Cindy King's International Business Blog » international blogs

Cultural Perceptions Of Women Online

Cindy King — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:00:57 +0000

Women have to pay close attention to cultural differences in perceptions. Many times when you make a cultural blunder you don’t realize you’ve made one until much later after the damage is done. Sometimes you never learn of your mistake. And often you’ll realize your mistake when you see the damage it’s done. This is particularly true of non-verbal cross-cultural communication challenges.

I’ve had a couple of reasons recently to think about the cultural differences in how women are perceived and I’d like to share one of these stories with you. I’m fairly sure the woman in this example did not realize the different perceptions people had of her photo.

First Impressions Online Go Farther Abroad

We all know the importance of the first impression we make. And when you have a successful online presence it’s natural to want to reach international audiences too.

But what happens when you’ve jeopardized your international success just because you did something too close to the line of what is socially acceptable in your own country. And it turns out to have a different impact in other cultures.

Wrong Assumptions

First here’s a little background information to keep in mind. As you can see, I’m a woman and I grew up with American television.

You might think that I react to American women the same as other Americans. Well the trouble is that I’ve worked with many different nationalities and I’ve learned to understand how others perceive things differently.

At the time I started blogging I noticed another woman who also started at about the same time. She was in the same networking sphere as I was. So naturally I stumbled across her blog a few times and clicked on her about page.

Too Much Skin Sends Clear Signals

There was a rather seductive photo of a woman… it was a head shot taken from an angle above. You could see lots of bare skin. She was obviously wearing a strapless dress, except you just couldn’t tell there was a dress in the way the photo was taken.

The photo clearly stated that this blogger wanted to appeal to men. And the men in my social networking group liked her. But I was not who she wanted to connect with.

Sorry guys. I don’t have a link for you. The photo is no longer there. Besides I just don’t like giving press to people unless I really like them. This is yet another way where my culture differs from others.

When Different Cultures Pick Up Different Signals

This presentation of herself would have impacted both men and women from other cultures in different ways. Of course in many cultures she would have had a certain popularity with the male readers. But popularity based on what?

Some cultures may simply consider it an artistic photo that did not match the content of the blog.

In Muslim countries this particular photo would probably have been considered pornographic.

The rules of seduction vary in different cultures and these rules of seduction can impact all of our communication. I personally do not take offense with a photo of a woman in a sleeveless dress. But a woman in a sleeveless dress in a very suggestive pose does tell me that she is after someone else to read her blog and I lose interest.

Success And A Change In Direction

Almost 2 years later, this blogger is still there and her blog is growing very nicely.

I revisted her blog recently and noticed the bare skin photo was gone. There was extra text: text describing an “all American girl” type lifestyle.

She’s obviously trying to change her image. The trouble is that I still remember the bare skin photo just a short while ago. There was a disconnect.

I wonder what challenges she’ll face in adjusting the first impressions her original readers had. And I think she’ll have more troubles establishing credibility for this new image within the international community.

Show Respect For All Of Your Audiences Right From The Start

This raises the question of showing respect and following basic cross-cultural communication guidelines to all of your audiences right from the start. Here are two things that could have made a difference in my eyes.

Clarity helps wrong assumptions on both sides. If this photo was a photography class assignment, a short mention of this together with some explanation on the connection to the rest of the blog content would have helped. It would have helped to keep a good impression with at least a portion of the international audience.

Maintain consistency for better credibility. The stories I got from the two different about pages did not seem to come from the same person. There’s probably a good explanation, but the transition was too brutal to maintain credibility.

This is just a little bit of effort to make to protect your reputation and credibility with a larger international audience.

What do you think?

Do women have a harder time to manage their online credibility?
As a woman, when would you wear sleeves online to avoid offending a wider international audience?
Do you consider an online photo in a sleeveless dress a cultural blunder?

An Elevator Pitch To Cross Cultural Barriers [Day 1 -31DBBB]

Cindy King — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:00:30 +0000

Building Better International Blogs

Yesterday Darren Rowse started his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge or “31DBBB”. If you have been reading my blog you will understand why I want to follow this blog challenge.

For those that did not follow the story…

In February, I read the book Darren wrote with Chris Garrett, the ProBlogger book. In March I implemented one of the tips in the book: a blog post series. That was the March Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge. This month long series resulted in a 92% increase in blog visitors compared to the previous month.

