How do you market yourself online when you do not have specific goods to sell, but are selling your services? The answer to this question is content marketing strategies. When you have a service to offer, generating content and an audience online can gather many potential clients. It is defined as the supply of relevant, informative and entertaining web content to the internet user. This content could take many forms, including blogs, tips, research and more.
When content is generated on a regular basis – credibility and trust grows. This is because it provides an opportunity for the service and the client to connect in the digital world. Relationships are built and maintained. It’s the next best thing to networking in person.
As a translator, how do you stand out among other service providers on the market? It’s a difficult thing to do – stand out and assert yourself among others. However, with good content marketing, it is possible to gain an advantage over the competition through digital relationship building. Many translators seek contracts as sole proprietors, and do not operate with huge marketing budgets, and it becomes important to generate content in a productive, efficient and economical way. Here are steps in doing so.
Create or refresh your website
The first step to content marketing is to ensure you have a website and that it is performing well. You may consider hiring a web designer to assist with this process, however it is not necessary with some basic research into how to do this. If your website is already created, you could examine every page to ensure that your links are correct, and that there are no “dead ends”. You may want to look for and delete content that is outdated, incorrect or repeats.
Write content regularly
New content is the basis of this type of marketing. Websites that create new content often come up higher in Google searches, resulting in better rankings for the website. Thus, content marketing isn’t about creating website pages and being done – it is an ongoing project. Some individuals choose to hire marketing companies for this process, others update content alongside their translation work. It is recommended that new content be created at least once a month, to allow for this relationship building and for clients to hear you voice through your writing style and skill.
Spread the word around
Now that content is written, it’s time to spread it around. Raising visibility can be done on websites like Linkedin that are dedicated to digital marketing. There are free community platforms that can be posted to, such as Medium, Flipboard, and Hub Pages. Social media can be invaluable for spreading the word about your new content. Social media can humanize a business by putting your face onto it and showing your qualifications, experiences, and personal style. Building followers by engaging with your online community regularly is key to social media success. This is called “seeding” – when you put your content in a place that your target audience is likely to read it,
Learn SEO
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is essential for content marketing. This is where your website comes up in search engines based on the keywords within your website. These keywords are the fundamental concepts that describe your website and any words that a client may use to type into a search engine, like google. Once you have compiled a list of keywords, then integrating them into your website in titles, headings, and descriptions is paramount for SEO. Caution must be used, here, because too many keywords can cause search engines, like google, to react negatively and lower the websites rankings. The goal here is to make your website high on the list of websites that come up in relevant searches – think page 1!
??Paulina Ponsford was born in Chile and has lived most of her adult life in Canada. She worked as an Accountant for thirty years in the Oil and Gas industry in Calgary. At the same time, she always wanted to connect with people at a different level and for this reason, she became a volunteer Fitness Instructor and later on a Certified Facilitator in the area of human interaction. Paulina is now preparing to become a Translator and Interpreter in the languages of English and Spanish. Paulina also loves to travel and embraces what different cultures have to offer. She is also an avid reader and some of her favorite authors are Paulo Coelho, Khaled Hosseini, Mark Mustian, and Isabel Allende. If you would like to know more about Paulina, check out her blog at