I grew up on the internet so words like globalization, international audience, across the pond, or the far East never really seemed like foreign concepts too me. I was used to making friends and finding out later that they were halfway across the world or a couple states over in the U.S.
Of course, I had my local friends and would relay jokes back and forth between them and my internet friends. This may seem a bit unnecessary to explain to people that are Internet junkies or been on the net for a long time. In 2017, there are still people discovering online shopping, online banking, and who primarily use internet and email to connect with friends, family, and colleagues. This post is for them.
On Twitter, my organic audience consists of 28% U.S., 13% U.K., 5% Russia, 5% India, 4% Indonesia and a lot of other countries are 3% or less. My audience is a bit reflective of the people I’ve worked remotely with building websites and solving technical problems.
I just launched this site yesterday but so far distribution is around 84% U.S., and 7.5% for both Germany and U.K.
The important thing is that I never really targeted any of those countries or set out to make friends in any specific country. I just participated in things I was interested in and there happened to be people from other places. Most people are very welcoming even if you have an accent and everybody has an accent outside their region.
One of the cool things about being open to all cultures is that you end up finding out about things going on in other parts of the world that you may be trying to implement where you live. This ends up giving you lots of quality content, statistics, and studies, and research to build on.
Obviously, don’t take credit for others work and make sure to source your data. Saying you made something up when you saw it on a foreign channel will result in problems down the line.
The main thing to remember is to be yourself, don’t force yourself to do things just because you want to seem cultured or perceived as a global citizen. If you are in a major metro, wander around the different ethnic areas and see if something catches your interest and ask about it.
Wishing your area was more diverse won’t change the racism from previous generations but you can decide to step outside your traditions and make friends with anybody willing to shake hands.