Here is some interesting news about Facebook’s growth from a marketing perspective: The Washington Post reports that “seventy percent of Facebook’s users are outside of the United States.” This means that more than half of the people who use this social media platform are not even in the country that originated it. You can opt to have a Facebook page appear in other languages, but this is not something that many users in the United States even think about. Remember when we suggested that you Increase Your International Visibility? There was a reason for that. The internet goes way beyond our borders.
Many times when people think about international customers, they start worrying about the language barrier. What we forget is that there are a number of English-speaking countries where people where there is no language barrier. In addition to this, a number of countries that do not count English as one of their official languages still have a lot of citizens who learn English. While there are stylistic, grammatical and vocabulary differences among English speakers worldwide, we usually have enough in common to understand one another. Plus, on the web, you do not have to worry about not understanding someone’s accent (at least not with text; podcasts and video are another story). And most web users are savvy enough to use the web to look for definitions when they don’t understand something.
When it comes to increasing your online visibility, the world really is your oyster, and you can use website optimization to reach out to people any and everywhere. Depending on your business, you may want to start selling products overseas. Or you may want to encourage people who are traveling to patronize your business when they visit the country.
