Individual LinkedIn profile reviews for translators

It has been on my mind for a while, finally it is there: using the Alexandria platform to offer individual LinkedIn profile sessions for translators.

A very powerful and efficient way of promoting your services to the world, your LinkedIn profile should be a true shop-window of who you are, the services you provide, your expertise and your skills. With the new LinkedIn profile rolling out, many things have changed!

If you’re interested in a tailored, interactive and private review and help with your translator LinkedIn profile, this is a good opportunity – it will take place on April 16th.

There are 5 slots of 30 minutes each available throughout the day in the virtual classroom. Registration is limited to one person per slot, so there are only 5 seats available. If the concept works and if there is further demand, such an afternoon may be organized on a regular basis again.

Make sure you have a microphone – it will be very interactive!

Complete information and registration here

I’m looking forward to help you boost your LinkedIn profile! ;)

Digital records could expose intimate details and personality traits of millions

Research shows that intimate personal attributes can be predicted with high levels of accuracy from ‘traces’ left by seemingly innocuous digital behaviour, in this case Facebook Likes. Study raises important questions about personalised marketing and online privacy.

New research, published in the journal PNAS, shows that surprisingly accurate estimates of Facebook users’ race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes – information currently publicly available by default.

In the study, researchers describe Facebook Likes as a “generic class” of digital record – similar to web search queries and browsing histories – and suggest that such techniques could be used to extract sensitive information for almost anyone regularly online.

Researchers at Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre, in collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge, analysed a dataset of over 58,000 US Facebook users, who volunteered their Likes, demographic profiles and psychometric testing results through the myPersonality application. Users opted in to provide data and gave consent to have profile information recorded for analysis.

Facebook Likes were fed into algorithms and corroborated with information from profiles and personality tests. Researchers created statistical models able to predict personal details using Facebook Likes alone.

Models proved 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate distinguishing African-American from Caucasian American and 85% accurate differentiating Republican from Democrat. Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases, and good prediction accuracy was achieved for relationship status and substance abuse – between 65 and 73%.

But few users clicked Likes explicitly revealing these attributes. For example, less that 5% of gay users clicked obvious Likes such as Gay Marriage. Accurate predictions relied on ‘inference’ – aggregating huge amounts of less informative but more popular Likes such as music and TV shows to produce incisive personal profiles.

Even seemingly opaque personal details such as whether users’ parents separated before the user reached the age of 21 were accurate to 60%, enough to make the information “worthwhile for advertisers”, suggest the researchers.

While they highlight the potential for personalised marketing to improve online services using predictive models, the researchers also warn of the threats posed to users’ privacy.

They argue that many online consumers might feel such levels of digital exposure exceed acceptable limits – as corporations, governments, and even individuals could use predictive software to accurately infer highly sensitive information from Facebook Likes and other digital ‘traces’.

The researchers also tested for personality traits including intelligence, emotional stability, openness and extraversion.

While such latent traits are far more difficult to gauge, the accuracy of the analysis was striking. Study of the openness trait – the spectrum of those who dislike change to those who welcome it – revealed that observation of Likes alone is roughly as informative as using an individual’s actual personality test score.

Some Likes had a strong but seemingly incongruous or random link with a personal attribute, such as Curly Fries with high IQ, or That Spider is More Scared Than U Are with non-smokers.

When taken as a whole, researchers believe that the varying estimations of personal attributes and personality traits gleaned from Facebook Like analysis alone can form surprisingly accurate personal portraits of potentially millions of users worldwide.

They say the results suggest a possible revolution in psychological assessment which – based on this research – could be carried out at an unprecedented scale without costly assessment centres and questionnaires.

“We believe that our results, while based on Facebook Likes, apply to a wider range of online behaviours.” said Michal Kosinski, Operations Director at the Psychometric Centre, who conducted the research with his Cambridge colleague David Stillwell and Thore Graepel from Microsoft Research.

“Similar predictions could be made from all manner of digital data, with this kind of secondary ‘inference’ made with remarkable accuracy – statistically predicting sensitive information people might not want revealed. Given the variety of digital traces people leave behind, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to control.

“I am a great fan and active user of new amazing technologies, including Facebook. I appreciate automated book recommendations, or Facebook selecting the most relevant stories for my newsfeed,” said Kosinski. “However, I can imagine situations in which the same data and technology is used to predict political views or sexual orientation, posing threats to freedom or even life.”

