Writing

Selling in a foreign language

December 18, 2009 Leave a Comment

French dictionary success

This is a guest post by Mike Garner, director of Really Good Writing, 4Networking’s oldest members and specialists in bilingual French and English online marketing and digital PR.

In the 1980s there was a travel agency in Paris not far from the Gare du Nord whose name escapes me but whose strapline was the rather uninviting, “Please, go away”. I’m still struggling to see what was lost in translation. It was one of the worst hooks I’ve ever seen in my life. What’s more, the proud owner asked me what I thought of it and even though I translated it for him, months later the sign was still there.

I once met a British company trying to sell conservatories in France. They were wondering why they weren’t getting anywhere until someone pointed out that “conservatoire” in French means music school. The Internet abounds with scary translations of signposts or menus that we can all laugh at, but presuming you don’t want your marketing materials to be mocked, here’s a few hints about getting it right.

Think culture, not language

Don’t go thinking that just because you have a dictionary (or Google Translate) you can switch your message into another language and be understood by everyone. The UK and the USA are famously two countries “separated by a common language”. Add a real foreign language and you can imagine the cultural minefield you could be getting into.

For example, you can use themes that are slightly more overtly sexual in France but don’t go talking too much about money to the French. Stereotypes perhaps, but they have their basis in truth. Ideally, hire a local marketing agency to help you with the cultural problems that your product or service may encounter.

When you do translate, do it properly

There are some things you will have to translate, a brochure or manuals for example. Only last week, I had a conversation with someone who was surprised to learn that computers don’t to that kind of thing. Fortunately for human translators, computers have a long way to go before they are good enough to imitate real people. Machine translations are fine if you want to get the gist of what a text means, but real communication still involves real people. Ideally, you should choose one that lives in the country of the target language with extensive knowledge of the source language.

Some things HAVE to be translated

Be aware of consumer law in each country you are working in. All food labels and machine and appliance manuals must have a French translation in France for example. Not only is that a legal requirement, it makes common sense. Imagine if you brought home your new lawn mower (just to pick an example) and all the instructions were in a language you didn’t understand? We’ve all tried struggling with the VCR with the rubbish translations, getting them right is really essential for good customer service.

Remember regional differences

Just because you’ve translated a document into another language doesn’t mean to say you can use it anywhere that language is spoken. Canadian French really is nothing like the French you learnt at school. Quebec is a linguistic enclave in the middle of a sea of English and despite their efforts to preserve their French, their language is heavily influenced by what’s around them. You must think about localisation.

Employ local staff

Selling and marketing in a local language is not a DIY exercise. The experience of locals is essential and you must take on board what they say. You’ll increase your chances of success tenfold.

It would seem logical that, unless you’re selling in a really international market, you can’t sell to foreigners in English. Even though some do try. Just think about your target market a bit and take steps to think like your customers think. It’s all about them, it’s not about you.

Filed Under: Copyediting, Copywriting, Guest posts, Marketing, Proofreading, Writing Tagged With: english, french, lost in translation, mistakes, regional differences, translation

Bloggers, are your messages being distorted?

December 11, 2009 1 Comment

Have you ever asked a question or sent a suggestion to a client or colleague, only to have them entirely misconstrue the message you are trying to convey? Does it sometimes feel like you are communicating in another language, with messages that appear straightforward simply not making it through to your audience in one piece?

Blogs can be a hotbed of miscommunication, often because posts tend to be led by personal opinion, and therefore carry an element of bias. Here’s my guide to three factors that can disrupt or distort your message on its way to your audience.

Message/medium mismatch

How you word any written communications should be governed in part by the intended method of delivery. When blogging, if you address your readership directly, it’s worth taking time to think about who they are likely to be, and try to avoid making broad generalisations that lump people into a category they’d rather not find themselves forced into.

Simliarly, the imagined audience referred to as “you” in a blog post addressed to a large audience will be very different to the “you” in a follow up email in response to a question from a reader. We expect personally addressed messages to be, well, personalized – to show an understanding of the individual recipient.

So, in a blog post, “Are you lacking a web presence?” might be a reasonable question to open with, whereas with a follow up email, you would be expected to have done your research and know the answer to this before firing out the message.