I was so thrilled with the results, that I decided to run a little competition here to find out what other series you would like me to publish, 6 winners get a free copy of the ProBlogger book. The competition ends April 15th, so please help me come up with some good ideas for series to write for this blog.

There are obviously some easy things I can do to improve this blog. This is why I am going through the ProBlogger 31 day challenge to build a better blog.

During the next 31 days, I will share my thoughts on on how to adapt 31DBBB projects to build better international blogs.

An Elevator Pitch

The project for Day 1 of the 31DBBB is to craft an Elevator Pitch.

Now, I must admit that I have not spent much time lately surfing blogs in cultures with indirect communicators.

Cultures of indirect communicators are “High Context” cultures such as those in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe. This does not mean that indirect communication is exclusive to these cultures. It only means that people in these cultures communicate much more through what they do not say.

I am very curious about how these cultures would use an elevator pitch on their blog… probably not the same way as in cultures with a more direct communication. And if anyone has any examples, please let me know.

Cultural Frustrations With International Web Communication

First I would like to share my frustration with the emails I get from indirect communicators. The email always basically says:

“Hello”
“Hello, I want to get to know you”
“Hello, I have a great business”

And nothing else. Whenever I follow up with basically a “Yes, what is it?”, invariably the same “Hello” comes back to me. And this bouncing back and forth without actually saying anything can go on a few more times. I always get the impression that something faceless and motionless is just hanging over my shoulder. It is always impossible to find any bit of information to get into the core of a conversation. There is a nothingness. There is no conversation.

Yes, I am a direct communicator.

Communication between direct and indirect communication cultures is impossible when it is 100% web-based communication between two people that have not met before.

Meet & Greet

The problem with establishing communication between direct and indirect communicators online is that it is very difficult to get past the “meet and greet” stage. No real communication can ever take place if this does not happen.

No matter what the local cultural practices are, I would personally find an elevator speech very useful on all blogs aiming for international audiences. It just makes the first introduction so much easier.

For example…

Imagine I got an email from an indirect communicator who remembered to include a link to his blog. And now imagine that on the top fold of this page there was one clear elevator pitch.

This would tell me whether it would be worth my time to enter the long path of trying to establish a connection with an indirect communicator online. In addition, an elevator pitch gives me a few words to use to try to start a conversation.

An Elevator Pitch For An International Blog

Now, here are some ideas on how to improve an elevator pitch for international readers…

Put Your Location Near Your Elevator Pitch

This is critical. Most people recognize US telephone numbers and can then mentally label the web page “USA”, but not everyone can. In many cultures it is important to know who you are… and where you are is part of the picture. This helps them picture you.

Do not underestimate the number of readers you lose simply because they cannot identify your location.

Choose Words Carefully

We all get into the habit of using a certain vocabulary. We use the words we hear around us. The problem is that people a hop and a skip away from us may not get the same picture with the words you use.

The good news is that with a blog, it is easy to listen to your readers. Of course you can pick up their vocabulary, but spend more time listening to what they understand from what you say. And then adjust your vocabulary, or how you say things, until you get the right echo back. This is part of the process of creating a relationship with your readers and it can take time.

There are many different cultural dimensions to be aware of when targeting specific cultural groups. Have a look at the Cultural Web Tools to pick up more cultural subtleties.

How International Readers Can Help You

You might not think that non-native English speakers are able to craft really good elevator pitches. Yet non-native English speakers often communicate in metaphors and these metaphors are often gems in communicating messages. Listen to your international readers, you never know what ideas they can give you.

International readers bring different ways of seeing things and they can also show you opportunites or paths you had not thought of before.

When I started blogging on my two blogs last year, my instinct told me I needed two blogs, but it was my blog readers that showed me how to separate the two “elevator pitches” best.

Your elevator pitch is what summarizes your blog content strategy. It is both the backbone to your blog content and the sign that tells your readers why they should stick around. If you want international readers for you blog, you must also think of how you communicate your content strategy to them. Make sure your elevator speech communicates well across all cultures.

