Data released by comScore has shown that Facebook is now the leading social network in Brazil, with a staggering 192% increase in the number of visitors in the past year. Brazil is the fifth biggest user of social networks globally, yet [...]]]> Data released by comScore has shown that Facebook is now the leading social network in Brazil, with a staggering 192% increase in the number of visitors in the past year. Brazil is the fifth biggest user of social networks globally, yet Facebook has until now struggled to compete with the popularity of Google owned Orkut, which had a strong presence in the South American country.

The figures are quite astonishing. In December 2010, Facebook had 12 million Brazilian users, compared to 32 million for Orkut, yet 12 months later Facebook has reached 36 million users, while Orkut only grew to 34 million. As well as increasing visitor numbers, user engagement on the site has also increased, with more time being spent on the site and more pages being accessed on each visit.

The comScore data doesn’t take into account visits from public computers and mobile devices so the exact numbers may be slightly different, and the growth rate of 5% for Orkut shows that it is far from finished in Brazil. However, this is a major win for Facebook, which is now the leading social network in all but 6 countries around the world.

Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, Vietnam and Poland still favour local social networks to the global leader. In a session at the upcoming International Search Summit @ SMX West, Michael Bonfils will lead a session on these major markets and provide insights into their leading networks, including Qzone, Vkontake and Cyworld.

No related posts.

I have written before about how Bryan Eisenberg introduced me to his tools site and how there were several tools that stuck out as “must try now” tools. Among them was a tool based on the data from a Wordpress [...]]]> I have written before about how Bryan Eisenberg introduced me to his tools site and how there were several tools that stuck out as “must try now” tools. Among them was a tool based on the data from a Wordpress plugin called AddThis.

When reviewing the data it got me thinking that there was another dimension to it, especially when we look at how users across various nations and countries share the content they read.

When companies go global, and are targeting various markets, they tend to fall into the trap of generalizing their approach. By that they might be taking something that works in the U.S. or UK and applying it to Germany, Russia and China, to mention a few.

Why is this important? Well let me illustrate: If you are running a content rich site that you want the user to share with others, it is important to understand that not all sharing options are equal in all countries. If you are choosing the four most used in the U.S. you might opt for targeting Facebook, Twitter, Print and Email.

However, despite the fact that the U.S. is one of the leading online nations in the world, the rest of the world use various other channels, as well as the aforementioned.

Here are few random samples:
Russia has Vkontakte, Twitter, Facebook and Mail.ru
Saudi Arabia has Facebook, Facebook Like, Google and Google
The Netherlands has Facebook, Twitter, Print and Hyves
Brazil has Facebook, Facebook Like, Orkut and Twitter
India has Facebook, Email, Twitter and Google
Switzerland has Facebook, Ping.FM, Print and Twitter
China has Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook and Favorites

So while you might be safe with Facebook in most countries, it is important to understand that there are other channels unique to each country you are targeting. This is vital in order expand your content’s reach to local users.

Bottom-Line: Don’t generalize, localize!

No related posts.

LinkedIn has announced today that it now has over 100 million users, 56% of which are based outside the US. This is a pretty impressive statistic for a company that started with no real intention of developing an international [...]]]> LinkedIn has announced today that it now has over 100 million users, 56% of which are based outside the US. This is a pretty impressive statistic for a company that started with no real intention of developing an international user base and had initially no defined strategy for achieving that.

The data released by LinkedIn shows that the fastest growing countries in the past year, which were Brazil, Mexico, India and France; Brazil saw a staggering 428% increase and the network now boasts users in over 200 countries worldwide.

So how has this Californian Start-Up achieved such global popularity?

Delegates at the International Search Summit in San Jose on March 11th were lucky enough to hear from one of the co-founders of LinkedIn, Konstantin Guericke. He talked about the reasons he believes LinkedIn has had such broad international appeal.

Ultimately, trust is universally important, everywhere in the world. LinkedIn taps into that by enabling people to build and develop solid relationships with trusted and/or recommended contacts. As business becomes increasingly international, the need for one platform to manage and collate all contacts also grows – and LinkedIn provides just that.

