Twitter

Here is my article which was first published on Social Media Examiner:

Posterous is a social media platform where it’s very easy to post just about anything—photos, videos and words. You can set up your account and publish content simply by sending an email. Yes it’s that simple!

Posterous is known as the most “social” networking place of social media. It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post.

There are many different reasons and motivations to create a free Posterous account. Let’s have a look at the 7 most common reasons for businesses to use Posterous.

#1: Can Replace Your Blog

When a regular blog is not for you, Posterous can give you similar advantages to a regular blog without the work of setting up a blog and maintaining it. All you have to do is send in your content by email. It’s that simple. This is why Posterous is great for lifestreaming.

This can be a good starting point for businesses hesitating to create their own blog. Posterous can provide a place to learn more about social media and develop the right content strategies.

#2: Fills a Gap Between Blogging and Microblogging

Posterous is an easy way to publish more content to reach different audiences. Steve Rubel says, “I still see a big space in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats.”

And as Ted Villa says, “Posterous is clean and nimble, simple to use and a great tool in any organization’s social media toolkit. It’s a great way to extend a client’s footprint online and increase links to their site as well as their social media sites.”

This can fill a gap in your presence on social media.

#3: Can Improve Your Visibility

Posterous can help you improve your visibility in search results in two ways.

First, you have more updates for search engines to find. If you like to share photos and videos online, Posterous makes it very easy to do this (see reason #7 below for more details). And with photo and video publishing made this easy, you end up sharing more content to increase your online search results.

Second, you can publish your Posterous content on your own website. Unlike other social media platforms, you can set up your Posterous account on your own URL. This means you can set up your Posterous account on:

• Your own domain name separate from your company website
• Or even use a sub-domain of your current website or blog

This is something important to keep in mind as the social media landscape changes over time.

#4: Gives You Another Voice on Social Media

Many business professionals also use Posterous to post content that would be off topic on their main website or blog and engage with a different audience online.

Posterous provides an easy venue to share different “social” content. A separate platform makes it easy to create an additional point of connection with your audience, with a different style, to engage different mindsets. As Debbie Weil says, “There are distinct differences in how you talk or write for the different platforms. Simply put, you write in a different ‘voice’ and, generally, talk about different topics.”

This makes it easy to reach out to different audiences.

#5: Makes it Easy for Groups to Publish Content

Posterous allows you to set up group accounts too. This means you can set up:

• Posterous pages for individual team members
• Collaborative Posterous pages for different company employees to post on the same page
• Collaborative Posterous pages to bring people outside your company to collaborate on one Posterous page

Here’s one example of how Posterous brings social networking to a higher level: ClickIdeas

#6: Helps You to Segment Content for Different Audiences

You can use your Posterous account to create different points of contact with your audience. Pat Kitano says, “I originally intended this slideshow (How to create a blog without “writing” one) for local businesspeople who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new ‘blogs’ on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.”

This makes it easy to test different market segments outside of your main blog or website.

#7: Is the Easiest Option to Share Photos

Posterous is simply the easiest social media platform to share photos and videos. All you have to do is email your photo or video to Posterous and it does everything else. This means you can publish your favorite photos and videos from any location where you have access to your email, even from your mobile phone.

This is why many users choose to post all of their photos and videos to Posterous and set it up to feed their Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Bonus: Makes You Easy To Connect With

Sometimes a personal touch helps you to create a stronger connection with your audience on social media. This is why some business professionals use Posterous as a place to provide a unique glimpse into their personal lives.

Jason Falls does a good job at providing both personal and business insights on his Posterous page: Falls, Off the Rocker. He links to these Posterous posts from his Twitter account and invites his Twitter followers to get to know him better.

A Step Toward Creating Social Connections

Creating a social presence and adapting to different social media platforms are not easy for many businesses. Posterous provides a way for businesses to make a social connection between their own website and other social media platforms as they learn more about incorporating social media into their current marketing tactics.

Ready to Give Posterous a Try? Here’s some good resources to check out:

• Read Mashable’s Posterous Guide.
• Have a look at Guy Kawasaki’s Twelve Tips and Tricks.
• And remember to subscribe to Social Media Examiner. There’s more to come on Posterous and other social media platforms.