Multiple meaning mix-up

The accepted meaning of certain words can vary widely. This isn’t just down to dialect; it’s also down to personal opinion and experience. For example, if writing a review, keep in mind that one person considers to be a “fast service” could be positively snail-like in the eyes of another. If you’re using descriptive words like this, be sure to back them up with the facts. So, in this case, you could say, “Fast delivery, typically within 3 hours and in this case, within 45 minutes of receipt of my order.”

In addition, it’s wise to avoid complicated phrases as the wordier you get, the more open to misinterpretation the message becomes. This also goes for jargon and technical words, which should generally be avoided where possible, and clearly defined when used.

Tainted by terrible timing

In the event of an accident or tragedy, certain posts may have their meaning temporarily or permanently changed by the new context the event creates. For example, if you were to publish a post based on the concept of a business as a high-speed racing car on the same day as a serious Formula 1 accident, your message would be severely distorted.

If the event occurs after you have hit publish, there is, of course, little you can do other than respectfully amend or withdraw the materials from further public viewing. However, your audience is unlikely to be sympathetic if you allude to a tragedy that has already occurred, even if it done unwittingly. For this reason, it’s worth scouring the news for recent and current events that relate to your blog post’s concept before distribution, so as to reduce the risk of inadvertently causing offence and appearing obtuse or callous.

These are just three of many potential causes of miscommunication. What others would you add?

Filed Under: Featured, Marketing, Writing Tagged With: blogging, communications, double meaning, miscommunications, misunderstandings, Social Media

Error avoidance! Minimise your mistakes

December 10, 2009 1 Comment

Proofreading error

Startlingly large numbers of businesses seem to rely heavily on Microsoft Word’s spellchecker alone to catch errors in their professional communications. This can be dangerous practice, as mistakes are frequently missed by machines, particularly where the mistake is more to do with the grammar than spelling.

Poor punctuation, grammar and spelling in your business writing can reflect badly on your business, so here are some pointers for effective proofreading.

Read a hardcopy

It’s notoriously difficult to pick up errors when reading a document on a computer screen, never more so than when your eyes are tired and your patience is waning.

To give you the best chance of noticing errors, print your document off and check through a hard copy, underlining errors as you go with a pen with strongly contrasting ink. Once you have finished, correct the errors on your electronic copy and then repeat the process once more to ensure new mistakes haven’t been created.

Get a second opinion

When reading over your own work, it is very easy to read what you expect to see on the page, rather than what is actually written. This means that your own proofreading may miss simple errors. To prevent this, have another person check through the finished document once you have read it yourself.

Don’t forget, even if there aren’t any errors as such, a fresh pair of eyes can also help you iron out ambiguities and awkward phrases.

Be consistent

Not every proofreading mistake is a mistake if viewed in isolation, which makes some errors particularly hard to spot. For example, there’s nothing wrong with the word “synthesise”, but if it appears again later in your copy as “synthesize”, you have a problem.

This type of error is most likely to happen if you have more than one contributor to the same document, or you are drawing information from several sources before editing. To help reduce confusion, it’s useful to put a company ‘style guide’ in place which sets out the preferred form for all debatable spellings and grammatical constructions. If that sounds like too much work, it’s possible to buy style guides right off the shelf to adopt as your own.

Use ‘track changes’

If you’re working on a long document, or passing it to someone else, a great tool for those using Microsoft Word is the ‘track changes’ function. This allows you to keep a record of what changes have been made and then accept or reject them at the review stage. This can be useful if you feel certain corrections might be up for debate.

Track changes can also be used if you need to make last minute additions to a document that has already been proofed as it will highlight clearly which areas are new and therefore need to be checked again.

Check it again once it’s in position

Sometimes, errors only present themselves when the copy is in place on a leaflet or online. If you use a printing service, ask for proofing copies and check through the final documents you receive back before approving the full print run.

It’s not unheard of for printers to create new errors such as printing pages in the wrong order, so don’t assume that the copy you sent is the copy that appears in print. Similarly, cutting and pasting by web designers isn’t foolproof, so check through all your copy once your design has uploaded it but before you allow anything to go live.