Within days of launching, LinkedIn’s user base was already 50% international. Guericke explained how this wasn’t due to a global marketing effort by LinkedIn, rather was driven by its users – who  issued invitations to connect with business contacts across the world. Its growth was organic and natural.

Another reason for LinkedIn’s popularity is its functionality. It is fundamentally a professional network but it is also a great search tool. Whether you are recruiting, looking for partners or suppliers, finding event speakers, researching the competition or seeking a new job, LinkedIn’s search function enables you to conduct detailed searches, which display results for people and companies across the entire world. I personally haven’t come across any other platform that delivers such quality results in such a concise format – and that surely is a huge part of why it continues to grow.

Initially LinkedIn was only available in English – something which didn’t affect its international growth but the interface is now available in multiple languages and offers localised elements such as units of currency and measurements, all designed to improve the  user experience. Despite most communications on LinkedIn taking place in English, Guericke recommends creating your profile in different languages, if you can speak them, as it will increase your exposure on the site. If a German user is looking for CEO’s in the automotive industry, it is likely that he will search for “Geschäftsführer” and “Autoindustrie”. By creating multilingual profiles, you are increasing your chances of being found by people with genuine opportunities to offer.

When asked at the International Search Summit whether LinkedIn is likely to evolve into a more social network, with more personal information included, Konstantin said that it intends to remain a purely professional network. To me, that’s good news. Blurring private and professional lives would take the site in another direction, and deter many people from using LinkedIn. As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, and its pretty clear that LinkedIn is far from broken.

No related posts.

Overcoming language barriers is one of the greatest challenges for any business targeting an international audience, particularly in the social space where multiple conversations are happening on multiple platforms in multiple languages all the time.

Here we talk to Jani Penttinen, [...]]]> Overcoming language barriers is one of the greatest challenges for any business targeting an international audience, particularly in the social space where multiple conversations are happening on multiple platforms in multiple languages all the time.

Here we talk to Jani Penttinen, founder of multilingual community Xiha about how he has developed a platform to facilitate multilingual communications and the role it can play in helping organisations to develop their  international visibility.

Jani will be speaking at the International Search Summit Munich on April 4th.

For those who don’t know, can you tell us a bit about Xiha?

Xiha is a three year old technology startup focused on solving issues around languages and translation and providing speakers of different languages ways to communicate with each other. We operate our own social network www.xihalife.com, and at the start of 2011 we started selling the platform as a service to other businesses under the brand PremiumFanPage. With PFP, we provide a service where a business can operate their website in a number of languages without extra effort

All content, from static text to blogs and Twitter feeds, is translated by human professionals in near real time, so a customer in Japan will see a fully Japanese website while someone in America might be looking at an English language website. We also embed Google Translate to all content, so it is easy to communicate with visitors. This is based on what we have been doing with the Xiha community for the past three years now, and we are very happy to be able to provide the same tools for everyone.

Why did you decide develop the site?

I was living in China at the time, and there was no website that worked in Chinese and English and provided ways to mingle with the locals. I couldn’t use the local websites as they were in Chinese and the locals didn’t want to use the foreign websites, which were all in English. My wife, who is Chinese, had the same problem as she was interested in learning more about other countries. She had the idea of a community where everyone could use their own language for browsing but still make friends in other countries, so together we started building the site and later started a company around it.

You’ve created a large global community. What has it taught you about the way users from different countries/cultures interact online? What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned?

First of all, people from different cultural backgrounds certainly behave different way in the online community. Members from the Nordic countries are quiet and kind of shy, while Asians are not afraid to talk to anyone and ask for help to improve their English. People from Latin America and southern Europe are very talkative and colourful.

For the most part, the Xiha community works really well. People are there because they are interested in other cultures, so they’re quite tolerant of the differences in behaviour. I’ve also noticed that people are really OK with broken language, so nobody needs to be afraid to write even if they don’t know the language very well. And as we provide the machine translation for all of the content, so we often see lively discussions where everyone is writing in their own language!

