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! ;)

Three new Translation hashtags on Twitter

We launched three new hashtags in February – if you are on Twitter and interested in one of these three topics, feel free to search them and use them!

#medxl8: hashtag for medical translation
#xl8cpd: hashtag for CPD (continuous professional development) in the translation industry
#xl8events: pretty clear – translation industry events (conferences, congresses, seminars, netwroking days…)

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Connect with us on Twitter:

GxP Language Services – @GxP_Services
Tweeting medical and pharma industry news, resources for medical translators (in English), calls for translators, occasional jobs. Accounts in German, French and Spanish also available.

Alexandria Project – @Alexandria_xl8
Tweeting events, training (webinars, seminars, conferences, etc. and various resources (dictionaries, glossaries…)  from/for the language industry.

Translation News – @Translate_News
Tweeting language industry news.

Translation Jobs – @Translate_Jobs
Tweeting language jobs (translation, interpreting, proofreading, editing) from various online platforms (via RSS – we do not have anything to do with the jobs posted).

Translation Blogs – @Translate_Blogs
Tweeting updates from our own selection of favourites language & translation blogs, in real time.

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: 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

Lyon conference workshop – Boost your use of Twitter

Last weekend, I attended the annual ProZ.com France conference in Lyon, which was not only a great opportunity to return to the city where I studied and lived for five years, but also to see the French translation crowd again – many I hadn’t seen since the Nice conference in 2009, the Paris event in 2008 or for some, even the Aix en Provence conference in 2007! We had a great time and the atmosphere was relaxed and happy.

The event was the opportunity to give a presentation on Internet Marketing for the first time ever in French – which is quite amusing when you think about it, given that I am French. Anyway, it was also the first time that I spoke to a French audience on those topics and I was curious to learn about the relationship between social media tools and my own fellow translation country(wo)men. Although the group was very small, the presentation was extremely interactive – just the way I love it! Actually, forget I said “presentation”. It was a discussion, and a very interesting and lively one at that. It was a pity I didn’t have more time – again, I know! How time flies when you’re in good company with interesting questions and feedback.

The topics I presented were 1. Twitter (how to use it to gain visibility and boost your online reputation) and 2. Facebook – privacy issues to protect your personal life and reputation on the Web (unfortunately not enough time for that one, we had to rush through it, but we covered some main points presented in this article and in this one in very basic terms).

Here is the Twitter presentation (in French) available for download: Twitter presentation FR Lyon 2012 -

- many thanks to the attendees. I hope you enjoyed the workshop and more importantly, that it helped you in some way. That was, after all, the objective. And as promised, if you have any questions or need anything, just send me an e-mail!

Thanks again to John for once more giving us the opportunity to meet, exchange and party. I’m really looking forward to the 2013 French conference!

@Translate_News in the Top 100 Twitter Translation People

We had a nice surprise the other day: one of our Twitter accounts has been listed in Neil Payne’s list of Top 100 Translation people to follow on Twitter: our @Translate_News Twitter feed! You can find the entire list here.

The GxP team is happy and grateful to be in the same list as many amazing people who rock the translation industry on Twitter!

New series of webinars – autumn 2012

I’m happy to announce the freshly baked new webinars for translators for this upcoming second semester of 2012!

October 24th, 2012: Build yourself an optimized LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn is now the most powerful ally of freelance businesses in general – it is an amazing shop-window. But how to sell yourself there? How to make that shop-window attractive so that potential clients and partners look at it and open the door to the shop? Your LinkedIn profile is where it all begins and in the web 2.0 era where everything goes so quickly online, you only have a few seconds to grab your visitors attention. Get some keys in this webinar to boost your LinkedIn profile and mak it one of your best online shop-windows!

Duration: 1 hour with Q/A

Complete information, sign-up and registration here

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November 7th, 2012: Social SEO basics for translators

In the jungle of Web marketing today, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become a must when doing business via the Internet. SEO is “the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” – or un-paid, search results”. In other words, as a freelancer, how can you make your potential clients find you before they find your competition on a Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. search? By making sure to rank among top results in given searches.
Social SEO is the art of using social platforms and social media to help boosting your Google ranking. Without entering into too technical considerations (we are not all Web developers!), this webinar will cover the basics of social SEO for freelancers.

Duration: 1 hour with Q/A

Complete information, sign-up and registration here

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November 21, 2012: Social Media Marketing for translators 2012: a must or a should?

An overview of the state of Social Media Marketing in 2012 in / for the translation industry and keys for attendees to take a better enlightened business decision: investing in Social media Marketing or not.

Duration: 1 hour with Q/A

Complete information, sign-up and registration here

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Remember that on-demand replays of some of my previous training courses for translators are still available as follows:

Social Media Marketing for translators: Do’s and Don’ts
view course feedback
watch video

Why you should seriously consider Google+ and Facebook marketing
view course feedback
watch video

Boost your use of Twitter
view course feedback
watch video

LinkedIn good practices for translators
view course feedback
watch video

Workshop: Harness Social Media Marketing for your business (160 minutes)
view course feedback
watch video

Translators: 5 ways to get more followers on Twitter

Some basic but always efficient tricks!

