It’s been a while since brands discovered the power of social media and started using it to promote themselves. What many of them don’t realize, though, is that their social media efforts need to be tailored to each local audience to be genuinely effective. How? Through social media localization.
Imagine this: your favorite sports team just won the national championship, and you’re out in the streets celebrating with friends and fellow fans. Between cheers and selfies, you find yourself quickly scrolling through your go-to social media app to see what everyone is saying, and hey, that major sneaker brand you always thought of as distant and global is celebrating too! That’s the first time you realize they always post in your language, in your time zone, keeping up with what’s happening around you. Suddenly, they don’t feel so distant anymore, right? They support your team! Next time you need a pair of shoes… you might just think of them.
In this article you’ll discover what social media localization is, why it matters for your brand and how to get it right, along with useful tactics and common mistakes to avoid.
What is social media localization?
Social media localization is the process of adapting social media content to align with the linguistic, cultural and behavioral norms of a specific market by translating texts into the local language(s) and adjusting elements like imagery, contextual references and communication style in order to reflect regional conventions and expectations.
The overall goal is to make your social media content feel like it truly belongs with your customers, which means different things depending on where they are. For example, promoting summer sales in July might work in the Northern Hemisphere, but customers in New Zealand might be confused as to why you’re advertising inflatable pools and beach umbrellas in the middle of winter…
And that’s exactly why regionally relevant content is essential. Social media localization helps you move from simply speaking at your customers to actually bonding with them, creating a sense of familiarity that will make them remember you when it matters most. Jade Shimooka, Social Media Manager at BrandMuscle, sums it up this way:
“You want to engage with the local community and post locally curated content. It shows you support the community and, in the end, [your customers will] recognize your brand when they’re ready to buy.”
📈 Did you know?
Some of the advantages of social media localization include:
• Better reach – Connect with people who speak different languages.
• Improved following and conversions – Engage more effectively with individual audiences.
• Competitive advantage – Consumers respond better to companies that address them directly.
• Brand loyalty and longevity – Win the hearts of your customers and cement your position in foreign markets.
How social media localization works step-by-step
Social media localization is a complex effort that involves many different people and departments and requires careful coordination and monitoring. Here’s an overview of the key steps involved:
1. Research your target audience
Dig into the data at your disposal through tools like Google Analytics and Facebook’s Audience Insights to find out where your followers and customers are based. Then, roll up your sleeves and find out everything you can about them. What languages (including regional variants) do they speak? Which social media platforms do they use the most? Do they prefer to be addressed formally, like in France, or informally, like in Ireland? To what type of content do they respond best? What are the current local trends and hashtags?
Look into your main local competitors to answer all of these questions and use what you learn to inform your social media localization strategy.
Forty percent of respondents to a CSA Research’s survey claim they won’t buy products from websites that are not in their language, highlighting just how important it is to directly relate to your audience — something you can’t do without thoroughly researching their habits and preferences.
2. Adjust your content strategy
After defining your overall content strategy, you’ll have to adapt it to the unique characteristics of each region.
- Avoid posting your social media content all at once: if it’s true that it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere, the same goes for 3 AM, when most of your customers are sound asleep. Research the peak engagement times in each region and adjust your posting schedule accordingly.
- Align your content with local holidays, seasons and events. During Ramadan, your posts targeting users in the Middle East will be more effective after sunset. Similarly, your September back-to-school campaign won’t land particularly well in Australia, where the school year begins in January.
- Determine which types of content are most effective for each platform and pay attention to how different audiences consume them. For example, videos might perform best on Instagram and TikTok, while text-based posts or infographics are more suitable for LinkedIn.
- Finally, ask yourself: is translating your existing social media content enough to truly connect with the new target audience or should you invest in a dedicated social media campaign with original, carefully tailored content?
Extra tip 🚨
If your social media strategy heavily relies on memes or pop culture references, these are likely to fall flat in other countries if not adapted to the local landscape. If you sell office supplies, make sure your target audience is familiar with The Office before posting a (surely hilarious) meme centered around it.
3. Translate and adapt your content
Some of your content will be perfectly reusable across multiple markets, as long as it’s properly translated. Social media is a form of marketing, and marketing translation is something you better get right, as it directly affects your brand’s business performance.