It’s been a pleasant surprise to notice that people can interact even if there is no common language. Machine translation is not perfect, but then again it’s usually a better option than not being able to communicate at all. Google is also doing an excellent job improving the quality of translations all the time. We get most of our traffic from international searches, from outside of the English speaking world, mostly because we have a large website with a lot of public content in dozens of languages. We’ve learned this to be a competitive edge – the market is way less saturated when you go outside of the English speaking countries, and the smaller the language group, the better we perform.

In your opinion, how can organisations leverage social sites like Xiha to engage with customers and boost brand awareness?

The tools we provide, both in the Xiha community and as a platform, help organizations speak with the customer despite the language barriers. The Xiha community is quite unique because it is so widely spread – one million people in over 200 countries, with no country representing over 5% of the total!

Quite often a company only has customer service in one or two languages, while they may have customers around the world. As I said before, people from different cultural backgrounds behave differently so it is very important to get a direct contact with the customers in different markets. Even if you have local sales offices, the headquarters should keep some level of contact with the customers to better understand the needs. A lot of companies already have a Facebook fan page, which is a good idea, but they are completely missing out on other languages.

At the International Search Summit, you will be talking about the role multilingual SEO played in growing Xiha around the world. If you could give just one tip to marketers running international search campaigns, what would it be?

Work with real humans, native speakers, when coming up with keywords, search phrases and content. Never attempt to shortcut by using a machine translator. It works well with human to human interactions but it will fail with search engines, for a number of reasons.

And finally, why should people attend the International Search Summit?

It has never been more important to focus on international markets. There is so much new research coming out, and the market is exploding rapidly. Performing well in this space can be a real competitive edge for any startup.
The International Search Summit is a conference series focusing exclusively on international and multilingual search and social media topics.  In 2011 the event is being held alongside the Search Marketing Expo conference (SMX) in San Jose, Munich, London, Seattle and New York.

For more details on speakers, sessions and registration visit www.internationalsearchsummit.com

No related posts.

I’d hazard a guess that at least 99% of people reading this post will have a LinkedIn profile and I’d put money on the likelihood that your connections will not be limited to people in your own organisation, your [...]]]> I’d hazard a guess that at least 99% of people reading this post will have a LinkedIn profile and I’d put money on the likelihood that your connections will not be limited to people in your own organisation, your own city or even your own country.

With over 90 million users across 200 countries, LinkedIn has not only become an integral part of working life, but also a huge opportunity for marketers to reach a relevant, targeted audience anywhere in the world.

Here, we talk to Konstantin Guericke, one of LinkedIn’s co-founders to ask him how the business network became an international success and how organisations can leverage its global reach.

Konstantin, LinkedIn has transcended language/culture and become a truly global network – how has it achieved that, and what has made it so successful?

We have done some things in the product that go above and beyond typical localization, but it is also a testament to the fact that world is flat. More and more professionals have international business contacts, so as they connect their network into LinkedIn to access people and information more effectively, they automatically spread and strengthen LinkedIn in countries across the globe.

Our global leadership role is also a result of that fact that trust and relationships are key for effective business across cultures. I think in many places, trust is even more important than in the US: Middle East, Japan, China, etc…

When you first started in 2003, did you ever envisage it being such a success?

We consciously worked on a very large opportunity and sought the right investment partners to support us in that, but we were also acutely aware of at least half a dozen major reasons why LinkedIn might never take off.

As VP of Marketing, you played a major role in the international growth of LinkedIn. What were the major challenges you faced?

As we spent no money on advertising, our focus was on supporting our members as they spread the word, helping our users get the most out of LinkedIn and PR. One of the challenges we faced was that we were quickly copied in other countries, did not have localized versions right away and it took time for us to build up the network in other countries.  So local competitors  thrived for a while, but because the world is so interconnected, there is a huge incentive for professionals to have access to investors, experts, partners, etc. outside of their home country.

LinkedIn’s huge membership level, along with its global reach makes it an appealing channel for marketers targeting a global audience. How can organisations use it effectively as a marketing tool?

For global reach, I would highlight advertising, polls, groups and company pages. These four work best if used in a coordinated fashion and integrated into your website and other online marketing programs. All except advertising are free, and companies can get going with advertising via DirectAds for as little as $10 per day. For groups, for example, you can set up sub-groups in languages other than English, where people can provide feedback on your product and initiatives or discuss a topic related to your market.

