Blogs are no longer a fad. By the same token, they’re not exclusively for businesses, either. Any person can start a blog on any topic, and just because you may be a business of one doesn’t mean you can’t start a blog that is professional, engaging, and genuinely useful. Moreover, if you start a blog, you are able to reach your clients and provide solutions to questions they may have not thought to even ask.
Last week we talked about organizing files and folders in the tip-of-the-week. Keeping yourself organized also means taking time to consider your marketing strategy, because better organization means a better overall approach. IF you start a blog, you show an extra level of commitment to your clients. You show you value your work and its industry, but more than that, you demonstrate a desire to keep your clients informed, entertained, and better educated about the services you provide.
Blogs don’t have to be complicated, and they don’t require a daily commitment. The trick to writing on any topic is to know what interests your readers and to understand enough about the topic to make what you write relevant, engaging, and genuinely useful to your readers. Do you think you may want to start a blog? Here are some tips to get you started:
- Relatable – Write on topics your readers/clients can relate to, not just things you find interesting as a translator or interpreter. This is not to say that your readers may not also find these topics interesting, but clients are much more interested in solutions to problems in their industry than specific language-related posts.
- Genuinely useful – If you have tips for clients on how to easily format files before sending them to you for translation, share them. Do you constantly find yourself emailing a list of reminders for clients when providing quotes, such as email any existing glossaries or provide past translations? Why not turn these helpful ideas into blog posts that your readers can benefit from, which saves you time and provides new content for your website?
- Keep it interesting – This one seems obvious, but too often blog topics can be overly general and vague with no substance. If you are a legal interpreter or translator, maybe you want to write about the impact of a specific but important case outcome in your source or target language country. How does this outcome impact either the people involved or the translation of documents due to new vocabulary or changing formats?
- Stick to a schedule – Blog posts don’t have to be daily or even weekly. Find a realistic schedule that works for you and stick with it. It is important, however, to keep your readers in mind, as certain days or times of the day may be better than others.
- Try to keep blog posts more or less the same length – People appreciate consistency, so if your readers are in a hurry one day but they still want to read your latest post, they know they can read it in about five minutes.
- FAQ posts – Do you find yourself constantly answering the same types of questions? Of course you could make an FAQ page, but why not turn some of those FAQ’s into blog posts of their own, where you have the space to elaborate, receive feedback, and respond to additional questions?
It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to start a blog; it simply takes a bit of planning, interesting topics, and an interested audience. If you write a few blog posts ahead of time, you save yourself time in the future, and when you get busy with interpretation or translation work, you still have material to share with your readers.
Have you started a blog as a freelance translator or interpreter? We’d love to read your experiences and thoughts on the process in the comments.
