When you create a Facebook account, your language is set by default based on your location, but you can also change it according to your preferences. Users are comfortable using Facebook in English while a growing population believed their local language helped them be more grammatically correct in their communication with others. Going regional is necessary as more than half of the world's 2.4 billion Internet users sign into a social network regularly. Google launched its Translator in Hindi in 2007 and its Hindi portal in 2009. In September 2011, Twitter also launched regional content delivery in Hindi alongside Google and Facebook offering a search engine in nine Indian languages. Furthermore it’s interesting to note that IndiBlogger, a popular Indian blog portal, hosted 350 Hindi blogs recently, which only means the relevance of going regional is increasing.

Around 64 of rural internet users in India (24.3million active users out of a total of 38 million) use the internet in their local language. That means regional language content availability can boost the growth of Internet in India by 24 per cent. The regional language sites are growing at 56 per cent year-on-year and English sites just by 11 per cent. I will say that with the caveat that overall Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and YouTube were the top five social media tools used by marketers, with Facebook leading the pack. But if you break it down by business-to-business marketers, marketers are more focused on LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging, at least, according to the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

According to a recent study jointly done by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, Hindi is the second most widely preferred language after English in India. In rural India, 27 per cent of the users use Hindi to access online content, followed by Marathi and Tamil. In urban India, 60 per cent of the users access online content in Hindi followed by Tamil and Marathi.

Audiences define the language. When you start putting your efforts into regional or niche social media websites, being aware of the regional social media etiquette is essential. Working with local social media experts to understand online behaviour can also work well.

India has the second highest user base when it comes to Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter but in the case of Pinterest, India accounts for only 9.3 per cent of the user base. Pinterest, on the other hand, also provides language support for Hindi as a part of its app update for Android and iOS. Other languages supported in the newly updated app and website includes Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, Romanian, Hungarian and Greek. LinkedIn has launched a Chinese version of its website and has also introduced three new languages to improve Asian user base – Korean, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia.

The brand leveraging social media using regional languages is BBC - Hindi (Facebook & Google). Started in July 2011, BBC Hindi is a 1.4 million fan page with an engagement ratio of approximately nine per cent. NDTV (English), on the other hand, has a 3 million fan page with an engagement ratio of around 7.5 per cent. An engagement ratio of 9 per cent shows that the audience is relating to the content and conversing too. BBC Hindi has used this strategy to tap markets where other new players have not made a mark.

The last decade has witnessed unprecedented Internet diffusion in India. Over the past three years alone, Internet usage in India increased from 100 to 200 million people. The increase has not taken place only among the urban but also amongst the rural Indian population. Regional marketing is thus going to be essential and crucial for advertising in the future and it is time for brands to capitalise on the same at the earliest. Regional marketing will affect not just Facebook usage but also advertising in order to increase Google and search engine optimisation ranks, providing content of higher relevance to different segments. Currently only 10 per cent of the Indian population is on Facebook, the majority of which is from urban areas. However, there is an increase in the rural Indian population joining Facebook. Regional marketing is going to be essential and crucial for Facebook advertising. Brands are slowly taking the regional route to cross the language barriers. While a significant effort will be put in by the marketers in regional marketing, they will also receive great help from the social networking websites which will be providing the option of consuming content in various languages.

FOUNDER & CEO, MINDSHIFT INTERACTIVE

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