MT tools that translate figurative phrases like “Think outside the box” in a literal way will confuse your foreign audiences and weaken the perceived professionalism of your brand. Turn to highly creative, native-speaking translators with a deep understanding of cultural context and nuances.
Other content will need transcreation rather than translation, which takes a more liberal and imaginative approach to adapt idioms, humor and cultural references in order to align with local customs and properly resonate with the target audience. The goal is not to simply translate words, but recreating the message in a way that feels authentic and relevant in every market.
An example? Not being able to faithfully translate the “Just do it” slogan in an effective way, Nike Japan used the hashtag #Minohodoshirazu (literally meaning “Don’t know your place”) to embody its spirit, inviting their Japanese audience to defy limits, challenge norms and be their most authentic self.
4. Tailor your visuals
Social media marketing is image-driven, so it’s essential to avoid alienating your audience with completely irrelevant imagery, like pushing a suburban backyard scene to Singaporean apartment dwellers.
Your audience must feel seen and represented, which means adjusting visual elements like clothing styles, typical weather, skin tones and local aesthetics. An example? A picture of a tall, blond man sipping tea in a cozy, plant-filled café will fit well in the Netherlands, but may feel disconnected or unrelatable in a more hectic and diverse country like Malta.
You might be tempted to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach based on generic, inoffensive visuals, but this will only make your brand image weaker and blander. Add some authentic local flavor to your visual content by working with local designers or photographers: no stock photos allowed!
5. Monitor your performance
As with everything, the only way to know if you’re doing well is to… check. Continuously track key metrics like engagement, reach and conversions to make sure your efforts are hitting the mark. High reach combined with low engagement is the symptom of a problem: it means your content is reaching your intended audience, but they’re not really responding to it…
Additionally, consider running some A/B tests to compare different versions of your localized content and determine which one is performing better in each market.
And remember, don’t just look at global metrics! Break down your data by region, platform and content type and use these insights to refine your strategy over time, optimizing how you invest and allocate your resources.
Examples of brands that nailed social media localization
Let’s understand the true power of social media localization by looking at how some brands have mastered the art of adapting their content to different audiences across the globe:
Duolingo partners with local icons
The infamous Duolingo owl, Duo, has fully embraced the meme culture that surrounds him, and the Duolingo social media team is masterfully riding that wave. While this is already a strong example of clever social media marketing, let’s get to the localization part.
Take the Italian Duolingo Instagram account, for instance. They teamed up with Pietro Ubaldi, an Italian voice actor known for lending his voice to many beloved characters from Japanese anime, skillfully tapping into his cultural influence to invite the Italian audience to learn Japanese.
Another example? Using footage from Dua Lipa’s concert in Milan to promote the app on Instagram, tying a global star to a local event. And when Italy sent the iconic puppet Topo Gigio to the Eurovision, @duolingoitalia didn’t miss the chance to post a picture of him with Duo, calling it “the ultimate bromance”.
The examples are never-ending, but one thing is clear: Duolingo consistently creates original content that’s tailored to each market in a way that makes it feel deeply familiar and authentic. And people love it, so much so that it’s become widely recognized as an industry benchmark.
Uniqlo adapts its social media content to the hemispheres
Just take a look at Uniqlo’s Instagram page dedicated to Australia in June: you’ll see parkas, jackets and people with cashmere sweaters standing by the winter sea. Switch over to their French account and you’ll find very different visuals: people in tank tops and t-shirts under the bluest, sunniest skies imaginable, along with models sporting classic French marinières.
Meanwhile, their Japanese account features almost exclusively Japanese models and images that include much more text, catering to the local preference for information-rich content. A one-size-fits-all strategy just wouldn’t be as effective, and Uniqlo knows it.
Netflix promotes the most relevant content to its users
Netflix is another brand that understands the importance of engaging with its audience on social media in a way that feels relevant and personalized.
Aside from posting in the local language through unique, localized social media accounts, Netflix promotes different content based on the region and leverages local memes and cultural references to strengthen the connection with its diverse audiences.
Its Korean account on X (formerly known as Twitter) frequently features collaborations, games and challenges with local actors from new shows and popular artists like the band SEVENTEEN, as well as a lot of content related to Korean dramas and comedies.
Its Western accounts, on the other hand, focus more on what’s popular in those regions, often highlighting locally produced content featuring prominent national actors and celebrities. Netflix Canada, for example, produced a short video where Canadian icon Carrie-Ann Moss shares a few of her favorite things about Canada.
