These days the integration of translation and localization into product marketing and content creation is usual. It has been found that the majority of consumers give importance to language in comparison to price at the time of making their purchase decisions. To target this impressively large companies must give priority to multilingual blogging.
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The Demand for Multilingualism in Marketing
When it comes to blogging, a Content Marketing Institute study conducted in 2017 found out that in comparison to search engine marketing, content marketing can generate up to 3 times greater number of leads. Content marketing via branded channels can help companies reach a broader section of new audiences. And an effective way to do that is by creating multilingual content for the company, especially multilingual blogs, and social media.
Multilingual content is the latest trend in marketing strategy that helps a business capture audiences across the globe. Going multilingual can help businesses build a bridge to overcome cultural gaps, find new investment opportunities, and forge foreign partnerships. However, it would be advisable to trust a translation platform online to get the required benefits through multilingual blogging.
It Is Not Just About Translating Content
While it may appear quite tempting to have your existing blogs translated at low rates, simply translating the content will not be enough to draw the attention of potential customers.
You have to spend time researching for specific keywords to ensure that the new content you put up online is found easily on search engines. The ecosystem for using multilingual content is very different from what you usually do in the case of usual content marketing. There is a good chance that content exceptional in a specific market finds no audience in a different locale.
To succeed through content marketing using multilingualism, you have to strategize keeping in mind what your context is and how it will affect your audience. However, that does not mean that you have to create a specific strategy for every locale, but you need to have sufficient knowledge about the culture you intend to target through your content. That is why you need to work with native speakers from all over the world. They will know how your brand will be perceived in the new market, what words you should use, and how to create a true business image there. Fine-tuning your content strategy to localize is the key to success through content marketing.
Understanding the Benefits and Shortcomings of Multilingual Blogging
First of all, take a look at the pros and cons associated with multilingual blogging before jumping into translating your content through a credible translation platform.
How You Can Benefit from Multilingual Blogs
Here are some benefits associated with taking up multilingual blogging as a part of your content strategy:
- More followers and referrals – The significant benefit of creating multilingual blogs is being able to provide content to the audience in a language they have known since birth. Blog followers and readers will be drawn to your content when they can read it in the mother tongue that they follow. It will help you gain a consistent group of followers and possibly referrals when your content gets mentioned on various social media platforms, which will increase the chances of gaining potential followers through these platforms.
- Better SEO for Your Website – When you incorporate the keywords in the mother tongue of your clients in a multilingual blog for your business, you will attract a non-English speaking audience through search results. Using localized SEO can also assist you with gaining backlinks and referrals from websites that use other languages. Also, you will be able to rank higher in the search engines, as there may be fewer or no competitors who use them.
- Increase in Audience Base – Undoubtedly, with the help of multilingual blogs, you will reach a broader and larger base of customers. Your brand will get more visibility and will have all chances to conquer new markets. The new language knowledge will open up avenues for you to sell products/services to an increased audience base. Even studies reveal that the majority of the consumers opt for products/services that contain information in a language known to them.
The Shortcomings
While there are several advantages of opting for multilingual blogs, there are certain shortcomings too that must be noted down:
- More workers – There is a good chance that you will have to learn one or more new languages that you have never encountered in your life. It can be a time-consuming process. You may also hire more people who will create you with the blog or keep using translation platforms online to get the job done. Such platforms have native speakers from almost all over the world. Moreover, they usually provide proofreading services. So you may prepare the content and send it just for editing. It may save you some money.
- Quality Compromise – There’s a chance that your blogs will not be quite as impressive as a native’s blog. Practice is the key to being successful. If your blog is of low quality compared to a native’s, readers and potential customers may get a negative opinion about your company’s quality and credibility.
- Double the Work – When you start a multilingual blog, you will need to create blogs and articles for every blog you write separately. You will not find Google Translate helpful for all your blogs because direct translations aren’t always available. You will need additional time for proofreading and editing the blogs, which will increase your workload and time consumed.
- Working on SEO – While there are benefits to SEO in terms of multilingual blogging, there are also some setbacks in using this strategy. Tags and meta descriptions will have to be made relevant to each language, which will require more than an individual’s hard work. TIt will mean that you will need more investments in hiring SEO professionals to get the job done.
- UI/UX difficulties – Again, you might have to restructure the entire blog based on the kind of script being used. For example, the English language is written in the left-to-right order, but a language like Arabic is written in the right-to-left direction.
- Risky Investment – To keep up with the strategy of multilingual blogging, you might have to resort to creating more content. To create more content, you need to have all hands on deck, and possibly new ones, which can be a risky investment. It is because good translators can be rather expensive to hire.
Alternatively, you can opt for a cost-effective and experienced translation platform online that offers professional translation services at affordable rates.
Final thought
An engaging and valuable multilingual online presence can help a business scale globally. Without investing abroad, it can dramatically lower the expense of the company’s expansion costs. Taking professional help can prove worthwhile when it comes to multilingual blogging.