If in doubt, consult a professional

If accuracy is vital for your communications and you don’t have a colleague or friend you trust to weed out any errors, it may be worth having a reputable proofreader go over the finished document. A professional proofreading firm will go through your text with a fine-tooth comb and could provide that vital reassurance you need before letting the printers roll.

Filed Under: Copywriting, Featured, Proofreading, Writing Tagged With: checking, grammar, meaning, mistakes, Proofreading, punctuation, spelling, typos

Honouring journalistic excellence

October 21, 2009 Leave a Comment

Fountain pen

The Workworld Media Awards 2009 is an independent scheme, which has highlighted excellence in journalism for 23 years.

The awards honour written and broadcast journalism, covering the fields of work, management, business and economics.

There are eight categories available:

Reporter of the year
Feature journalist award
Columnist of the year
Broadcast programme award
Broadcast news reporter of the year
Journalist to watch
Online journalist award
Lifetime achievement award.

Last year, awards went to journalists from the BBC, The Economist, the Daily Mail, Hazards, Human Resources and The Observer, while the Lifetime Achievement Award went to Polly Toynbee, columnist from The Guardian.

Journalists can nominate themselves, or be nominated by someone else. All entries must be submitted by 6pm on Friday 6th November 2009.

More information and an entry form, visit the Workworld Media Awards 2009.

Filed Under: Awards, Copywriting, Freelancing, Writing Tagged With: journalism, media, press

The first and the last word in charity adoption

September 25, 2009 3 Comments

As is pretty obvious from the title of this blog, words are my business. I spend most of my waking hours choosing them carefully, writing them out, looking back through them, talking them through with colleagues, clients and friends, tweaking an adjective here and an imperative there to (hopefully) produce the perfect copy.

So, when I came across the Adopt a Word initiative that allows you to ‘adopt’ a word for charity, my first thought was, “What word shall I get?” and my second was, “What a great idea!”

I’ve written about fundraising and the importance of a theme/activity that inspires people before, and the Adopt a Word concept strikes me as a little bit of genius. Everyone I mentioned it to knew immediately which word or words they wanted most.

Head over to the Adopt a Word website and you’ll see that this project has plenty going for it: a concept you can get on board with, a worthy cause, celebrity endorsement (lots of), and even merchandise to show off your newly adopted word.

All funds raised go to I CAN, the creators of the project. I CAN is the children’s communication charity, which aims to ensure that no child is left behind because of a difficulty speaking or understanding.

Its mission:

“To make sure that everyone in contact with children knows how important communication is, what a communication problem looks like, and what they can do to help.”

So, the core concept – words – is very closely tied to the charity it supports. The Adopt a Word concept gets prospective donors thinking about words, and realising how much they value communication, which helps to highlight the importance of the I CAN cause – excellent stuff.

Clare Horwood , Head of Individual Giving  at I CAN,  was kind enough to run me through the background to the project:

“Adopt a Word is one of our fundraising campaigns to raise money from individuals. Alternative gifts are a great way for charities to increase their donations, but it’s a fairly crowded market.

“Obviously, we can’t use goats or pandas so words, which are at the heart of our cause and the building blocks of communication were the natural choice.

“By putting words up for adoption we hope to make their importance understood in the context of children with communication difficulties. Also, because words have such a broad appeal it means we can extend our reach beyond the traditional donor and way out into the twitterverse!”

The initiative has been running since October 2008, but recently received a boost when Stephen Fry purchased ‘wordy’, sparking a flood of donations. I think with another push on social media and via more traditional marketing and PR channels, it could receive much wider exposure.

Adopt a Word’s Twitter persona (@adoptaword) is starting to make waves but as with any initiative, there will be areas for improvement and the guys at I CAN are (unsurprisingly) great to communicate with, so I’m betting all suggestions are welcome.

Personally, I have suggested adding PayPal as a payment option and adding a button so that people can push a message to Twitter about their adoption. What do you think?

(Thank you to @reedwords for making me aware of this. And in case you’re wondering, I bought ‘social’)

Filed Under: Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: charity, communications, giving, Marketing, pr, Public Relations, words

What price news?

