Philip Wride – Social Media Marketer and Community Manager

Something that came up recently and made me more aware of how big an issue this can be. I’m not talking about the ability to speak multiple languages to interact with your community audience although that would help. I’m talking more about having an understanding and appreciation of the differences. For me being a native British English speaker having to make changes for a US audience is hard, not hard in terms of making the necessary lettering changes but hard in terms of having to swallow the fact that I’ve got to make the change in the first place.

If you manage an English language community what’s the audience split between different territories speaking the same / similar languages and are you aware of the nuances for each? In addition to that, what does your audience expect? I know a lot of British English speakers that would hate to receive an Americani”z”ed email or response to something while it seems Americans are a bit more forgiving if they receive a British English correspondence.

If you’ve created a specific style / persona for your CM duties have your audience come to terms with that style and do they understand where you are coming from? Outside of your community management duties, what are the internal processes for marketing communications, support communications and anything else that touches users? If you don’t know it would be worth finding out because all your hard work catering to your audience in the way they want to be catered to could be undone but communications from other departments.