to the BBC, a spokesperson for the Council of Arab-British Understanding said, “It beggars belief they cannot even write ‘welcome’ in Arabic. What will our Olympic guests be thinking? It is cringeworthy.”²³²

Above all, make sure that your market engagement is led by a person that can speak the language in the country in which you are managing the outreach. Native speakers understand that cultural understanding can add value and safeguard you from mistakes.

But language is not the only point to bear in mind when planning social communications initiatives. Japan, for example, has adopted Twitter to the extent that over 14% of the world's tweets were in Japanese²³³ in October 2011. That is impressive. One of the reasons for Twitter's popularity in Japan is because culturally Japanese people prefer to remain anonymous online, something that Facebook has not been able to offer because of its real name policy.

But of course, it isn't just about language, but also about culture and lifestyle. For example, the weekend in some countries in The Gulf and Middle East is on Friday and Saturday. But not all: in Saudi Arabia it's on Thursday and Friday. And never forget national holidays and festivals, which are based on religion or days of national significance.

Desktop v. mobile

In April 2010 the self-proclaimed “Queen of the Net” Mary Meeker, formerly with Morgan Stanley (@MorganStanley) and now at Venture Capital Firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (@kpcb), predicted in her 2010 Internet Trends Report that within the following five years “more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs”. Meeker gave the date of 2014 for when the majority of the world would be using a mobile device to access the internet.

According to recent data from the International Telecommunications Union²³⁴ though, some countries already have a majority of people accessing the internet via mobile broadband subscriptions compared to fixed wired subscriptions.

Knowing how people access the internet and social networking sites is essential.

Would you develop a campaign designed to be activated on desktops when the majority of your target audience in Brazil, Russia and Indonesia accesses the internet through iPhones or Android devices? You wouldn't.

The reliance of mobile broadband is one reason why apps like Instagram are so popular in countries in Asia, says Jon Russell in The Next Web blog.²³⁶

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have mobile apps available in multiple languages for international markets. But mobile instant messaging apps are already crossing the divide to desktop.

Japanese instant messaging app Line has gained over 70 million users since it first launched in June 2011. With over 32 million accounts in Japan alone, the application, which also allows users to send each other images, video, audio media messages and make free VoIP calls, has gained a 40% penetration in its home market.

So popular has Line become in Japan that the country's Prime Minister's Office has set up an account, which will be used to provide essential information in the event of an emergency or disaster. And knowing that so many Japanese nationals use Line on their mobiles, it is a move that signals how the government is reaching out to citizens.

The move to establish itself a presence in English on social networking sites is new for Japan's government.

On 3 March 2011, Japan was shaken by the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake. The resulting tsunami caused devastation across the northeastern seaboard of Japan.

Before the quake, Japan's government communications had been focused on internal conversations. This changed after the quake, when research identified that the reputation of “Brand Japan” had been damaged. There was a clear need for a communications team that focused on engaging with international influencers overseas. Immediately, a Global Communications Department within the Prime Minister's Office was set up.

Led by Noriyuki Shikata (@NoriShikata) the brief was to address global issues and “overcome reputational damage” following the quake, as well as regain Japan's credibility, especially as a manufacturing base and investment destination. Two weeks later the department set up a Twitter account in English for the Prime Minister's Office of Japan (@JPN_PMO). This was followed by the creation of a dedicated website in English for the Prime Minister's Office and account on Facebook and Weibo.

Immediately, the new Global Communications Department started to be followed on Twitter by journalists and media outlets that it was targeting. Its presence on these platforms also enabled it to be fleet of foot and identify sentiment, data that enabled it to know the view of the international stakeholders it wanted to engage with.

The social media that join the world together is highlighting the differences between us. Professional communicators must understand these. More than ever before PRs have to understand people. There is no excuse for dragnet communications campaigns that ignore what people are like, the beliefs that they have and the tools that they use to share the opinions.

To be successful in international social media there is a prerequisite to be forensic. To localize your communications. People appreciate being understood, and with sufficient commitment they will reward you with the mutual understanding that you work for.

Speaking to Forbes magazine Economist Global Correspondent Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran reminds us that, initially, most corporations were caught out by the explosion of social media. However, “through trial and error many are now doing better. They must, as the future belongs to firms that can best harness the global trend toward open, networked and user-driven approaches to innovation.”²³⁷

Biography

Julio Romo MCIPR (@twofourseven) is an International PR, Social Media Consultant and Digital Strategist. He has over 15 years' experience working with clients in the UK, mainland Europe, The Gulf and Asia, advising and delivering strategic training to governments, financial services institutions, telecom companies and sports personalities. He speaks at conferences and comments on how digital and social is changing the face of business and communications. You can reach him through his blog at www.twofourseven.co.uk.