Now It’s Your Turn

• What are you interested in getting out of Posterous?
• Do you already have a Posterous page?
• How is Posterous helping your social media marketing?

Share the link to your Posterous page below and tell us what your experience has been so far in the Comments section below.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

7 Ways Posterous Improves Your Social Media Presence

Membership Sites

The first WishList Member Training & Certification sessions took place earlier this week and it really sank in how you can use this membership plugin in many different ways.

If you have followed me for the last couple of weeks, you’ll know just how jazzed I am about the WishList Membership Plugin. I’m always on the look out for ways to use content marketing and thus web marketing to reach international audiences.

This new membership site software does provide some very interesting options for international marketers. Of course international marketing is complex and takes a fair amount of skill and effort. But I’m up to the task and just can’t wait to set up a few membership sites to start playing around with the free membership options for some international market research activities.

Different Memberships Models

But after listening to the first Wishlist training calls I came away with a very clear vision of how I wanted to set up all of my websites and the sales funnel I want to make in 2010.

By using a variety of different membership sites and by repurposing content I already have I can create a strong product series that makes sense for my business. All of my niche sites will soon be on WishList.

Here are the different membership site options I’m looking very closely at for my business:

• A “Modular Membership Site” where you pay everything up front (maybe with payment options) and where content is delivered over a few months. This means once you create the content and set it up, you leave it.
• A “Combo Membership Site” with “Private Access” + “Micro Continuity Membership” + “Protected Forum Membership“. Sounds familar? Well, I’m dropping my Ning group project and setting it up on WishList.
• A “Coaching Site” with both common access areas and specific membership levels for each individual clients. Using a membership site plateform makes it easy to work with international clients.
• A “Project Management Site” for launch management.  This is similar to the Coaching Site except the content delivery will be set up differently. And again, it will be a big help in international launch management.
• A “Protected Download Site” for some niche specific marketing activities.  My ideas are still bubbling on this one, but this will be for targeted marketing tactics.
• And I’m also extremely interested in the “Free Membership” options for international marketing research tactics. This should play a huge role in my international market research, or should I say international community research.

Choose The Right Membership Model For Your Content Creation Commitment

Now you may not have noticed that I am not yet including the more popular membership site models just yet.

• The traditional “Publisher Membership” site and sister “Monthly Content” model. These require a long term commitment to creating content every month over a long term.
• The “Micro Continuity Membership” programs. These are short fixed-term membership programs with a monthly payment and they are getting a lot of buzz right now.

The reason for this is because I already have lots of content I want to use for at least one Modular Membership Site.  All of the membership options I’m looking at do not require heavy content creation.

After blogging for two years and on two different blogs, I have enough material to put a few different packages.  Of course, I do need to edit and repurpose existing content and I will have to create some new content.  And this will take some time. The launches of these membership websites will be staggered out throughout 2010. And right now I am busy drafting:

• Editorial Calendars
• Communication Schedules
• Promotion Plans

Once these membership sites are up and running I’ll go back and look at the membership site models that require a bigger commitment to content creation.

Fun With Membership Site Marketing

But quite frankly, I’m expecting to spend time tweaking my membership site marketing.  I don’t anticipate launching any of the bigger content heavy models next year.

You see, technically these membership site options exist because you can control many different things on the different levels of your membership site. You can drip feed content, change sidebars & dashboards for different membership levels.

There are New Marketing Opportunities With Membership Sites and these are worth spending the time exploring. Besides once the developers have access to the Wishlist API, there will be more fun plugins to play around with.  Next year there will be more creative options to beyond the traditional membership sites models to check out.

What about you?

• What other membership site models do you want to try out?
• How do you think a membership site can help you research your online community more?
• What would you like to get out of a membership site and what model would be best for you?

