Linguistically- and Culturally-Appropriate Social Media

Marketing: “Radio Ambulante” as Case Study

Ann Abbottarabbott@illinois.edu

@AnnAbbott

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Radio Ambulante convinced me to donate to their endeavor.

How did they accomplish that? Effective social media marketing.

What can we learn from them? How to do social media marketing in ways that are linguistically and culturally appropriate.

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What do we know about social media marketing?

Social media marketing research is early, scarce and is focused on framing the questions.

Social media marketing guides are abundant, maturing somewhat and are focused on strategy and implementation.

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What does this mean for business languages?

Being a digital native does not mean that our students know how to do social media marketing.

Being a language major does not mean that our students have a deep knowledge of the target market, target culture.

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What can we learn from Radio Ambulante’s social media marketing?

Discern their strategy.

Analyze the implementation across platforms.

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RA’s Website: Who is their target market? How do they use language and culture appropriately?

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RA’s Facebook: How frequently do they post? How do they engage?

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RA’s Pinterest: How do they use visuals to market their audio?

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RA’s Twitter: How do they incorporate calls to action?

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RA’s Kickstarter: How did they crowdfund their project?

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Conclusions

We need to teach social media marketing to our students who are digital natives.

Our challenge is to better teach cultural “perspectives,” not just products and practices.

For more information see my Pinterest Board: CIBER 2013 Social Media Marketing Abbott.