August 6, 2009 Leave a Comment

So, Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for all online content from News Corp, which includes The Times and The Sun.

On the one hand, eyeballs are increasingly moving online, so this form of news has to be monetised if publications are to pay journalists’ wages. On the other, news is everywhere, from an abundance of sources, so should the chosen few really have the right to charge? More significantly, would you pay to retain the right to read, or simply go elsewhere?

I posed these questions over on Facebook, and I think the answers are worth reproducing here as they pretty neatly tackle the key issues.

Protecting copyright

David Bennett picked up on the associated copyright implications of charging for access to online content:

My take is that If news costs to produce, why shouldn’t the producer be entitled to charge for it if there is a demand?

I notice that the final para of the article in the Guardian states ‘He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point.”

And that I think is the nub – easy and unauthorized redistribution on the web.

So, how will News Corp police the passing of information it uncovers into the public domain? We can’t own news, just the way it’s presented.

A little rewording and the pulling together of a few additional sources and bloggers could easily push the content into the free domain with little danger of being prosecuted, successfully at least, for copyright theft.

The micro-payment holy grail

But people seem to like their news primarily from the big, established sources with professional journalists. And, as David points out, we already pay for printed media, so how will this pay-per-view system be implemented? And can it be implemented successfully?

Gaz Bailey doesn’t think so:

This is good news as far as I’m concerned, certainly regards the Sun and The [News of the World].

Adopting this model will cut the number of people accessing the content down to the much smaller number who are prepared to pay for it removing more casual readers from the pool, and if NewsCorp et al plan to litigate against anybody they perceive to be recycling ‘their’ content, God forbid that might actually clean the internet up of cretinous celebrity news a bit.

Wayne Smallman has fewer doubts about the micro-payment model in theory, but questions whether it can work it practice:

Now that micro-payments are both practical and acceptable, the idea is doable, but I just can’t see this working somehow.

As a businessman, I totally agree with Murdock’s intention of making money from the web. They are producing the news, so why not?

In practice, and when competing with blogging, micro-blogging and social media, it’s hard to make a business case for what is mostly free.

The genie is out of the bottle…

Subscription model?

So, if we accept that news is worth paying for, says Darren Gallagher, the question is, how much is it worth?

Everything will eventually end up, in majority, online. So paying for online news is a natural progression. Free newspapers are becoming a thing of the past, especially high quality ones.

So the real question is, how much are you willing to pay for news? I personally, would be willing to pay a subscription to access the paper I buy daily, but instead of picking it up from the newsagents, accessing it online.

This is because I trust the quality of the articles, editorial opinion and the overall content. I also believe that journalists should be paid for their content. So I wouldn’t begrudge paying a subscription one little bit, as long as the standard remained high.

And Rob Bennett points out that the subscription model is already working out rather well for one media giant:

There is, of course one organisation out there now who have the resources to produce totally ‘free’ regional, national and international content (TV and web) to the same level and volume as News Corp by forcing every television owner in a very large country to pay for the content it produces whether they watch it or not. I currently subscribe to the BBC for £139.50 a year.

Personally, I wouldn’t really mind a pay-per-click model since the cost would be reasonably weighted in favour of the sources I like best and use most. Yet, subscription seems the more likely model since News Corp needs to ensure a minimum bottom line.

In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. No doubt ‘old media’ will be watching with bated breath to see if News Corp can pull this off. And if it does, there can be little doubt that the rest will follow suit.

Filed Under: Copywriting, News, Public Relations, Writing Tagged With: journalism, micro-payments, news corporation, newspapers, online news, Social Media

Advertisers, have you been thinking BIG?

June 11, 2009 1 Comment

Do you excel in creative excellence across any media platform? Do your campaigns stand out from the crowd in a big way?

If so, the Campaign Big Awards 2009 may be your opportunity to get some well-deserved recognition for your latest campaign.

There are twelve product categories open for entries:

Alcoholic drinks
Automotive, aerospace, marine
Charity, NGO, not-for-profit, public service
Consumer durables and furniture
Fashion and beauty
Financial, corporate and utilities
Government (national and local)
Grocery, soft drinks and household
Health and pharmaceutical
IT and technology
Media and entertainment
Sport, travel and leisure

This year, the organisers have also introduced six new categories, one for each form of media (Digital, Direct, Outdoor, Press, Radio and TV & Cinema). There is also now an integrated campaign category.

