Facing the issue of dealing with foreign languages in Social Media engagement as a business is going to come up at some point. In the U.S. it’s dealing with Spanish, in Canada with French and increasingly Mandarin, Hindi or other dialects. Dealing with other languages is something Europeans are very familiar with, often either French, German, Spanish or English are the default languages.

But what happens when you want to engage in Social Media for marketing, public relations or just stakeholder relations? In Canada and the U.S. it’s usually a default to go English, in Quebec you go with French. But we are seeing an significant growth in ethnic groups in North America; and they have buying power. They are also connected. Cultures like French, Spanish, Hindi, Philipino are all very socially oriented. They also have a very high propensity to use Social Media.

Working recently with a government client, we faced the language issue. We nearly failed miserably. What we learned, fortunately in the nick of time, is that the company or organization, must first be fully prepared to support an engagement with a minority group. This may seem obvious, but it goes deeper. It’s not about having just one or two people on staff who speak the language, it needs cross-organizational preparedness.

If you’re reaching out to a particular language group in Social Media, success comes over longer term engagement. With cultures that have strong community orientations, a quick dive-in campaign to “test the waters” or drive some quick sales will hurt more than help. The very core of many cultures is “community and family” and this does not weaken in Social Media applications. In fact it becomes more so.

If you’re going to engage with another language group outside your operating language, plan carefully and look beyond just “marketing” or “PR” best practices to conduct some sociology, socioeconomic and cultural issues. Most importantly, be sure you can support another language internally, over a longer time and that your product/service supports other languages. There’s more to consider, but that’s later.