For B2B segments with high average selling prices, targeted searches are usually the best way to identify the most promising customers and partners, and while InMail is an excellent option, in many cases it’s hard to beat getting a warm introduction from someone your prospect already knows and trusts.

Finally, why should people attend the International Search Summit?

Having lived, worked and studied not only in the US, but also in Europe and Asia, I think it is important to remember that most significant corporations derive over 50% of their revenue from outside of the US. Companies succeed when they adapt not only to the local culture, but also market conditions. It is a challenge to be global and local at the same time, but there are many examples of how US companies have succeeded, so you can learn a lot from both failures and successes.

Konstantin will be speaking at the International Search Summit in San Jose on March 11th. The Summit is a one day event, being held alongside SMX West.  Early Bird registration is still open.

No related posts.

According to Internet World Stats there are close to 2 billion Internet users worldwide. According to same source there are around 520 million Facebook users or 7.6% of the total Internet population.

Europe has the most Facebook users or just above [...]]]> According to Internet World Stats there are close to 2 billion Internet users worldwide. According to same source there are around 520 million Facebook users or 7.6% of the total Internet population.

Europe has the most Facebook users or just above 162 million, North America comes next with around 150 million. Asia comes number three with some 93 million users, Latin America has 68 million or there about, Africa has 17 million, Oceania/The Caribbean (Australia) has also 15.6 and finally and the Middle-East have close to 11.7 million.

No related posts.

Everyone is talking about social media, and many companies are actively participating in it. But with so many channels, tools and techniques available are global brands making the most of it and is it an effective marketing tool. We’ve asked [...]]]> Everyone is talking about social media, and many companies are actively participating in it. But with so many channels, tools and techniques available are global brands making the most of it and is it an effective marketing tool. We’ve asked Massimo Burgio, a global search and social expert where companies are going wrong with social – and what they should be doing to engage users and build their brand using social media.

What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in global social media at the moment?

Not much, really… maybe the NewTwitter as a better tool, or platforms like SocialCast or Jive for managing social media marketing project on a team scale. Social media is growing fast on the consumer side, while the brands look like they spent all their creative efforts in offline media, as I don’t see big commitment on the social media side. The most exciting news this year is probably the decision of Pepsi not to invest $20M on a Superbowl ad, and to invest it in social media instead– but not on Facebook and the likes. They threw a contest for social business ideas, and gave the money to support sustainable businesses. However, there is nothing new even here, Google does it all the time…

What are the biggest mistakes being made by organisations in their international social media strategies?

Waiting for social media success to happen because of the users’ activity, rather than stimulating conversation and proposing new ways of engagement. This is a global mistake but not necessarily a mistake in global strategies. It just happens over and over all around the world, and marketers keep doing the same mistakes in every country.

How important is it for organisations to plan their social media activity? Should social media activity be planned – or is it more spontaneous, and reactive?

Social media marketing is not black magic, it’s just another channel for marketing fellas to engage in. And like any other marketing channel, it needs serious planning of content, resources, commitment. The reactive part (replying to a comment or a thread) is nothing more than any other community management process – always on. But companies cannot allow their presence on social networks to be determined by users in terms of content – they need to focus on how, what and when to communicate, with some decent planning.

There are so many social media tools, platforms and channels – how can marketers determine which tools will be most effective in their chosen target markets?

It’s all about strategic and competitive analysis. Marketers should market where their target audience is, and not just jump on the first option only because it is fancy. Sometimes social media means also being active on “boring” networks such as LinkedIn or Yahoo! Answers, but those can sometimes be more effective than “shining happy networks” such as Facebook, twitter or (remember that?) Second Life. I suggest looking at the Conversation Prism designed by Brian Solis, I will talk about it at the International Search Summit London.

What role do you think SEO plays in achieving success in social media campaigns?

SEO plays a pivotal role in everything internet. Even if it’s not possible to implement SEO coding on many social networks profiles, knowledge from SEO should always drive in the choice of vanity URLs, profile names, tags and categories when allowed, and so on. On the digital media side, meaning the optimisation of all media we distribute on social networks (text, links, images, videos, maps), SEO is definitely the main reference for all social media optimisation techniques.