1. Follow people

While you don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, it’s still important to follow those accounts that are of interest to you – the criteria are up to you. Quite simply, it just looks bad if you have 800 followers and you are not following anyone yourself. Ditto the other way round: the more people you follow, the more you increase your chances of being followed. I’ve observed that approximately 30 to 40% of the people you follow will ‘return the favour’ and start following you.

2. Tweet interesting stuff

This should be obvious! Whether it is your own content you are sharing, or interesting content from all over the Web (regardless of the subject matter), aim to be interesting. If your followers like what you’re giving them, they’ll let you know with retweets, favourites, etc.,and they’ll say so to their own followers, who will, in turn, follow you and so forth and so on. Snowball effect!
You need to figure out your content strategy first – more in an upcoming article!

3. Be a giver 

The key word in the term ‘social networks’ is the word ‘social’, and Twitter is probably the most social of all. This means that you should not just be a receiver, you have to be a giver as well if you want it to work out in your favour. A giver shares content from other people, colleagues, even competitors. A giver makes recommendations of other people to follow, engages in discussions (serious ones as well as exchanges about airline food), reports on news (upcoming industry events, news from colleagues, industry news, etc.), shares experiences and expertise, retweets and always tries to meet new people and network. Give and you shall receive – it’s the core spirit of social networking, and sometimes we tend to forget that.

4. Use hashtags

Increase your visibility on Twitter by using hashtags. Find those that influencers use, or simply browse through your timeline and see which hashtags are used by the people you follow and which ones are hot right now – and use those relevant to your content! This way, your tweets will appear in searches for a certain hashtag and this increases your chances of gaining followers interested in that particular topic or who follow that hashtag. Here is a list of some popular translation industry hashtags.

5. Include your Twitter info everywhere

An effective, quick and simple trick is to include your Twitter username in your business contact details – e-mail signature, Skype, CV, LinkedIn profile, ProZ.com profile, business cards, website… Use either the URL or just your @Username.

Translators Without Borders Newsletter II

  Click on the image below to read the original newsletter in your browser

Barcelona conference presentation – Social Media Marketing for translators : why, what, how…

Last weekend I attended the ProZ.com International Conference 2012 in Barcelona. It was really fantastic seeing old friends again and making new ones, and to finally have a chance to see some of the wonders the city of Barcelona has to offer.

The conference was also the opportunity to give my presentation on social media marketing and online reputation – 1 hour is terribly short to cover the topic, but some basics were thrown at the audience and hopefully all attendees got something to chew on. The purpose, as outlined in the introduction, is not to make anyone a Social Media expert (and in an hour, that’s impossible), but rather to help translators in the decision-making of investing in that marketing strategy – or not – by giving them as many elements, pros and cons as possible to help them decide whether it’s something their own business could use/need  - and of course, for those who decide it may be something for them, make them curious to find out more and take the next step.

The presentation felt relaxed and was quite interactive. I don’t like to push the Q/A at the very end, attendees can just interrupt me if they want to rebounce on something I just said. IMO it is simply more comfortable and informal that way. Hopefully people feel this as well, because it not only creates a relaxed atmosphere, but it also makes the presentation more lively and ultimately (hopefully) fun. And well, egoistically, I have to admit it’s much more fun for me as  it makes each presentation different from the previous one and the audience has often really interesting, original and unexpected questions, comments or experiences to share. So, no routine. As always, I wish it could have gone on for another 3 hours – and hope attendees do as well!  ;)

A really big thank you to all of you for our attention and patience, I hope you all left the room with a clearer idea of this wide Internet marketing world and some (more) elements at hands to make your decision – if that’s the case, then I did the job in Barcelona (if that’s not the case, feel free to contact me via e-mail and shout at me ;))

Anyway, here is the pdf of the presentation, feel free to download it: Barcelona_Conference_SMM_Presentation

An interesting thing happened during the session and in the plane back from Barcelona – or at least I consider those thoughts interesting. It occured to me that, compared to a year ago, I was focusing less on actual Social Media and always more on SEO, online reputation / online presence – that was the case at the Germersheim University a few weeks ago when I gave that same presentation and, to an extent, at the conference in Warsaw in April. This is definitely material for a future article (and sooner than later), but for the past 3-4 months, it seems social networks themselves are loosing the importance they had a year ago in online marketing – they are still important, no questioning that, but SEO and online image in general seem to grow more and more important. Social sites actually always were SEO and online reputation tools but this was maybe not always clear, or hidden behind the WOW factor of social sites. I have this feeling that perspectives are changing – client don’t ask “How can I be on Facebook for my business?” anymore because it’s Facebook and it’s hype. They ask today “Why would I be on Facebook for my business?”.

Interesting shift in perspectives here – but again, this is material for a future article.

In the meantime a big thank you to Patricia for the organization of this great conference, and a big thank you to all – it was simply fantastic being there with all of you. See you next year at the Porto 2013 Conference!