Is a community tie to the language it is built?
Being Mexican I'm thinking of building a community in Spanish, but the idea of narrowing the market to Spanish(I know is big, but not that big in $) speaking instead of including English makes me wonder about it.
Can I build a community for both languages?
Has it done before?
Would anybody recommend it?
I've seen producthunt/reddit/etc. having great communities but not too big in other languages.
I just localized my product for Spanish. I think there is a big need, but I am not an expert. FB groups don't offer localization? I think they do.
Maybe try and bridge some market gap? Spanish speaking worlds to the US speaking tech world.
I've tried to in the past with Chinese and English and it's very, very difficult.
Yeah, that's what I thought. What was your community about?
I'm curious about this too but for Vietnamese as I live in Vietnam currently & testing a few ideas here. But I'm also half Mexican (terrible at Spanish though 😅) - much of my family is from Jalisco so cool to see where you are. If I can help with anything let me know. I'm very curious about things in Mexico & would love to be involved in projects there in my future.
My opinion is I love the idea of inclusiveness, there is never enough passionate bilingual people that can bring different groups of people together. Money is very important I agree but community also can't be forced, so if Spanish is more natural & you can use your offline network in Mexico to help grow it - Spanish sounds like a great option.
Just my thoughts.
Hey Rene! I think you are the first one from Jalisco I talk to here! Cool to find a paisano in IH.
I'm actually helping some friends with building a community and was interested in the vision of each community. I was thinking about what tool to use when the question arrived.
I think there's great value in Spanish speaking countries or basically any other languages for a community of anything. In my case when I wanted to promote my Spanish speaking products, it never worked in Reddit or Product Hunt. Because my market was only to Spanish speaking countries.
Yeah, it sounds very straightforward that it is not viable to do it, and it sounds like doing it adds an extra layer of friction for your community to thrive. I think the spanish-only community is gonna be the way!
PS: I'm already trying Delightful, very interesting product.
I was born in the US but I've been to Mexico many times over the last 15 years, been a few years since the last time though & really look forward to getting back to see family & eat delicious tacos in my dad's hometown :D.
Really excited to be connected here & hope there is some overlap in our interests in the future. Good to hear about the community decision! With the Reddit & PH success rate for products in other languages, it seems that there is possibly a void or you have to really get clever in how to do marketing/growth in places like Mexico.
Thanks for checking our Delightful & leaving a review! That really helps a lot :). There's much more I need to do with the app.
Side note about Delightful, the app was translated into Spanish for me by a passionate user in El Salvador which is amazing. Have had a lot of users come from Spanish speaking countries so I have no doubt wellness/self-care apps in Latin America will gain more steam over time.
What does your <3 tell you?
Hi Alonso, I wouldn't assume that there's not much money to be made in the Spanish speaking market. Don't forget there are tens of millions of Spanish speakers in the US and Spain who are middle to higher income earners and fully connected. I was trying to find the name of a guy I saw recently who is US based but has built his business around selling marketing courses in Spanish and he is making bank. Unfortunatley I couldn't find his name. If your passion and interest is in doing it in Spanish, I'd suggest going for it.
You are right Nathan, I was trying to cover a whole Venn diagram... In my mind is harder to persuade Spanish people how valuable a community is, perhaps because there's not a reference of a community thriving and offering value like English speaking countries offer.
@alonsovaes I understand what you mean. I live in Colombia and many things here are at least 5-10 years behind the US in terms of adaptation of technology and learning online, etc. I remembered the name of the guy. He's Mexican too - Cris Urzua. You can read about him in the book Start From Zero, which was written by a mentor of mine and talks about how to go from zero to having a successful business. Cris Urzua was also a student of his.
There'll be some crossover (spanish -> english, mainly - not usually the other way around), but essentially you'd be building two communities.
Good point, many Spanish speakers bilingual compare to the other way around. Building two communities or a bilingual one now seem like a real hassle
How many of your target members are Spanish-English bilingual? Or if they are not bilingual, do you rely on interpreters to communicate between members?
Currently speaking the same language makes things easier for people to form a community. Maybe in the future when we have AI translator the problem can be mitigated. And people can truly form community based on interests without language barriers.
I think like less than a 10 percent could be bilingual. I think I have to wait for that AI tool to help me out!
Hi Alonsovaes,
Maybe, or maybe not. If it's a general application product like note taking or messaging, it probably doesn't matter right? If it's a product that helps Spanish people find jobs, then probably matters.
Got a .com?