More on Membership Sites:

• New Marketing Opportunities With Membership Sites
• WishList – A Great Marketing Tool To Get To Know Your Market Better

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides

• Design Your International Visibility
• International Market Research

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Different Membership Models For Your Business Needs

International Content Creation

I just read Denise Wakeman’s 7 Tips to Create Better Blog Posts and realized how my reading habits have changed dramatically over the last few years. I used to always take the time to read meaty articles, but not any more. I now skim through everything I read and within a few seconds decide whether I want to give it another minute or two and a second evaluation, or if I want to stop reading immediately. After the second review, I usually stop reading the article, unless it really grabs my interest. And only then will I take the time to read it properly. Yes, everything I read goes through 2 reviews before I decide to read it.

So I need white space and frequence subheads in blog posts – otherwise I cannot skim through it properly. When I skim through an article the first time I only read the title, subheads, the first couple of bullets, maybe a short callout or a quote and 2 sentence paragraphs that look interesting. That’s it… and this is not a lot of content to grab my interest, is it?

Another new habit I’ve acquired is listening to audios. Whenever I’m doing a task that does not occupy all of my brain space, I put on an audio version of something I want to read.

Multiple New Habits In Consuming Content

I’m not the only one who has changed their habits in consuming information. Many others have too. And this is not including the new habits we have of reading the different types of content now available on social media.

Social media platforms have specific atmospheres about them:

• Facebook is full of networking games
• LinkedIn has a business feel to most of the conversations
• Twitter folk do not like sales pitches

Have you noticed the variety in content styles between each of these social media platforms?

And looking at this from the other side, from the readers point of view, there are even subgroups of further differences in how people like to consume content. When you add cultural preferences into these different ways of consuming content, things can get complicated.

Below we are going to look at the different types of content from two different angles:

• Personal consumption preferences
• The broader audiences you want to reach

And finally we’ll see how complex content creation can become when international audiences also listen in to what you share with the people next door to you.

3 Different Personal Preferences For Content Consumption

Here are 3 different reasons why you need different types of content in your online marketing.

1 – Connecting With People With Different Time Constraints

Let’s face it, some of us always busy for certain information. Some of us will always take the time to read certain types of information.

Who do you want to reach? What are they like? How much time do they want to spend reading your stuff?

2 – Grabbing People’s Attention With The Right Information

Sometimes the same information delivered with a slightly different point of view is all it takes to grab people’s attention.

Do you know how your readers prefer to get the information you want to share with them?

3 – Engaging With People Who Consume Your Content In Different Environments

It is easy to understand how sound should be avoided in some environments. If many of your readers use phone applications to visit your site, they will not appreciate anything slow to load. The same people who connect with you during their business hours for a certain type of content, may also like to connect with you first thing in the morning with another type of content.

Do you know where your readers prefer reading your content?

3 Different Audiences For Your Content

But you cannot only look at the personal preferences in how people want to consume your content.  There are also the different ways you can target your audiences where you need different content.  The next 3 points look at different factors you can use when creating your content.

4 – Bringing People To Take The Next Step Most Appropriate For Them

We all write content for a reason.  What do you want your reader to do after reading your content?  Different readers will be willing to take steps of various sizes.

Do you have content with the most appropriate  obvous next step for your audience?

5 – Appealing To People From Different Cultures

You need different content to engage effectively with different cultures.  Even when these cultures speak the same language, you will get a better response from your audience, if you use the right vocabulary and hit the emotional buttons that appeal to the specific culture you want to connect with.

Does your content speak to your audience?  Can your audience easily identify themselves with what you say?

6 – Avoid Excluding International Audiences

The web is a global one and different cultures have different communication styles.  What is polite and friendly in one culture, can have the opposite effect in another.  What can seem insignificant in one culture can have a big impact on your communication with another cultures.  This is easy to understand.  But when you look closely at the content you publish online, who is it for?  It is great to write for a specific audience, that’s what we should do.  The question is whether there are any small things we can do to facilitate reading by international audiences.

Do you put international readers off without realizing it?  Does this bother you?

Complex Global Audiences

The last thing to remember is the complexity of today’s audiences.

7 – Managing Mixed Audiences

Situations can become complex:  you may have international readers who use phone applications to read your online content while your reader next door wants to take read the same content slowly with his morning coffee.

What do you do? Is there a way to publish content strategically on different social media platforms?