If you could give just one tip to marketers running global search/social campaigns, what would it be?

One tip? Only one? It won’t be enough… So I’ll go with: “You’re putting your brand in the front line. Be prepared and know what you are doing.”

And one final one, why attend the International Search Summit?

Because it has a very particular take on search, from the global perspective. And because it’s fun, of course!

The International Search Summit London will take place on 28th October at The British Library. Visit www.internationalsearchsummit.com/london for the full agenda and to register!

No related posts.

In a research done by Nordic eMarketing in cooperation with the eNewsPR network, journalists are found to use less than 2.5 keywords most of the time. In the same research Nordic eMarketing found that French journalists are lazier than the [...]]]> In a research done by Nordic eMarketing in cooperation with the eNewsPR network, journalists are found to use less than 2.5 keywords most of the time. In the same research Nordic eMarketing found that French journalists are lazier than the English when searching for content and Scandinavian journalists are likelier to venture outside of their ccTLD and use .COM or other ccTLD endings when searching for content through their preferred search engine.

After reviewing well over 2 million individual visits and search referrals, filtering out various media from over 40 countries and all continents, Nordic eMarketing found among other that Twitter is a poor organic referrer and Google returns close to 90% of the reporters coming through search.

Stay tuned at Multilingual Search and be among the first to get this report/white paper on the behaviour of journalists and how they search for content.

It is due to be published late October this 2010.

No related posts.

This is the message Marty Weintraub is going to share with delegates at the International Search Summit on 28th October in London when he presents on how marketers can use international social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and [...]]]> This is the message Marty Weintraub is going to share with delegates at the International Search Summit on 28th October in London when he presents on how marketers can use international social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as search and keyword tools to gain valuable insights and data that will drive global success.

In a recent SearchEngineLand post, Marty argues that marketers need to use the array of tools available to really segment their users and target specific demographics. He endorses contextual research – anything that isn’t search – as a means of finding out what your target audience is talking about, what they are interested in and what they need. This is done by engaging with users on sites such as YouTube and Twitter – join conversations, make friends, participate in debates and you will find those who either want what you’re selling, or will endorse it themselves.

Facebook, according to Weintraub, offers marketers a wealth of opportunity to gather this data due to the huge amount of information users share on the site, and don’t make private. Either by optimising your pages for internal search or targeting an audience through Facebook’s PPC mechanism, organisations should make the most of the access to data Facebook provides and use it to boost their online campaigns.

“Traditional” search still undoubtedly has a role, but by combining old techniques with new, marketers can vastly increase their data on, and therefore knowledge of global customers, prospects and brand ambassadors.

In his session at the International Search Summit, Marty will present case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of blended data and discuss processes which enable organisations to deploy multiple search and contextual channels and effectively measure ROI.

Marty, who is President of US Agency aimClear,  speaks regularly at conferences on this subject, but will be focusing on the international aspects at the International Search Summit. Tickets for the Summit are available at the super early bird price of £125 –book now to avoid missing out as there are limited numbers of tickets available at this price.

No related posts.

If you think that by tweeting in English you will reach the entire world, you are wrong. Though English is by far the most ’spoken’ language on Twitter, there are still many other languages on Twitter. French [...]]]> If you think that by tweeting in English you will reach the entire world, you are wrong. Though English is by far the most ’spoken’ language on Twitter, there are still many other languages on Twitter. French company Semiocast performed an analysis on 2.8 million tweets and found that half of the tweets are in English. Last year that was 75%. Twitter is only fairly recently started introducing international versions of their site, however in many countries the ‘home language’ has been used longer.

The top languages are in a way surprising. The top five languages are English, Japanese, Portuguese, Malay and Spanish. This shows that Twitter is very popular in the far east. Japan accounts for 14% of the messages while Malay languages (Indonesia) reaches until 6%. The high number of Spanish and Portuguese tweets are less surprising with many countries in South America also using these languages.

The research was performed within 48 hours. For two days all the tweets were counted. In that time the researchers found that major European languages like German, Italian and even Dutch are used for about 1% to 2% of all messages. The French seem the least active on Twitter with less than a percent of the messages.