General Motors thinks locally while doing business globally
But it’s not all about sales and marketing: social media localization plays a crucial role in professional settings as well, as demonstrated by General Motors. The company manages multiple LinkedIn accounts, each dedicated to sharing region-specific news, updates and job opportunities.
On their main page you’ll find job listings for Michigan and California, while the Africa & Middle East one includes news about events in Dubai and regional holidays like Hala February, celebrated in Kuwait. Similarly, their Australia and New Zealand page features content and information that’s relevant to their local followers, sparing them from having to sift through an endless sea of irrelevant posts to find what matters to them.
Despite the variety of localized content across these accounts, one element stays the same: the brand’s vision, which is detailed in the description of every page. This shared narrative creates a common thread that solidifies General Motors’ global identity while catering to the needs and preferences of its local audiences.
Common mistakes to avoid in social media localization
Social media localization is a fairly complex process which, depending on the depth of your efforts, may involve many different moving parts. To help you navigate this, here are some common mistakes to watch out for:
Limiting yourself to one-to-one translation
When the California Milk Processor Board launched its “Got milk?” ad campaign, the slogan was unfortunately translated into Spanish as “Are you lactating?”, sparking outrage (and incredulous laughter) among its target audience.
A direct, literal translation can work in the simplest of cases, but creativity is key in social media marketing. A tagline that strongly resonates in your home market isn’t likely to have the same effect elsewhere, especially if it relies on humor, slang, cultural references or memes. And don’t overlook language variants: Latin American Spanish, for instance, is not the same as Castilian Spanish, and people will notice.
Having just one global account
Avoid posting all your localized content on a single account. While it’s definitely easier to manage, you’ll overwhelm your followers with posts that are completely irrelevant to their region or interests, leading to confusion and disengagement. Just imagine a user in Brazil constantly seeing promotions aimed at Europeans. You’d unfollow too after a while, wouldn’t you?
Localized accounts allow you to speak directly to each audience in a way that feels intentional and personalized, strengthening your bond and boosting engagement over time. Seems too hard? Remember that, even though language is fundamental for great communication, translation is not always necessary.
Take Starbucks: they have separate Facebook pages with dedicated content for each country, but the captions are translated only for those markets that appreciate it the most, like Mexico, Korea and France, while pages for the Philippines and Singapore stay in English.
Using irrelevant imagery
Many social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, are built around visual content. That’s why it’s especially important to localize not only your copy, but also the images you use, ensuring they reflect the audience you’re targeting.
In short, don’t show snow-covered landscapes or ice-skating scenes to audiences in tropical regions like Southeast Asia: they’ll come across as irrelevant or out of place to people who’ve never experienced winter.
Color symbolism also plays a big role. In China, red represents luck and celebration, while white is associated with mourning, so be careful with that all-white wedding-themed campaign you were planning…
Disregarding user feedback
No relationship can work without some listening skills, and the beauty of social media is its immediacy. Users are right there, eager to give you free, instant feedback, so why ignore it? Use it to your advantage instead: take note of what they like and dislike, continuously adapting your social media strategy to their taste. Engaging with feedback improves your content while also building trust and loyalty over time.
Set up social listening tools like Sprout Social or Brandwatch to track and analyze the overall sentiment around your brand. Assign a dedicated team to respond to comments and messages while also addressing praise and criticism. If you’re looking for specific insights, just ask! Set up a poll or ask a direct question to your audience to know how they feel.
Failing to account for local trends and events
Social media moves fast, but not at the same pace everywhere. What’s trending in one region might already be old news in another, and being unaware of this can make your content feel irrelevant or out of touch.
Keep up with local news, trends and developments by using tools like Google Trends to ensure your messaging stays timely and impactful. Follow locally relevant influencers and news outlets to know what’s going on at all times and seize any opportunity that may arise.
Take Singles’ Day in China, for example. Did you know that it’s the world’s biggest shopping event? If China is one of your target markets, neglecting it would be a major missed opportunity…
Localization tactics that actually work
But let’s not focus only on what not to do. Here are some of the best practices you can follow while localizing your social media content — proven tactics that will make your brand feel local, relevant and relatable:
Choose your platforms carefully
Not all social media platforms are created equal, especially when it comes to localization. Choose your platforms based on your target audience: which ones do they use the most? If your audience isn’t particularly young, you might want to skip TikTok and concentrate on other social media, like Facebook. If it’s professionals you’re targeting, your focus will be on LinkedIn.
