The topic of this article is requirements for effectively reaching and engaging glocal audience, i.e. local and global (international) audience.
1. Are requirements for reaching and engaging international audience different from those of local audience?
There might be additional requirements for effectively reaching and engaging international audience such as English, inter-cultural communication skill and global perspective; however, the essence of requirements are the same for reaching and engaging international and local audience.
The author would like to explain this by first presenting requirements of local audience and then additional requirements specific of international audiences, explaining how the essence of the latter is the same as that of the former.
2. Why the requirements are the same in essence?
1) Requirements for reaching and engaging local audience
Requirements for reaching and engaging audience in general, normally local unless specified, can be concluded as the following.
- Customer focused
- Active participation to the community, providing value
This is because as mentioned in many blog articles on this topic, concrete tips and methodologies of reach and engagement in social media world can be summarized as below, which are all about the above two points.
(1) Completed bio
Complete a bio with appropriate information so that people would know who, what kind of contents/updates are to be tweeted and posted etc. This is about opening the account from customer-focused way. Also, if people would not now such things, that person would not be able to actively participate in the community.
(2) Regular and appropriate frequency tweets and updates
It is often mentioned based on statistics result that majority of people open up twitter account but do not tweet at all or much, which is inactive participation to the community and providing no value. Not many people are posting sufficient updates in other social media such as Facebook meaning only a proportion of the community members are active.
Regarding the frequency of the tweets on Twitter, it should not be too frequent so that Tine Line of your followers will be filled only with your tweet. It is the same for Facebook and all other social media. This is about consideration to the followers/friends of social media and contributing to the community in an appropriate way.
(3) Content of value
This is whether tweet/post updates are something that gives value to the followers/friends. Sadly it is a reality that there are tweets and updates that are not understandable to others and/or have no meaning to others except the person who tweeted/posted the update.
Also, there are public tweets and updates targeting to only a specific follower that that all others would not understand at all or would not be interested in, and therefore have no value to others. This is not of customer-focus and does not provide value to the community. Such tweets and updates are ideally sent as DM and/or private message to the target.
(4) Mentioning and promoting someone
It goes without saying that promoting and mentioning your followers/friends is active contribution, giving value to the community, in a customer-focus manner. Everyone would be thankful if he/she is mentioned and being promoted.
(5) Thanking and responding
And everyone would agree that saying thank you and/or replying to someone when he/she helps someone, retweets someone’s tweet, promotes someone and mentions someone is of customer-focus and is active participation in the community.
(6) Being sincere and ethical
Unfortunately there seems to be some insincere and unethical behaviours in online communities. Such include pitching, unfollowing someone as soon as that person starts to follow, abusing etc.
These are not of customer-focus and not contributing to the community, or rather, insincerely and unethical. This means that the reverse is necessary requirements although it may not be sufficient for customer-focused and contribution to the community.
Authenticity is also usually included in requirements for engagement. This is also related to sincerity and ethics.
2) Additional requirements for reaching and engaging international audience
The following are the primary additional requirements for reaching and engaging international audience. These are in essence about customer-focus and active contribution to the community providing value.
(1) English communication skill
English is a kind of standard language in international world including online community so English communication skill is a requirement for reaching and engaging audience around the globe. Online translation services are available but it is a reality that not being able to communicate in English is a big hurdle in reaching and engaging international audience through interactive communication.
People are unlikely to follow unless the bio and/or tweets are in the language they understand because it is inconvenient to translate every tweets and updates. What is more, quality of the translation is not yet so high. At least that is the frank evaluation when the author reads some English and Japanese translations; many of them are not smooth grammatically. In such a situation, the nuance and style of the tweet and updates would be not delivered sufficiently if it is the translation.
If this requirement is interpreted as providing information in the language that people understand, this is all about customer-focus. Also, if it is interpreted as a way of providing information with meaning because information in the language not understandable is meaningless, this is about providing information of value.
(2) Inter-cultural communication skills / global perspective
People would also agree that this is another requirement for reaching and engaging international audience. This can be paraphrased as philosophy and mindset of Diversity and Inclusion, focusing on accepting and respecting differences attributing too difference in nationality, ethnicity, society and culture.
This is also about customer-focus and providing value to the community. Such philosophy and mindset, it is impossible to select content that has value to the international community in a customer-focus manner, nor to tweet and update in a way that has value to global and/or local audience. Also without such philosophy and mindset, it is impossible to reply appropriately to people of different background attributing especially to different nationality, ethnicity, location, or even gender, generation etc. which can be difference of local audience.