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

An Elevator Pitch To Cross Cultural Barriers [Day 1 -31DBBB]

How One Tip From One Book Increased My Web Marketing Results

Cindy King — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:00:59 +0000

Improve Your International Web Marketing

During the month of March, my eyes have been glued to the Counterize statistics for this blog. And specifically, the visitor statistics.

Now the month is not quite over, and I want to give you a screen shot of the graph I have been monitoring. But these results just keep climbing by the hour… so of course, I want to see where the counter will end tonight, to give you the results for the full month of March.

The one thing that is obvious is that the number of visitors to this blog increased dramatically. I am not sure where it will end tonight, but it is:

Not that far from a 100% increase in the number of visitors this month compared to last month’s visitors.

Unfortunately I have a few business meetings in Paris tomorrow and cannot show you this month’s traffic results straight away. But look out for my post on Thursday. You will see why I have been so excited.

Now, as soon as I started seeing these results I wondered why.

What is so different about this month? What happened?

Things You Learn From Books

This was a fairly easy question to answer.

I have only done one thing differently this month. Just one.

I will let you in on part of the secret…

Some of you may have noticed the new list of “Resources” in the right sidebar. Well, I just added this list of resources to share with you after seeing these March results.

One of the links there is to the “Book Reviews” I have done here on this blog.

Yes, the reason why the number of blog visitors increased this month is because I implemented one, just one, tip after reading one of these books.

Despite the great results I do feel rather stupid. You see, the book I read came out last year. I thought this book was only for beginners and not for people like me with a little more experience, so I kept putting it aside. Other books got on top of my reading list and I only got around to reading this particular book in February.

Details In Two Days

Don’t worry. Thursday I will give you the details on:

The book I read
The single tip I implemented in March
The results this one tip has had on my blog readership

Free Copies Of This Book

Plus, I would like to share this book with you.

So I am working on a way to give away several copies of the same book. More about that on Thursday.

Put Good Advice Into Action

This book was an easy read. And I found it so motivating that I decided to take the time and implement just one tip from the book. As I said, I am not a beginner, but there were still several tips and bits of advice that I have not got around to implementing myself. I simply chose one of these tips.

This reminded me of the advice I have often heard before:

When you read a book, only aim to take away 2 or 3 nuggets and use them. Take action. Do not try to take away everything from the book. Limit yourself… but do take action and implement them.

Of course, I understood the logic behind this. In today’s busy world, it is hard to keep up with all of the reading I would like to do. And sometimes it even appears harder to keep current and competitive. This bit of advice now resonates loudly with me and I will try to follow this more in the future.

Stay tuned for Thursday post… hopefully you will put this same tip into action and increase the number of visitors to your blog as much as I did in March.

And if you want to improve your web marketing, I will be giving away several copies of this same book… so you can read it and look for the nuggets you want to take away..

More To Improve Your International Web Marketing

- Connecting With People On Twitter
- New Marketing Taints Old Networking Tactics
- Is Social Media Changing Business Networking?
- More Segmentation = More International Sales
- Likability For International And Social Media Communication
- Choice Of Social Media For International Markets
- Social Media Marketing Across Cultures
- Cultural Differences In Social Media Marketing
- What Is Marketing?
- International Article Marketing
- Marketing Segmentation
- International Email Marketing
- Your International Marketing Choice
- International SEO For Quick Results
- Ways To Enter International Marketing
- How Too Many Contributions Spoil International Communications
- My Own Case Study – Small Business Flexibility In An Online World
- What Is Your Definition Of International Web Marketing
- Translation Agencies’ Narrow Vision

Copyright Cindy King 2006-2010 - International Business Blog

How One Tip From One Book Increased My Web Marketing Results

What Are Your Words Saying To Your International Market?

Cindy King — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:00:35 +0000

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

Here’s A Blog To Help Your International Market Research

Cindy King — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:00:10 +0000

International Market Research

Are you just beginning your international market research and want to get a feel for you foreign markets?

You might find a blog here to help you.

Aya’s Blog Review

This is a blog reviewing other blogs, and Aya has a section on international blogs.

There are a few blogs here in this international blog section that you may find inspiring.

Also, if like me you have a blog targeting international audiences, get Aya to review your own blog and join the list. It’s free if you put one of his widgets on your blog and VERY affordable if you don’t want to commit to his widget.