“Just the possibility of this happening could deter people from using digital technologies and diminish trust between individuals and institutions – hampering technological and economic progress. Users need to be provided with transparency and control over their information.”

Thore Graepel from Microsoft Research said he hoped the research would contribute to the on-going discussions about user privacy:

“Consumers rightly expect strong privacy protection to be built into the products and services they use and this research may well serve as a reminder for consumers to take a careful approach to sharing information online, utilising privacy controls and never sharing content with unfamiliar parties.”

David Stillwell from Cambridge University added: “I have used Facebook since 2005, and I will continue to do so. But I might be more careful to use the privacy settings that Facebook provides.”

Source: cam.ac.uk

7 myths in using Facebook for business (and in general)

Random thoughts… 7 myths or mistakes you may be doing, without knowing it, on Facebook.

Myth 1: no, it is not possible to know who has seen your Facebook profile, so pleeeaaaaaase stop installing apps that claim the contrary and that post status updates to your profile calling your friends to install it. Really, please, stop.

Myth 2: no, sharing your tweets on your Facebook Profile/Page is not such a great idea. It is counterproductive and extremely annoying for anyone following you on Facebook. And for those following you on both: even worse. Facebook has a very different netiquette from Twitter. You don’t tweet on Facebook. You tweet on Twitter Same goes for “RTing” people on Facebook, by the way: huh?

Myth 3:  no, the copyright and privacy disclaimer that you have to post as a status to prevent FB from using your data is not for real. It’s a hoax, and it’s been ciruclating for months. Please, please, stop sharing it. (“In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!(Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communique, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook’s direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.”)

Myth 4: no, your professional contacts don’t care about your workout stats, so pleeeaaaase stop sharing the runtastic report of your latest run (or any other sport tracking app, for that matter) with said business contacts (your personal contacts are a complete other matter –  you do what you want, personal stuff is personal stuff. But there is personal stuff your business contacts really don’t need to see/read. No? )

Myth 5: no, the status update asking your Friends to hover over your name and change their settings so that friends of friends of friends don’t see what you like or post is a fake too. This is a hoax that has been circulating since May 2011. (“To all my FB friends, may I request you to please do something for me: I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. However, with the recent changes in FB, the public can now see activities in any wall. This happens when our friend hits “like” or “comment”, automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way. So I need your help. Only you can do this for me. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (do not click), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “COMMENTS & LIKE” by clicking on it. By doing this, my activity amongst my friends and my family will no longer become public. Many thanks! Paste this on your wall so your contacts would follow suit too, that is, if you care about your privacy.”) – and similar ones, there are some variants of it.

Myth 6: no, Facebook will not become a paying service anytime soon, so please stop sharing hoaxes pretending otherwise…

And if you don’t believe me, see Facebook’s FAQ – Common Myths about Facebook.

Myth 7: no, your phone number is not accessible to anyone on Facebook. Unless you entered it yourself and made it public. So, the status update claiming “ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE… INCLUDING YOURS are now on FACEBOOK! go to the top right of the screen, click on ACCOUNT, click on EDIT FRIENDS, left side of screen and click CONTACTS. you will see all phone numbers from your phone are published that you have stored in your mobile phone. TO REMOVE, go to RIGHT column, click on “this page.” please repost this on your status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published.” is just a big hoax… and an old one, from 2010 or so.

There are many more! Which ones come to your mind?

The new LinkedIn profile is here: what’s new?

Yay, it’s finally here – annouced months ago and rolling out since October, we are all finally getting the new LinkedIn profile.  So what’s new, how much has changed?

Well, actually not THAT much. I mean yes, but no. The layout and feel are different, and a few fields have moved. Let’s see what’s changed:

Activity
Your activity (posts, links, new connections, etc.)  is now right below the top box containing your picture – it used to be in the right sidebar. This change is interesting because your posts get a much better exposure – particularly links you post with an eye-catching image. Definitely a plus for your content marketing strategy. You cannot change the position of this box.

A new “Background” box
Your sections such as “Summary”,”Languages”, “Specialities”, “Experiences”, “Education”, “Certifications”, “Skills” etc, are now all together in one big “Background” box – but in Edit mode, you can still change the order you want each section to be displayed – if you want your languages to appear before your Summary for example, click the arrow shown in the screenshot here in red. Then simply drag and drop the section where you want it to be displayed.