Getting Your Content Right

Consumption preferences for different market segments will differ for each social media platform. This is why you need to:

• Adopt one social media content plan at a time
• Engage with your readers to tweak it and find their preferences

You only know how to write web content when you know what, where, when and and how your reader wants to read it. But the list of different online content above shows us the two trends we also have to be aware of:

• The changes in how different people deal with the amount of information they have to process
• The variety of the different types of content businesses need to publish online

What about you?  What do you think about your online content needs?

• What are your business goals for the content you publish online?
• What does your audience want to read from you online?
• What different kinds of content do you need to publish online to reach international audiences?

More on International Content Creation:

• An International Development Template
• Foreign Language Communication Simplified
• International Content As An International Business Development Strategy
• The One Important Step Missing In Many Guidelines For Good Websites And Landing Pages
• Third Transition To A Global Market Internet Business
• What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?
• Web Content Conference In French
• Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides:

• Connect With Your International Markets
• International English
• Culture Customized Content
• Cultural Web Tools

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

7 Reasons For Different Online Content

How To Create An International Business Blog

Is there an ideal international blog promotion formula? Well, I have been hunting for a good for a while and I’m now finally happy with what I have come up with for my own international business.  I’d like to share it with you.

With my background as a cross-cultural marketer I know how to reach international audiences. That was not my challenge. The missing ingredient for a strong international blog promotion strategy was elsewhere. You see, although it is easy to understand what you need to do to promote your blog online, it is not always easy to figure out how to put this into practice.

Today I’m only going to talk about businesses targeting international English speaking, or “English-reading”, audiences online – we’ll look into international blogs in other languages in another post.

Let’s have a look at the easy part before I share my secret with you.

Blog Promotion Tactics

Luckily, if your international blog is in English, you have many resources outlining blog promotion tactics. The trouble for foreign businesses is:

• These resources are in English
• The best blog practices in one country may feel a bit “foreign” to someone from another country
• It takes time to get used to blogs and blogging practices and even more time when you add in the cultural differences

There is some good news for foreign language blogs: ICANN is now moving forward with URLs for countries with alphabets in non-latin characters. This means there will be more culturally diverse web activity and resources available… and possibly more foreign blogging opportunities.

But at least you can find a multitude of blogging resources in English online. After spending a few weeks reading through the wealth of information on blog promotion it is easy to come up with a long list of things to do.  Here the the main ones:

Personal messages to the people who comment on your blog – to create community.

Regular search monitoring – to engage with people linking to your blog or talking about you and your blog online.

Regular social bookmarking & networking activities – to both promote your own blog posts and integrate the communities on a few strategic platforms.  For my business these are currently: Posterous, BizSugar, FriendFeed, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit.

Comment on other blogs and forums - to be seen, engage in discussions and create relationships with peers and potential clients.

These tactics work well for blogs in English.

A word of caution: Don’t assume the exact same tactics are ideal for all blogs in other cultures. Cultural differences effect all forms of communication, including blogging. More about this in a future post.

This list looks easy enough.  But what happens when you actually sit down to do the work. The truth is, this is the most difficult part of creating your blog promotion.

How Do You Manage Your Blog Promotion

Managing your time investment in promoting your blog is the hard part.  You see, if you are not careful you can spend the whole day promoting your blog. Sure, this will get you results.  But at what price?  This is why I listened attentively and went hunting for formulas on how to include blog promotion into my social media strategy.

• How much blog promotion do I need to do for my business?

And finally these are the 3 bits of advice I used to come up with my own plan:

• Spend the same amount of time promoting your blog as writing your blog posts
• Spend 5 hours promoting your blog for every hour you spend writing your blog post
• Do a long list of social media actions every day

Blog Promotion For An International Audience

After looking closely at this advice, I decided to follow and adapt these three rules for my business:

Blog Promotion Rule #1 - When my schedule gets busy I still blog.  Blogging is now firmly part of my daily routine. And I always spend at least the same amount of time for blog promotion as for blog writing.  No exceptions.  This is usually about an hour for each task.