Platform preferences vary widely across countries, and that’s when localization is most important, as it prevents you from spreading your resources too thin. Prioritize based on the region instead: TikTok will work great in one country and not be available in another, while Instagram or X might dominate elsewhere.
And be careful not to overlook other platforms just because they’re unfamiliar or unavailable in your market: apps like Naver Café in Korea may not be on your radar, but they’re huge locally. Kwai, in Brazil, has around 60 million users, 35% of which claim to have bought products or services after discovering them on the platform.
Separate your strategies
It might be tempting to roll out one big strategy across all markets, but it’s important to separate your overall social media plan from your localization strategy.
Each market demands its own tailored approach based on local preferences and cultural nuances, including practical aspects like the best times to post to maximize engagement. Your content for the US, the UK and Australia might be very similar, if not the same, but their time zones definitely aren’t!
Also, remember to not be overly playful with your German and Japanese customers and to address your French audience a bit more formally. And always create separate accounts for each region!
Work with local influencers
As the name suggests, influencers have a strong influence on their audience, and social media is their natural environment: it only makes sense to put two and two together and ask them for help with your localized social media campaigns.
They understand the market better than anyone, so be sure to give them the creative freedom they need to communicate your message authentically and effectively — while clearly outlining your brand image and tone, both of which may vary across platforms.
That doesn’t mean going in blindly. Choose your influencers based on a common target demographic by using tools like Upfluence and track the engagement metrics and user feedback of each specific campaign to see who’s delivering the best results.
Hire locals to handle your social media
If possible, this is one of the best moves to make. Bringing a local team on board to manage your social media in a specific region saves you the hassle of having to figure out how to translate and adapt your content (and second-guessing if you did a good job).
We’re talking social media managers, writers, graphic designers, video editors and community managers. Train them thoroughly about your brand’s core values and they’ll take care of the rest. Local experts will have intimate knowledge of the language, the culture and the audience itself: you’ll be in good hands!
Analyze your performance
Analyzing your performance is essential for successful social media localization: it helps you understand what truly resonates with your regional audiences and what doesn’t.
Track key metrics like engagement and click-through rates, shares, comments and follower growth for each localized campaign or post. Use platform-specific analytics tools like Instagram Analytics or TikTok Analytics to compare content performance across different languages, regions and cultural groups. If your posts perform great in Latin America but not in Spain, it might be time to stop recycling the same content across the two regions.
And remember: closely monitor audience feedback and sentiment to catch any misunderstandings or cultural missteps (it didn’t end well for that Dolce & Gabbana ad featuring an Asian woman trying to eat pizza and cannoli with chopsticks…)
Tools and platforms that simplify social media localization
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media management platform offering a wide range of features, from curating content and scheduling posts to managing teams and measuring ROI while integrating with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest and more.
Hootsuite allows you to target multiple countries by selecting continents or broader regions, streamlining your social media localization efforts in those areas. Plus, it automatically detects the language of any social media message and uses Google Translate to instantly translate it.
Predis.ai
Predis.ai enables you to generate social media content in multiple languages simultaneously. While the translations may not be the most refined, as it’s always the case with machine translation, it’s an effective way to speed things up with simple, straightforward content you want to get out there all at once.
Emplifi
Emplifi is a marketing-focused social media management platform that gives you a comprehensive overview of your global and local strategies, consolidating social media analytics in one place and even featuring tools to discover and compare influencers to work with. It allows a decentralized approach that leverages both global and local teams to deliver audience-specific experiences.
Using Emplifi, global teams can take a step back and examine incoming data from all markets to identify patterns, trends and untapped opportunities.
Believing in the power of humor and understanding how difficult it is to translate, Benefit Cosmetics chose Emplifi to run localized social media campaigns. The tool allowed them to maintain a unified global message while remaining sensitive and responsive to local preferences and cultural differences, which ultimately led to an increase in reach and global impressions. Rachel Bouvier, Senior Digital Analyst at Global Digital, shares this insight:
“We use Emplifi Social to inform our three different buckets of content: global, local, and influencer. We’re able to look at what the engagement is across these buckets, including the different comments they’re getting. This allows us to recognize local successes and adopt best practices.”