The middle icon (left from the arrow) is a new gadget that came with the profile redesign. It is a simple tool that enables you to add a link to a section – it can be a link to a video, a publication, an image, a blog, etc. This is a small additional way of creating backlinks to your contents (good for your SEO) and showing your expertise/experience.

Editing is now easier
Each section now displays the icons shown in the screenshot above when in Edit mode, which makes editing them even simpler than it was before. Click the blue pencil icon left available for each section and just navigate the information you wish to edit.
In Edit mode, you also now have a right sidebar “Recommended for you” where LinkedIn suggests fields/information to add to your profile – these are personalized, based on how complete your profile already is. For example, LinkedIn suggests me to add the following based on my profile information and completion level:

“People you May Know”
This box is now displayed on your own profile when you edit or view it – it used to be only available on the homepage.

“Profile Strength”
Still in the right sidebar, there is a new “Profile Strength” box. You actally already know that feature – it used to be a blue bar at the top of your profile showing how complete it was, in %. Now you even get a status for profile completion… Yay!

“Your Network”
Now, this is probably the most interesting new feature in the revamped profile – it gives you a visual and colored overview of your LinkedIn network based on Company, Location, Industry or School.  Having that kind of overview at hand is very useful. For example, if I look at my network by country, I see that most of my contacts come from France (left screenshot).
Each other circle around the main one is another location, arranged in size based on how many contacts ou have in these locations. It’s exactly the same for companies – the main circle shows the name of the company where the highest number of your contacts work, same for School and Industry – the latter can be particularly interesting for agencies and freelancers using LinkedIn for end-clients prospection in a few selected industries.

General thoughts

More colorful
Ok, this is a silly one – or is it? I often found the old profile design boring – black and white text. Now there is more color in your profile thanks to 2 minor changes:
- the logos of the companies listed in your “Experience” section are displayed – if these companies have a LinkedIn company page and uploaded their logo on it.
- thumbnails of profile pictures of people who recommended you are also displayed below each “Experience” entry.

Cleaner
What I personally like about this new profile – it’s clean, neat, simpler to edit and navigate. Section titles are bigger and bold, which makes them easier to spot when navigating a profile.

What about you? What do you think of the new profile ?

Social Media Marketing for translators: a must or a should? – replay now available

The video replay of my last webinar “Social Media marketing 2012 for translators – a must or a should?” conducted with ProZ.com is now available!
If you attended the live webinar, you have free unlimited access. If you did not attend, you can purchase access to the video.
Click here to view the on-demand replay page. Note that you need to have a ProZ.com account (member or non-member) to access the video.

Some feedback from attendees:

“Excellent webinar, highly recommendable” - Carolyn Gelsomino

“The webinar was really interesting and helpful.” -Jana Novomeska

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View a list of all past and future webinars and training sessions from the GxP team (with links to replays when available) here.

Social SEO basics for freelance translators: replay now available

The video replay of my webinar “Social SEO basics for translators” is now available online!
If you attended the live webinar, you have free unlimited access. If you did not attend, you can purchase access to the video.
Click here to view the on-demand replay page. Note that you need to have a ProZ.com account (member or non-member) to access the contents.

Some feedback from attendees:

“It was very interesting. Anne explained to us how important it is to know more about keywords, traffic, activity, and backlinks. SEO is a very powerful instrument of marketing – if you know how to use it… Fascinating and full of hands-on advice.” - Dr. Tilmann Kleinau

“Excellent webinar, highly recommendable” - Carolyn Gelsomino

“The webinar was really interesting and helpful.” -Jana Novomeska

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View a list of all past and future webinars and training sessions from the GxP team (with links to replays when available) here.

“Optimize your LinkedIn profile” webinar replay available

The video replay of my webinar “Build yourself an optimized LinkedIn profile” is now available online!
If you attended the live webinar, you have free unlimited access. If you did not attend, you can purchase access for 15 €.
Click here to view the on-demand replay page. Note that you need to have a ProZ.com account (member or non-member) to access the contents.

View a list of all past and future webinars and training sessions from the GxP team (with links to replays when available) here.