Blog Promotion Rule #2 - As I want to reach international audiences and rely heavily on social media, 5 hours of blog promotion a day is probably a very good thing for my business.  So I try to fit in 5 hours worth on as many days of the week as I can.  Did you notice how I said  ”5 hours worth”?  This means I am always looking for ways to increase the value and the reach of the time I spend promoting my blog.  So, in practice:

• I include a little blog promotion wherever and whenever I can.  It has become part of me.
• I’ve become a student of productivity and processes, and at the same time paying close attention to what works for me and what doesn’t.
• I nurture friendships with people who are both fun to be with and willing to help me out in promoting my blog, even if it’s a tiny bit.

Sure, sometimes I do spend 2 or 3 hours a day solely on blog promotion.  But not everyday and sometimes not for a couple of weeks.  In addition, it is only when my schedule is free.  These long blog promotion sessions are a pleasure because there is often a good deal of networking and connecting with my blog readers.  For an international business this is vital.

Blog Promotion Rule #3 -  I use a checklist to keep me focused.  This allows me to immediately jump into the tasks at hand… and jump out when I’ve finished.  My checklist is similar to the ones I found online, except I’ve adapted it a little to fit my business goals.  It does not matter if I do not manage to do everything on the list every day.  What I’ve found is that it is good to tweak it from time to time to be sure it fits into an hour and stays relevant to my business goals and the new things that pop up in social media.

How has this experience been?  Well, although I do spend an hour promoting my blog every day, I started doing this first thing in the morning.  This worked wonderfully for me.  Then I decided to try to get more “billable” hours into the mornings and moved this to late afternoons.

Big mistake.  Although I network on the phone almost every late afternoon and speak to people from all around the world, I was not good at keeping up with the blog promotion tasks in the evenings.  My brain was too tired to network across cultures in writing in late afternoons.  Speaking was fine.  Just not the writing.

So international blog promotion is now back to mornings for me.  This is fine.  The very first task I do every morning is review my keyword search results to read the latest news of interest to me.  And this flows well into the blog promotion tasks.

An International Hub

Blogs are not miracle international sales machines.  But with a little thought about your international promotion tactics, your blog can become the hub from which you connect with audiences in different areas of the world. What happens next depends on what you do from there.

As you can see from above, for my international business I allow a large amount of time for networking and almost always include blog promotion while networking.  Even if different businesses, with different goals, use different blog promotion tactics to reach their international audiences, networking will probably play a role too.  A blog as an international hub makes networking with international audiences a natural choice.

Have you guessed what my secret for effective international blog promotion is?  Yes, it is to include active networking as part of my blog promotion.  This creates a truly international business hub from a simple blog.

Now it’s your turn…

• What international blog promotion formula do you use?
• What are your goals when connecting with your international audience?
• How do you promote your blog to international audiences?

Please share your comments below.

More on International Social Media

• An International Business Blog To Discover New Markets

More on How To Create An International Business Blog:

• 3 Different Communication Challenges Of An International Blog
• Investment In An International Business Blog
• Business Blogs For Sales Conversion
• Business Blogs To Get International Clients
• Business Blogs To Open Foreign Markets

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides

• Build Your International Marketing Strategy
• International Web Marketing
• Connect With Your International Markets
• International Market Research

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

My International Blog Promotion Secret

International Content Creation

I recently critiqued a blog to give advice on how to improve readership. One of the first things that jumped out at me was that the content did not match the blog title and tag line.

Without checking the blog statistics, it is reasonable to assume that the blog readers do not stick around very long.  There were just too many words on different topics.

This quick look at the words that jumped off the blog reminded me of something else…

A Graphic Keyword Tool

There is a fun tool called Wordle.  Here is the Wordle of this blog:

I find the Wordle pictures very useful. It is easy to compare the words on your Wordle with your SEO keywords

…and your core business categories.

…and even more importantly, with the keywords your readers use to find you.

A mind mapping evangelist I spoke with recently, said that more that 75% of us have stronger visual memories than any of the other forms.

These words in a picture can highlight the words we need to use more.

International Keywords

It is not always easy to identify:

• The keywords your international readers use
• The words on your blog or website that grab his interest

International readers probably respond to different words.

It is important to think about this because finding the words that capture the attention of your international readers can help you improve your international communication.