With half of the tweets in another language than English and Tweets now being indexed by search engines it is becoming more and more interesting to ad specific languages to your twitter-efforts if you are targeting any of the languages named above.

Oscar Carreras, SEO Manager at Hotels.com, will be speaking about how they devised and implemented an international Twitter strategy to target markets such as Japan and Brazil at the International Search Summit in May.

source: http://semiocast.com/static/downloads/Semiocast_Half_of_messages_on_Twitter_are_not_in_English_20100224.pdf

No related posts.

Twitter and LinkedIn announced their partnership today, this will help bring tweets to LinkedIn. New features will be rolled out the next couple of days where LinkedIn account holders can tweet their LinkedIn status and vice versa (Tweets will be [...]]]> Twitter and LinkedIn announced their partnership today, this will help bring tweets to LinkedIn. New features will be rolled out the next couple of days where LinkedIn account holders can tweet their LinkedIn status and vice versa (Tweets will be sent to LinkedIn accounts in real-time).

Reid Hoffmn and Biz Stone – from Twitter – used ‘peanut butter and chocolate’ to explain how LinkedIn and Twitter should work together!

Really looking forward to this new feature…watch this space!

You can find the full article on the LinkedIn blog

No related posts.

On October 14 Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn announced via their blog that they have achieved a historic milestone. The social network for professionals now has 50 million users worldwide and half of these users come from outside the USA.

11 [...]]]> On October 14 Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn announced via their blog that they have achieved a historic milestone. The social network for professionals now has 50 million users worldwide and half of these users come from outside the USA.

11 million users come from European countries and India is currently the fastest growing market, with 3 million members to date. The Netherlands has the highest rate of adoption (per capita) outside the USA.

According to data from Alexa, LinkedIn has doubled its number of visitors over the last six months.
The top 10 countries with members on LinkedIn are -

1. USA
2. India
3. UK
4. Netherlands
5. Germany
6. Italy
7. Australia
8. Pakistan
9. China
10. South Africa

Celebrating this milestone Weiner says “LinkedIn has been global since inception” and it will be interesting to see what further growth will be achieved as more international versions of LinkedIn are rolled out.

No related posts.

A Latin American Communications Firm (Mazalan Comunicaciones) recently published the results of a survey that they applied in 26 countries to 40 Marketing Communications and PR firms to ask them about the tools they are using at the [...]]]> A Latin American Communications Firm (Mazalan Comunicaciones) recently published the results of a survey that they applied in 26 countries to 40 Marketing Communications and PR firms to ask them about the tools they are using at the moment both to send information to journalists and other SEM activities.Agencies and firms around the world including countries like UK, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Saudi Arabia, among others participated in this research which results in a very interesting global view.Although the most popular tools to send across information to journalists and mass media are still the telephone and the email, there is a common interest in social media and so far Twitter is the most used.When asking these companies what social media are they using to share information on their clients the results were as they follow (some of them clicked more than one so that is way the percentage shows as over 100%).

• Facebook 61%
• Linkedin 47%
• Hi5  3%
• Twitter 67%
• Youtube 61%
• Other 17%

Indeed Twitter is quite appreciated by the UK PR firms which are currently using it. It is interesting to see that Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube are coming up quite strong, however still Linkedin has the best reputation for doing B2B Social Media without spamming.When asking these companies if they are using paid search or any other SEM activity to support their PR activities, almost half said they are doing something.

• Yes 43%
• No15%
• Not yet 43%

An agency in Brazil said that there is a great opportunity to try to measure the results of social media, whist other countries think having a space there allows to have specific conversations with the different audiences, therefore sending more targeted messages. According to another agency from Germany, social media have changed the speed for delivering and receiving information. Another Communications firm from Spain said that it is important to manage social media and have a proper plan, as it is not something to dedicate just 30 minutes per day, but include in the plans and activities.It is great to see that overall, all PR and Communications firms around the world are sharing that interest. Probably is also the fact that the journalists and media are the early adopters of the web 2..To read more about the survey in Spanish go to:http://blog.mazalan.com/2009/08/redes-sociales-una-vision-global.html

No related posts.