10 steps for promoting your translation services in a skills portfolio

Our new guest post this week comes from France!  Wilfried is a French teacher for French natives and foreign students. He has dedicated his career to literature, semiotics, communication and serious game teaching in France and in China. Since 2008, as the Deputy Director and Communications Officer of ESTRI, School of Translation and International Relations, he has specialized in quality management and (viral) marketing, specifically by providing personal branding tips to help students define their place in the job market. In 2012, he also created www.paroledescoop.com, a consulting business for editing great Web content and finding solutions for optimizing organic results on search engines. When he is not trying to detox from his geek addictions, Wilfried is on the road, abroad, with the wind of cross-cultural differences whipping at his face.

Today he’s sharing 10 tips and steps on how to promote your translation services using a skills portfolio.

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Interested in developing your business and in promoting your expertise with personal branding tips? You are probably aware of Skills Portfolio: a communication tool allowing you to publish/share samples of your work and to provide your clients with evidence of your high-quality translations. If not, it might be time to reconsider your strategy with the 10 Ps of the marketing mix.

In order to create an efficient skills portfolio and to focus on the specifics of your business, here are 10 questions you must ask yourself before you continue. The answers to these questions will help you define the relevant message. You will then be able to choose the right tool and the proper media to communicate this message.

Priorities: Which translation texts do I want to select and promote? Which ones most efficiently represent my expertise? Which ones can I select while still respecting my client’s confidentiality? Which samples are catchier?

Product: Which specifics of my translation services do I need to sell? Which services should I focus on?

Place: What is my place in the translation industry market? What are my competitors focusing on? How do they communicate their expertise? How can I make the difference by selecting my background information and my own work? What will be the specific aspect of my service, my message? What do I want my clients to think, say and do?

Promotion: Which tool will be more appropriate for communicating my references and samples of work? Depending on my goals, should I promote my translation services online or offline, in an e-portfolio or in a brochure? If online, should I publish my skills publically on my website or privately on Google Drive for instance?

Price: Will my communication strategy add a lot of value to my work? What value does my portfolio add to my work: cheap, expensive or fairly priced?

Physical evidence: What proof can I provide my client with to allow him/her to make the right choice between several providers? Will I come across as providing proficient services? Which work will provide evidence of my proficiency? Can my former clients recommend my work? Should I provide information on the machine translation tools that I master? Which labels could enhance my business communication?

People: Does my portfolio content make mention of my team and group working skills? Does it say something about my collaboration history and success in achieving my client’s goals and requirements?

Partnership: Does my portfolio include my partners? Are my partners in contact with or indirectly related to my prospective partners?

Permission marketing: Will excerpts of my portfolio be published on social media such as my professional Facebook page, my Linkedin profile, my Twitter account? Will these excerpts prompt my clients to recommend my work? Will they encourage prospective clients to ‘like’ my page, to share my content, to follow my activity, or to contact me?

Purple Cow: Are my portfolio and personal branding strategy unique?

Internet Marketing for Translators – Part 1: Websites, blogs, profiles

This article is part 1 of the series “Internet Marketing for Translators” by Anne Diamantidis.

View the other articles in the series:

- Internet Marketing for Translators: Introduction

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Now, an absolute basic in Internet Marketing is having a website, a blog or at least a public page on the Web used as a shop window of your services and a place you can refer all of your visitors to (a ProZ.com profile, for example). Of course this is not an absolute must, but it’s somewhat trickier if you don’t have one.

• WEBSITE

A good website starts with a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate interface. Potential clients ending up on your website should quickly and easily be able to find all the basic information they need about you as a translator, your language pairs, services, areas of specialization, etc. The goal is for them to find all this information in less than 30 seconds and to want to know more, so that they stay on your website and visit its other pages to find out more. You must help them do so with a clean and logical structure to navigate this other information. The site shouldn’t be too loaded down  – even though connections are much faster nowadays, the global average remains slower, so do not include too many heavy images and plug-ins – your site should load quickly. Also, mind your writing – go easy on the colors and avoid WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS…

A frequently heard question is whether you should localize your website. Easy answer: yes, I personally think you should, in all your working languages because 1) it’s just perfect for your SEO, 2) it is also an elegant way of showing off your language skills and 3) it might help you get clients from your source language countries.

Keep it up-to-date – regularly doing so helps your Google ranking and makes a much better impression than a website that has obviously been “left to rot” for the past four years. This particularly applies to links – make sure they all work, maintain them, and update them.