Finally, the Paul Arden Award is also available for anyone who feels that have they have pushed the boundaries of the industry in an original, unpredictable and brave manner. This award is free to enter and gives the winner an opportunity to walk away with a £1,000 book token.

The deadline for entries is Friday 19th June 2009, and the final shortlist will be announced on the 18th September 2009.

For more information on how to enter, visit The Campaign Big Awards.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: advertising, Marketing, new media

Emily Cagle Communications new website and blog

April 29, 2009 3 Comments

Sapling

Most small businesses have a web presence these days but, in my experience, few are capitalising on the multimedia and social nature of the internet.

At the very least, a website should fulfil the core functions of:

positively representing your brand
attracting interest from potential customers
providing information on products and services

But in fact, a well designed website can perform a multitude of additional functions, including:

keeping customers informed of company news and offers
providing an alternative way to converse with customers
offering a value added service in the form of forums, tools and advice articles

As you may have noticed, my own website has recently undergone a major redesign, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to look at what has been achieved and why.

Better visuals

There can be little doubt that the first impression a site gives is largely down to the way it looks, so the first aim was to bring the site’s aesthetic up-to-date and to give a level of visual polish that complemented the written content.

The motif of the old website was of ink flowing into clear water, chosen to represent the art inherent in good writing and the fluidity of style required to make any piece of writing effective. The new motif was chosen to communicate those same messages and, thanks to Wayne Smallman at Octane, the web design consultancy behind this project, it is now better integrated into the overall look of the website, illustrating just how effective words and images can be when they are working well together.

Improved navigation

The original website was organised quite logically according to services offered, so the overall structure of the website has remained untouched.

However, the new design gives the services special prominence to make it easier for clients to find what they are looking for. In addition, the homepage has become a showcase for some of the key services on offer.

Integrated blog

A key factor in my decision to have the website redesigned was the need for a blog.

Following on from the theme of fluidity described above, one of the key requirements I passed to Wayne was that the blog should be seamlessly integrated into the main website. I think the results speak for themselves.

If you’re able to commit to posting regular content, blogs can offer a range of benefits, including:

providing a channel to keep customers informed – posting company news and offers in one place is convenient and helps build trust in the brand;
improving search engine visibility – sites with regularly updated content will generally fare better than static ones;
offering a useful resource for customers – posting advice articles relevant to your customer base will also help frame you and your company as experts in your field;
increasing your visibility via word of mouth – with the prevalence of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, an informative post can quickly spread across the web.

With the above points in mind, my own blog offers PR, marketing, copywriting and proofreading tips for small to medium businesses in the UK and Wayne has installed plug-ins so that every post comes with the option to share via Twitter, del.icio.us, Facebook, StumbleUpon or Mixx.

Since the redesign, I’ve written several advice-based posts, including:

In addition, I’ve been providing updates on all awards relevant to small businesses and aim to begin doing the same for business events in the coming months.

If you have any feedback about the new design, or the new content, please feel free to post your thoughts via the comment box below. I’d also love to hear what others have done to improve their own websites.

Filed Under: Marketing, Writing Tagged With: blogging, web design, website

Use Wordle to keep your writing on track

April 26, 2009 4 Comments

I just found myself on Wordle.net. I hadn’t heard of it before, but Google throws up some 900,000 results, so I’m guessing it’s already pretty popular.

Anyway, the site generates ‘word clouds’ which give you a visual representation of the most common words in a piece of text.

Here’s the result for the last few posts on this blog:

So, you can see quite easily that my recent posts have concentrated heavily on marketing and communications, and that I’ve been keeping track of business awards.

It seems to me that Wordle could be a very useful tool to help keep your marketing literature – or indeed your blog – on track. It could even be used to test for keyword frequency with a view to improving search ranking.

I’ll be posting ‘Wordles’ for my blog again, so it’ll be interesting to see how it changes over time.