Sprinklr
Sprinklr supports a variety of localization features, including the option to set different languages, regions and time zones for your content. It automatically localizes your copy at the time of creation and it allows for the customization of individual posts depending on the platform, helping you fine-tune your efforts even further.
For an enhanced customer experience, its Care Console’s AI lets you adjust your message (making it longer, shorter, or modifying the tone) to better match local preferences.
Facebook’s Global Pages
Facebook’s Global Pages allow you to deliver localized versions of your content to customers around the world, all under one universal brand name and a single, consistent vanity URL. You can use Global Pages to share different, region-specific content that’s meaningful to each audience, automatically redirecting people to each Page based on their location and language settings.
As a built-in feature of Facebook, this tool offers an easy and invaluable way to streamline social media localization while ensuring each market receives content that feels relevant, familiar and culturally appropriate.
Planning your social localization strategy: a quick checklist
Based on everything we’ve explored so far, here’s a handy checklist of the key steps to follow while building an effective social media localization strategy:
- Research your target audience 🔍
☐ Identify the countries or regions you want to target
☐ Research social media usage habits and preferred platforms in each location
☐ Explore cultural norms, interests and sensitivities
☐ Study your competitors in the area
- Adjust your content strategy 🎯
☐ Set up region-specific accounts for each platform
☐ Decide whether to adopt a global strategy or a fully localized approach
☐ Prioritize the most popular platforms in each region
☐ Align your posting schedule with local time zones, holidays and peak activity periods
- Translate and adapt your content 🌍
☐ Hire professional, native-speaking translators
☐ Adjust your tone and communication style to local preferences
☐ Create original content for each audience
☐ Partner with local influencers
- Tailor your visuals 🖼️
☐ Research local imagery to avoid cultural misunderstandings or insensitive visuals
☐ Change images and thumbnails to reflect the local population
☐ Ensure your content is seasonally relevant
☐ Adapt colors and landscapes to those familiar to the target audience
- Monitor your performance 📊
☐ A/B test different content formats and tones in each region
☐ Track local engagement, reach and conversion metrics
☐ Gather user feedback
☐ Leverage data to optimize your local strategies
Measuring success: which metrics to track post-localization
We touched on analytics earlier, but let’s take a closer look at the specific metrics you should monitor to assess the impact of your social media localization:
- Reach – It measures how many people from a specific location have seen your posts (impressions), helping you determine if your content is reaching its intended audience and to what extent.
- Engagement – It measures the number of likes, comments and shares your content received, showing how much your audience is engaging with your content.
- Click-through rate (CTR) – It measures how often a link is clicked, helping you gauge the effectiveness of your calls-to-action.
- Conversion rate – It measures the percentage of users who take action (e.g. by signing up or downloading something) after seeing your content. When analyzed by locale, it tells you how effectively your localized content is driving business results.
- Sentiment analysis – It measures the emotional response users have to your content. Positive sentiment means you’re on the right track, while negative sentiment indicates that there’s room for improvement. Perhaps your tone needs adjusting, or your machine translations aren’t hitting the mark.
- Follower growth/loss – It measures how many followers you’ve gained or lost over a certain period. It’s useful for testing different strategies and gauging the audience’s direct response to them.
Use this information wisely to continuously optimize your social media localization efforts and you’ll see the results — literally.
Conclusion
Social media is now an integral part of most people’s lives, accounting for 35.8% of total screen time worldwide, with an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes per day. With numbers like these, it goes without saying that social media represents a massive opportunity for all businesses willing to make it a part of their marketing strategy.
Mindful social media localization is the key to make these strategies reach their full potential.
Those 2 hours and 23 minutes we spend on social media every day are indeed a valuable opportunity for any business. The trick is getting it right, and now you know that social media localization goes far beyond auto-translating your posts: it’s about adapting visuals, tailoring your messaging and collaborating with locals to craft authentic, relevant content that shows your customers you really care.
With the right tools, a well-defined strategy and a commitment to local relevance, your brand can not only expand its reach but also foster long-term loyalty in markets across the world. Things are constantly changing and evolving: social media localization is your way to keep up.
If you’re ready to take the next step in this journey, why don’t you check out this article about multimedia localization?