Further reads and links on website optimization:
- Top 10 Tips to a Great Web Page
- 10 tips – how to build a good website – Cordis
- 10 Most Important Web Design Tips
- 30 Tips for a Good Website
- Beginner Tip: 5 Steps To A Great Home Page
- What Is on Your Business Website That Shouldn’t Be?

Last but not least, ideally seek the help and guidance of a professional to (re)create your website. I can highly recommend the services of Websites for Translators.

• PROFESSIONAL ONLINE PROFILES

The good news is that there are plenty of business networking platforms on the Web where your profiles can stand out, show a complete overview of your services and therefore play the role of a website.

ProZ.com

I know a lot of freelance translators who use their ProZ.com profile as their website. And why not? It’s public, so no need to log in to see the profile (like on Viadeo or Xing), it has a very high Google ranking and it is actually meant and designed for translators and for our industry. A well-done and full ProZ.com profile can be a great complete shop-window online, so go for it.

Some resources on profile completion and optimization:
- Getting the most out of your ProZ.com profile
- Profile completion 2.0
- ProZ.com profile: Creating a standout “About me”

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is THE global business network. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is. Sure, it may not be designed specifically for our industry but it offers tools and possibilities that we can use just as well as any other industry – tools and possibilities that really are very powerful. LinkedIn not only has an excellent Google ranking, it also gives us the chance to reach out to other professionals, within the translation world (not everybody is on ProZ.com or TranslatorsCafé) but also outside of it. Through LinkedIn you really can meet potential clients (including end-clients), and network with people who may need your services and who may partner with you. LinkedIn Groups are an extremely practical and powerful networking tool, as are Questions/Answers and similar features. Your LinkedIn profile has great shop-window potential if it is complete and optimized.

Some resources:
- 6 Steps to a More Marketable LinkedIn Profile
- LinkedIn Profile Tips: The 10 Mistakes You Want to Avoid and Why

Check out this upcoming webinar (Oct 24th): “Build yourself an optimized LinkedIn profile” (hurry, seats are selling fast)

Xing 

People ask a lot about Xing during workshops and webinars. To be honest, Xing is useless unless you’re doing business with German clients since they still widely use this network. However, recent LinkedIn stats showed that it was slowly gaining a lot of German users, so my guess is that Xing will slowly decay. It still remains a solid platform however, and having an additional profile there as “just another static page”; presenting your services never hurts and is good for your SEO. Simply make sure the profile is accurate, up-to-date and SEO-friendly but I would not invest time and money in it anymore.

Viadeo

Viadeo is even more useless, unless you do business with France. For some reason I can’t quite understand, French people registered there en masse;  like Xing contains mostly German users, Viadeo contains mostly French people. The problem is that nobody else visits this platfrom (I know, I’m simplifying) and Viadeo profiles cannot be seen unless you’re a registered user (which is extremely annoying when you’re Googling someone and the only online business profile available is their Viadeo profile). As is also the case with Xing, it does not hurt to have that additional result showing up in a Google search (Viadeo has a good Google ranking) so why not take one hour to create another static page briefly summarizing your services and offerings? However, do not spend too much time on it either. Remember that even static profiles have to be updated as needed.

Facebook

Facebook is a tricky case. You don’t have to use it as a marketing tool – it is meant to connect with your personal contacts (family and friends). However,Facebook marketing has proved how useful and powerful it could be, particularly for B2C businesses. This is not our case in the translation industry but still, there are agencies using their profiles or pages to post jobs or call for translators, colleagues sharing job posts, etc. You need to make a decision: do you want to use Facebook for marketing or keep it for private use only? If you decide to use Facebook for personal purposes only, make sure your profile and all its content are private and not available for the whole Web to see. However, if you’re considering Facebook marketing, the first question you should ask yourself is: page or profile? My take is that Profiles are the ideal solution for freelance translators. It allows you to “Friend” agency profiles, it suits you better than a page and – very important – it does not require the same amount of time to maintain as a page. A page needs to be alive, to be regularly updated, to post content in a consistent manner. It is a lot of work.

So, Facebook marketing with a profile: either you use your existing personal profile and use Friends Lists to make sure business contacts you are friends with only see what you want them to see, or you simply create a second profile for professional purposes only and therefore maintain a clean separation between your personal and business lives (this one can be public and indexed by Google).