Observation To Find The Right Words

How can you find the best words to use to grab your international readers’ attention?

This usually involves researching the online places where your international readers hang out and observing how they respond there.

The more contact you have with your international readers the better you get to know them…

…and the more familiar you become with their vocabulary.

Cross Checking Both Sets Of Words

As an international marketer, it is important to cross-check the words you hear and see your international readers using with the words you use on your blog or website.

Yes, you can do this with SEO tools.  But you may not need to do as much analysis with these tools as you think, especially if :

• You are already connecting with the international readers you are targeting
• You already have a large amount of content targeting this audience

The problem is that the last time I looked into international SEO, this was a time consuming activity and not always as accurate as businesses want it to be.

Soft Skills And Visual Tools

Knowledge of your international clients is your best tool.  And your soft skills on how you use this knowledge can get you good online results.

Visual keyword tools can give you fairly accurate feedback on how you are doing.  These tools can be fun tools like Wordle.  And they can also include an intelligent content analysis of your what you have online.

If you would like to have your blog critiqued for an international audience, email me at cindy@cindyking.biz

More on International Content Creation:

• An International Development Template
• Foreign Language Communication Simplified
• International Content As An International Business Development Strategy
• The One Important Step Missing In Many Guidelines For Good Websites And Landing Pages
• Third Transition To A Global Market Internet Business
• Web Content Conference In French
• Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides:

• Connect With Your International Markets
• International English
• Culture Customized Content
• Cultural Web Tools

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?

International Content Creation

Many small businesses would like to develop their business internationally. But they always seem to put it off. The reasons for putting off international business development are varied and multiple.

All businesses have had to adjust to many different marketing channels. But are they using the different marketing channels effectively for their businesses? This is the challenge businesses of all kinds face today.

I am currently reading Akin Arikan’s book, Multichannel Marketing. Akin says there are very few businesses currently using the different channels available to them effectively.

When small businesses are still grappling with effective multichannel marketing for their domestic markets, it’s no wonder international marketing today appears to be confusing.

That’s when a simple marketing strategy works best.

• Are you a small business?
• Do you want to develop your international business?
• Do you lack money to invest and manpower?
• Do you have some time you can commit to an international marketing strategy on a very regular basis?

The simple marketing strategy that will bring your business into the international business development arena?

An International Content Creation Strategy

I will answer your questions about what type of international content tomorrow.

Writing Content For An International Audience

Today I want to tell you why I think an international content creation strategy is such a good idea for small businesses.

I just finished reading Chris Garret’s blog post on Flagship Content To Make Sales where Chris mentions my work on Get International Clients.

I have to admit, I read Chris’ free ebook Killer Flagship Content shortly after it first came out. This book greatly inspired my writing strategy when I launched my two blogs at the beginning of this year.

Let me be clear here. At the time I did not know just how easy it is to get online visibility with Flagship Content, and how this content could bring in international sales. The book just made good marketing sense to me.

Flagship Content is great content. Content your readers want to read, re-read and pass along to friends. It is also evergreen, which means it can interest your readers just as much years down the road.

Once I started creating my own Flagship Content, I discovered the key reason why small businesses should invest time in creating flagship content regularly on one subject and written to a defined audience.

If you also put your Flagship content in an article marketing strategy, the natural keywords in your articles will put you on the first page of Google fairly quickly. This means that if you write using the words your readers will put into their search fields on Google, it is very easy to come up in top positions on your readers Google search results page.

International Content = International Online Visibility

The key is to create your content for an international audience. If your content is targeted to the right audience it will get their interest.

The Google search engine results will get you visibility in just about the whole world.

• Most of the native foreign language search engines use the Google algorithms for their searches.
• Google has made great improvements in dealing with languages.

If you do implement an International Content Creation strategy, there are still a few things you should do to optimize your international visibility. I go through these in the Get International Clients Business Guide 2 – Plan Your International Sales Road Map.

What is essential to remember is that your International Flagship Content, in English, will get you international visibility.

• If you target your content to international audiences.
• You need to write for your international audiences and use the language they use.
  