In the meantime, why not try Wordle on your own blog?

Filed Under: Marketing, Writing Tagged With: blogging, key words, literature, Marketing, search rank, Writing

Four things to consider when preparing a marketing brief

April 18, 2009 Leave a Comment

Tick boxes

Over the years, I’ve worked on a range of marketing and communications projects and have often found that the campaigns that deliver exceptional results are those that start out on the solid foundations of a clear brief.

It is not unusual for a client to be uncertain about exactly what it is they require but, in my opinion, it is part of the marcom (marketing communications) provider’s role to help develop a clear brief on which both client and provider agree, ensuring that both sides are in agreement about why the project is being undertaken, what the desired outcomes are and how these will be measured in terms of clear deliverables.

If you are starting out in a relationship with a new marcom provider, here are four tips to help you create an effective brief:

1. Why?

At the outset of any marcom project, before any specific objectives are agreed upon, both parties should be absolutely clear on the answer to one simple question, “Why are we doing this?” An answer to this might be, “To make more people who use disposable razors aware of our eco-friendly, self-sharpening razors in order to sell more units.” If either side isn’t able to give a definite answer, or if those two answers don’t tally, you are not yet in a position to start planning your project.

2. Who?

Sometimes, a company will have an instinctive sense of who they want to target, sometimes they will be able to extract detailed customer data from their records in order to provide a profile of a typical buyer, but often, companies will have very little idea about who they wish to target, instead simply hoping to cast the net vaguely in the direction of a particular gender, social band or age group.

Targeting a campaign towards a defined audiences is important for a number of reasons. It allows publications to be targeted more intelligently, messages to be phrased according to specific tastes and understandings, and budgets to be used productively to reach out only to those likely to respond in a way that is beneficial to your end goals.

For example, The News of the World is the widest read UK newspaper, but its readership is unlikely to respond in high proportions to a new product for the trawler fishing industry. Instead, a trade journal or trawler fishing magazine, with its narrower target audience would be far more likely to provide a successful focus for the firm’s marketing efforts.

3. How and when?

Now you have a handle on your project’s overall aim, and know who you want to reach, you can start planning your objectives and agreeing upon deliverables. This is when the old ‘SMART’ chestnut comes in handy to help you shape your objectives.

To be useful to your project, every objective agreed upon must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based. This means phrases like “increase orders per customer” are out. Instead, each objective must be qualified with specifics such as the number of sales you wish to secure per customer, and include a time-scale in which this will be achieved. Being realistic means assessing the company’s starting point and budgeting sensibly to ensure that both side’s resources and capabilities are sufficient to reach the goals set. Setting time-scales with interim deliverables is particularly important as it will help structure the project and ensure that you remain on track.

Of course, some objectives are harder to quantify than others, such as where the intention is to improve public and/or media perception of a brand. In such cases, it’s important that both parties agree on how this will be measured. For example, a public relations agency may need to demonstrate a way of assessing whether a news report about a company is positive, negative, or neutral and then show how this will be quantified to calculate the overall media image of the brand.

4. What?

What is it about your brand that you want your target audiences to know? Do you want to your company director to be seen as an expert in his field? Do you want your brand to be known as the strongest/cheapest/most eco-friendly of its kind? Do you want to emphasise your company’s commitment to sustainability? Do you want to be known as cool? Original? Ground-breaking?

If you’re struggling to answer these questions, start out by imagining you are at a networking event speaking to a potential customer: what are the three things you would want them to know about your product or service before they walk away? It’s not necessary to have a professional understanding of key messages and how they are communicated via the media or other marketing channels – your marcom provider can help you with that – but it is well worth thinking about these issues is simple terms so that you can go to your provider with a clear sense of what you want your audience to know about.

These four simple steps certainly won’t guarantee you marketing success, but they should provide you with a strong framework to take to your marketing, communications or PR agency to ensure they come back with a workable proposal that fulfils your expectations.

If you are planning to place an online advertisement for a marketing communications provider, you may also wish to read this post on writing effective project listings.

Filed Under: Freelancing, Marketing, Writing Tagged With: agency, brief, deliverables, marcom, Marketing, objectives, pr, Public Relations