Twitter

Your Twitter profile is a particular case in this context: you don’t want it to be the page you refer all your visitors to. There’s simply too little space and flexibility there to make it a true shop-window of you, your skills, services, expertise, etc.

Google+

A Google+ profile/page could be an interesting shop-window strategy because of the Google ranking; however, I do not recommend making it the page you refer visitors to – there is not enough there to make it a true and good shop-window. As an additional place from which to refer people to your main page/profile/blog/website however, it is a great tool.

• BLOG

Many of you often ask: “Is a blog a must?” No, it isn’t. The truth is, it’s better not to have a blog than to have one you don’t have time to maintain – not having a blog does not impact your online presence negatively, but having a dead one that’s been abandoned for 11 months after only three posts does. That being said, a blog remains a very intelligent strategic move in an Internet marketing strategy. You don’t need to post everyday – you just need to be consistent. This means that if you decide to write a new article every month, that’s great, but if you say it, stick to it – people who follow your blog should know they can expect news from you once a month (at the beginning or end of the month).

Once you’ve made the decision to start a blog and have defined a posting schedule, the big issue now is content. On an almost daily basis, translators ask me “what should I write about?”. I can’t answer this question for you, but I can give you some general tips on directions to take.

You first need to define/decide what your goal is with a blog – here are just a few examples:

- sharing and expressing your views and opinions on industry politics/developments?

- offering reviews of new tools (those related to the industry as well as those not directly related) – CAT tools, MT solutions, TM tools, etc.?

- showing your expertise in a given field/topic as part of your marketing strategy (e.g. you are a legal translator so your blog will primarily deal with legal matters)

The good news is that you can elect to apply more than just one of the above; you do not need to limit yourself to just one direction.

Your blog may be used as a website if the platform used is flexible and scalable enough to allow for clean and clear structure and different pages (like WordPress). By all means, a blog is definitely one of the greatest and most powerful Internet marketing tools.

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Stay tuned for Part 2: Social Media Marketing!

Internet Marketing for Translators: Introduction

Welcome to this newest series of articles on Internet marketing for translators!

This one is long overdue , and I apologize for that. It seems it is high time to refresh our memories when it comes to all the definitions of social media marketing/Internet marketing, with all of the “marketing bla bla (words that sound awesome and make you sound like an intellectual genius, while meaning nothing at the same time)” going around, all these concepts can seem confusing. Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with a lot of translators who were feeling a bit lost when it comes to all these concepts, so I’ll try in this new series to help you gain a better understanding of the terms.

In a way this is also actually the article I promised here.

Today, we’ll cover the introductory aspect of the series by focusing on the big question: what is Internet marketing?

Enjoy the series and feel free to give feedback if you feel that I’ve missed something, or for any questions you may have.

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What is Internet marketing (a.k.a Web or online marketing)?

It may be defined in many different ways but in simple terms, it is basically the art of using the Internet and any of its related tools to promote oneself and/or one’s products or services. These tools include platforms, email, etc. Internet marketing is the whole, if you like, and the methods involved are various and broad. I like to call these methods “subcategories” or “types of marketing”. Traditionally and typically, they are as follows

• Social Media marketing
• Inbound marketing
• Search Engine marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Referral marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Display advertising
• I’m also adding Social Networking to this list.

In this series, we will try to translate these into down-to-earth and intelligible words that we, normal human beings, can understand.

Many of these are often tied together – social networking for example also goes hand in hand with referral marketing or social media marketing. Inbound marketing needs social media marketing to achieve search engine marketing. And so on. There are only a few terms on the list above that are “independent” and may be used as an “isolated” marketing strategy, namely email marketing and display advertising.

Following each category, you’ll find a hitlist of basic goals that can be achieved with that specific marketing category, to help you see at a glance what each can and can’t do for you. These goals obviously are related to business – what you do on your personal Internet pages is by definition personal and therefore irrelevant as long as these personal pages are not interfering in a negative way with your professional online presence (see some of my previous articles on this topic: here, here and here).

Last but not least, I will also give you my opinion on the relevance of each marketing type for our industry and when applicable, links to resources for those who do not fall under my skills/area of expertise category. This is obviously open to suggestions, ideas and experience-sharing from all of you!

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Internet Marketing for Translators – Part 1: Websites, blogs, profiles