My Blogs Results In Google

I started writing an article 5 times a week. Trying to make these articles strong Flagship Content, not always succeeding.

I did not pay attention to my keyword use in the articles. I was so busy concentrating on simply getting the articles written and promoted online. I simply tried to cover all the aspects around my main subject area. I also wrote to a defined audience.

After about 3 months I was top of Google searches for all the keywords I wanted.

Now I want to target the keywords I thought would be difficult.

The top results in Google searches started bringing in a steady flow of customer inquiries directly to my email inbox at about the 4 month mark. These inquiries have been coming in steadily ever since. The inquiries come in from all over the world. I also get spontaneously calls on Skype since I put that link up.

And…drum roll… do you want to know the great news?

• Inquiries always come from my ideal customer profile.

International Content In Your Business Strategy

An International Flagship Content strategy is a great way for a new website to get visibility at no cost in a relatively short time.

I complicated things for myself by insisting on having a personal blog, here at Cindy King.biz and a business blog, Get International Clients.

Sorting out my two blogs has highlighted the importance of a good content creation strategy integrated into a solid business strategy.

Getting your business act together online is not as simple as it seems. Solid international business and marketing basics will help you develop your international success. If you would like to follow an step-by-step process for international business development check out the Get International Clients Business Guides and their International Sales Road Map.

More on International Content Creation:

• An International Development Template
• Foreign Language Communication Simplified
• The One Important Step Missing In Many Guidelines For Good Websites And Landing Pages
• Third Transition To A Global Market Internet Business
• What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?
• Web Content Conference In French
• Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides:

• Connect With Your International Markets
• International English
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Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

International Content As An International Business Development Strategy

International Content Creation

Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content – Freelancer Or Agency?

I’ve come across a couple of articles recently on the debate of who you need to hire to translate your content.

Are Translation Agencies Better?

Both articles were written by translation agencies. Of course each long article stated that:

• Companies should never hire a freelance translator for their foreign content.
• Only an agency had the manpower to do everything.
• You obviously need a translator, an editor, a proofreader and…well there were a few other professions on the list.

I have not run across articles written by freelance translators stating they are the best option for companies needing foreign content. My guess is they are too busy. And they can’t all bite the hand that feeds them. They also get work through translation agencies.

It would be more appropriate to see comprehensive guidelines written by a third party. But I haven’t seen any clearly written by an independent third party.

Wrong Debate

I actually think that the debate is elsewhere.

The question is not whether you need a translator with a team of agency staff, or a freelance translator.

I’ve held different marketing and sales positions in companies of various sizes and budgets. I was responsible for cross cultural communication in some form or another in each of those positions. And I definitely know what communication I need out in the field.

Is It Translation You Need?

The word “translation” used in connection for any sales materials brings images of bad sales results and extra hours for me to put together my own sales materials.

Good sales materials need to be crafted in its original language to bring in the bacon.

There is a good market for freelance translators.

There is also a good market for translation agencies.

Define Your Needs

You need to define your foreign content needs before looking for a service provider. Don’t automatically assume you need a translator simply because this is your text and you want it in a different language.

Language is only a part of the equation.

• What sort of text is it you need in a foreign language?
• What is this text going to do?
• Would you hire a local agency to write this text for you in your own language?
• Who would you hire to write this in your own language?
• Why?
• Who wrote the original text?
• What were his qualifications?
• Were his qualifications important to write this?
• What were his personality traits?
• Were they important?
• What did he need to know to write the text?

Look For The Right Skill Sets Needed For The Job

Obviously you would want someone with the same background to write the same text in the foreign language.

But that’s utopia.

• Budgets restrict us.
• Deadlines interfere.

Not knowing where to find the right person also gets most people totally stuck. Why don’t they ask themselves where they would get the same text written in their own language? And then look in those places but in the right country?

Find The Right Translator

And then the choice of freelance translator or translation agency comes up.

Both freelance translators and translation agencies can give you excellent foreign content.

There are so many different criteria that come into play. It is all about getting the best person you can for the job…and working with them, and knowing when to give them freedom to get it done right.

Sales Copy Is Always Different

My choice? I would always plan for, and spend the extra time, to find the right person to do the job.

