1. Facebook Beyond Borders
This article was originally published on the Acclaro blog.
Category: Marketing, Global Trends
Facebook's global user base hit the 500 million
mark last month, the company reported, leaving
marketers and advertisers in the U.S. and abroad
wondering, how can I get a piece of that
audience?
It makes sense: The purpose of social networking
is to share information about yourself in an online
profile, connect with others and communicate.
Theoretically, fan pages on Facebook should be
the perfect method for increasing brand
awareness, and ads served to Facebook users
should be highly targeted and relevant. At the beginning of the year, eMarketer
even predicted a near-40% increase in Facebook advertising spend.
But what happens when you're dealing with an audience that is not entirely native English
speakers? How do you adapt and expand your Facebook strategy to make sure you're not losing
out on consumers in key language markets?
Granted, English-speaking users on Facebook outnumber the next group of language users by
over 3:1. But the North American and Western European markets are nearing high saturation
levels, while those countries that speak Portuguese, Arabic, and Spanish are still growing fast.
In fact, some of Facebook’s fastest-growing languages aren’t yet even part of the site’s top five
overall, InsideFacebook notes.
Page 1: Facebook Beyond Borders Copyright © Acclaro 2012

2. Unlike users in the Facebook-saturated markets, users in these fast-growing areas are less
savvy in their attitudes and receptiveness towards ads, applications and fan page marketing
campaigns. This leaves a big wide open space for Facebook marketing on localized ads,
applications and fan pages.
As a global business, should you incorporate localized Facebook content in your social media
strategy? Absolutely. If you are a smaller operation and don't have the resources to build out
Facebook pages for each language market, keep a global fan page and set up a filter for posts
so that your foreign language content doesn't clutter up your main feed. However, know that
users will likely respond in their own language, which might confuse English-only readers.
The best way is to set up a dedicated fan page for each language market. Nike, for instance,
has Nike Football France, with nearly a half million fans. They write posts in French, include
links to local Twitter and YouTube channels, and most importantly, share highly localized
information that is relevant to their French-speaking audience. (Region-specific giveaways,
cultural events and so on.) 7-Eleven pays homage to its large presence and following in Asia
with a Facebook fan page in Chinese.
How do you centralize your brand's Facebook presence and make sure visitors know that all of
these pages are connected? Simply create a tab on your global English page and list all of the
localized pages and groups, much like you would do for a website via a language selector on
your homepage.
Page 2: Facebook Beyond Borders Copyright © Acclaro 2012

3. About Acclaro: Acclaro is an international translation and localization company that
helps the world’s leading brands succeed across cultures. We specialize inwebsite
translation, marketing campaigns, documents and software localization to give clients
an authentic voice in key language markets.
North America: 1-866-468-5106 Worldwide: +1-914-468-0222
www.acclaro.comsales@acclaro.com
Page 3: Facebook Beyond Borders Copyright © Acclaro 2012