What is multicultural social media?
Last night I spoke at a PRSA LA event on reaching diverse audiences with social media. One point came across clearly from all four speakers on the panel: people gravitate to like-minded people. They form communities around some common bond, but it’s not necessarily around language, ethnics or culture. It can be an idea or a passion.
Understand your audience
Every community is diverse. Each group has its own culture and agreements. To be successful in social media you have to do your homework and really understand your audience. It’s not enough to say Hispanic. What Hispanic? Young male Hispanics are very wired. they’re online 24/7. They have different interests, and might hang out in different social networks, than a young Hispanic female. If she is a young Mom you might find her in a Mom social network rather than a Hispanic one. Hispanic Boomers need a very different approach.
US Hispanic Social Media Insights
‘Asian’ is not one size fits all either.
Social media success is more about sociology than PR. I learned this doing corporate social responsibility programs in South Africa. There ‘black’ doesn’t cover everyone of color. We have 11 official languages. Each tribe is unique and has a distinct culture. If you don’t work within the mores of that group, you fail.
Where do you start?
As with any social media activity – listen first. Use the tools to gather data. Tap into the conversations and watch for the ideas, phrases and names that you are interested in. There are quite a few free tools – like using RSS feeds to pull in the data. Make a list of all the types of discussion that are out there and which ones appear to be getting traction. Find the communities that matter to your company. Identify the influencers.
Should We Be Active in Social Media?
According to the Forrester Social Technographics scale, 75% of Americans online are using social media sites, and that’s growing fast. 93% of them expect a company or organization to have a presence on social media. So unless your audience is not online, or is part of the 25% who are not active in social media, the answer is a resounding yes.
Build A Network Before You Need One
Establish your presence in social media and build up your connections and followers.
Barging into a community and hoping to market to them doesn’t work. It doesn’t work offline and it won’t work online either. Join the community and build a network by being a genuine member of that community. Become a resource. Offer help. Give valuable information. Talk to people in the community. Share information about yourself and your company.
Facebook and Twitter are becoming essential for that presence.
What Tools Are Best?
Your content analysis will tell you what kind of content to create and which are the best tools for you. Picking tools without listening first is putting the cart before the horse.
One tool that is essential to a social media program is a feed. Content in the social web runs in RSS Feeds. No matter what kind of content you produce, you must syndicate it with a feed. Make it available for others to re-publish, save, share, tag, tweet and retweet.
All blog software has a feed built in. But you can do the same for your news content. Add feeds to press releases, articles, updates, tips, recipes, videos.
How to socialize your content with news feeds
Multicultural audiences are active in social media. Finding where your audience is takes some research.
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