And it would probably not be a professional translator for any sales related materials. I would hunt down the best sales professional I could afford. Get as much foreign copy as I could afford.

More on International Content Creation:

• An International Development Template
• Foreign Language Communication Simplified
• International Content As An International Business Development Strategy
• The One Important Step Missing In Many Guidelines For Good Websites And Landing Pages
• Third Transition To A Global Market Internet Business
• What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?
• Web Content Conference In French

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides:

• Connect With Your International Markets
• International English
• Culture Customized Content
• Cultural Web Tools

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content

International Content Creation

I just got a newsletter in the mail today from a great internet marketer out of the UK, Chris Cardell. I really enjoy reading anything Chris puts out. Today, there was a quick guideline for creating good websites in his package.

There were basically the same 4 key points you hear non-stop as soon as you get into creating websites:

1. Clearly defined. Your websites goal has to be clearly indicated for immediate recognition. Be careful of any graphics you have – they must directly correspond to what your website is about. Confusion leads readers away.
2. Headlines are critical. If they don’t grab your readers attention they will move on.
3. Easy to read. If your website is too busy, too messy, too hard to read – readers will move on.
4. Compelling offer. If you don’t make your offer interesting to the reader, he will move on.

But Chris left out the most important key element in my eyes, and the one thing almost everyone forgets.

There is something you have to do before any of the key point above:

You have to know where your online visitor has just come from. Better yet, did he get here from a banner ad, an article or a Google search, and which words did he put in the Google search to find you.

This is absolutely vital information if you want your internet visitor to do something: read your page, sign up for a newsletter, learn about your product, or even buy it.

The more smoother the link between all these stages the more success you will have:

• your internet visitor’s mental frame of mind
• the motivation behind his search
• the language on the the text that lead him to your website
• his expectations of what he is hoping to find on your website
• and how your website corresponds to his previous experience and desires

I only understood the full value of this after studying good web copy in great depth. This is something trained copywriters will not leave out – they are trained to think of the reader from every possible angle. If you want your reader to do something you need to know how to convince him.

Imagine a huge department store with doors opening onto every different department. If someone found your store because they were hunting for shoes and they came in through the door they thought lead them to the shoe department only to find a mixed batch of articles nothing to do with shoes. Confusion.

Now imagine they found the door to the shoe section through a poster describing incredibly stylish red boots and they opened the door to find a large display of the boots immediately as they walked in. And there is a big sign saying they could get the matching handbag for half price as well, and there is a pay plan available.

Your online visitors have the same contrast in experience. It is not always easy to know where your online visitor are coming from. And visitors often come into your website through the side door, not the home page. Are you other pages clearly defined, or would they be confusing?

“Landing Pages” are popular because they help website owners to categorize and set up paths for specific visitors. This allows the website owner to say the right thing at the right time to the visitors that come in through different specific doors.

It is possible to make your “Landing Page” part of your current website, if you are asking your reader to sign up for a free newsletter for example. If you are moving in for a sale you may want to use a specific URL domain and keep your reader totally focused on what you have to say. Again if you start waving other distractions in his face when you are trying to make a sale, you will not make that sale as much as you can.

This first step of understanding and identifying your readers frame of mind at the moment he finds your website is also vital for international marketing. Cross cultural communication is often a trial and error process.

If your communication is lined up with your foreign reader’s search expectations and represents a smooth continuation in the communication he is expecting from you, he will be more likely to forgive any slight errors in cross cultural communication.
Now I am sure Chris knows the importance of this key step. His newsletter is an excellent resource for internet marketing.

Chris has a seminar coming up with a few celebrity speakers including the successful American marketer Dan Kennedy.

More on International Content Creation:

• An International Development Template
• Foreign Language Communication Simplified
• International Content As An International Business Development Strategy
• Third Transition To A Global Market Internet Business
• What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?
• Web Content Conference In French
• Who Do You Need To Write Your Foreign Content

More in these Get International Clients Business Guides:

• Connect With Your International Markets
• International English
• Culture Customized Content
• Cultural Web Tools

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

The One Important Step Missing In Many Guidelines For Good Websites And Landing Pages