In our research, we’ve found that ethnic and cultural groups use tools in similar patterns, no matter the group. What we’ve found is that either a cultural our ethnic group that resides inside a non-indigenous state will use a Social Media tool that can connect them globally across all cultures and also use tools that connect them just within their cultural or ethnic group. Yeah, so what does that mean?

We define Global Social Media Tools as those tools or services that are agnostic to a culture or ethnic group and enable communication in any language (text, audio or image) and have global reach – doesn’t matter what country you’re in, you can access them (for the most part). Examples would be Twitter or Facebook or Buzz.

Then you have what we call Group Specific Social Media Tools. These are tools that are language (usually indicating culture or ethnicity) specific or culture/ethnic group specific. Examples would be Vkontakte which is Russia’s “Facebook” or Sonico.com which is for Latin Americans and Portugese speakers or AbairThusa, a Gaelic speaking Social Network. Ameba is an example of a microblogging service in Japan that is like Twitter but for those speaking Japanese.

In the case of cultural and ethnic groups in countries like Canada, the United States or UK, almost all active people from cultural and ethnic groups also speak English and will have English friends and business connections and so will also use Facebook, Twitter or similar. But the majority of their activity takes place on services that are specific to their culture or ethnic group.

This is important when considering engagement in Social Media. Since you may also want to reach those people and measure activity, within their ethnic or cultural group. This adds a layer of complexity however, since you’ll need to understand their written language.

Think these groups are too small to really be concerned about? Not at all. Societally we all belong to different cultural, ethnic and social groups. Immigrant populations inside a country can be very positively engaged in their new home country. This can offer significant opportunities.

(Author: G. Crouch, MD)

But as predominantly English-speaking Western nations see ever increasing numbers of immigrants, language will be an issue in Social Media – for monitoring, marketing and engaging. Another challenge as part of this challenge is the use of the English language, it’s nuances, slang and context.

In our ongoing research into Social Media use, we have found increasing use of ehtnographic-centric Social Networks, such as AfricanZone (there are several others) for Africans in and outside of Africa. Or Biggada for Indians.

For large Social Networking companies like Facebook or NetLog, this can mean lost eyeballs for ad revenue models. For marketers it represents adding yet another social technology channel into the mix. For monitoring companies it means they’re missing potentially key information.

Just adding new language capability in Facebook is not enough. Beyond language are uses of colours and more specifically the forms of content. Bigadda and Bebo in the UK add their own content and engage with those communities because of their added content. More on this in another post.

Suffice to say, language and subsequently culture will be an issue in Social Media development in Western nations in future years.

In Social Media, it means deeper considerations when engaging an audience. It’s one thing to provide a Cantonese or Mandarin translation on your static web pages. It’s another to engage a Chinese audience in Social Media. Or Punjabi, Hindu, Ghanaian etc.

We’ve seen the rise of Social Networking sites for Latino Americans already. East Indians in Toronto use the Indian Social Networking site Bigadda more than Facebook in Canada – such knowledge can result in a failed Facebook campaign when your market is using an originating-country social media service. As a recent client of ours found out the hard way.

For longer term engagement, it means retaining staff who speak the language – and ensuring they can adequately communicate issues within the organization. More to the point, ensuring some form of sustainability in Social Media marketing efforts is also critical; these segment markets tend to be very loyal to products they feel value their culture and beliefs.

While a significant amount of acculturation occurs with immigrants, the deeper cultural assimilation and nuanced understanding of the country that have taken up their new lives in doesn’t usually happen until the first generation is born and of an age to be receptive to marketing tactics. So the two considerations we’ve found to be consistent is generation targeted and ensuring inter-organizational support while targeting the right Social Media vehicle.

It’s nothing to do so much with technology as it does with human nature and culture. During the heydays of broadcast media (TV, radio, print) we saw very little, comparatively, of specialized media channels for different cultural groups. What specialization there was (such as hispanic only radio stations in non-hispanic countries) were limited in scope due to the costs of the mediums being used.

Enter the digital media age and Social Media. These tools enable communications in a way that humans prefer to communicate – enabling groups to form, create, act and continue or cease. In the last 20 years we’ve also seen an increase in migrant populations to various countries. This means more varied cultures sprouting in within countries. Keeping an element of ones home culture is important as an identifier. Even in Canada and America, those originally of British, Irish, Scottish or Scandinavian descent are increasingly identifying with their originating roots.

This will present a whole new set of challenges to organizations reaching an audience – especially via digital media. I predict that the next trend for marketers will be understanding ethnography when doing their marketing research. It’s been hard enough for marketers to gather and incorporate demographic information and then we had to consider psychographic information in planning.

Because Western developed nations are seeing such a dramatic increase in immigrant populations who are gaining increasing purchase power, marketers and public relations pro’s will increasingly need to consider these factors. In Social Media we’re already seeing services like Hi5 develop dedicated Social Networks to hispanic and other cultures. NetLog (Facebook’s main European competitor) has language already figured out. If Facebook wants to be a serious global contender it’s going to have to improve it’s foreign language capacities.

While English may be the most spoken language outside China, it remains to be seen the impact this will have on businesses engaging in Social Media and digital marketing communications as a whole in the future.

Do you think cultural ethnographic considerations will become increasingly important to marketing communications professionals?

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)