Busy Autumn!

Not sure why, but September is always a great month for new business, new ideas, new challenges. Maybe it's refuelling energy levels on holiday in the summer that does it and this year has been no exception. At last we're seeing good news stories on our 24 hour news channels and there's no doubt that's having an effect on the high street. So this week what's new? First the Syston U13s rugby team has been sporting new kit, complete with our logo, second I've got around to downloading iOS7 (seems pretty good so far) and thirdly tomorrow's European Day of Languages so we have arranged a nifty little promo for our clients Brucciani of Leicester - take a look at their facebook page to find out more! https://www.facebook.com/Brucciani?fref=ts

The power of social media

I hate to say 'I told you so', but the story hitting the headlines yesterday about Paris Brown, Britain's first youth and crime commissioner and her use of tweets and facebook posts is a salutory tale for young people and those new to social media everywhere.

Social media is a powerful communications tool, but as I lectured my 13 year old when he first got set up on facebook, you should never put up a post that you'd be ashamed of later; or, in his case, that he wouldn't want his mother to read!  Somehow people easily forget that what they type into their phone or PC as a post or tweet will actually be read by others ... sometimes by employers or future employers, or for those in public facing appointments, by the man on the street.  Once you've hit that button your tweet or post is in the public domain, can be complex and sometimes impossible to eradicate and can very easily reach the eyes of those you'd rather it hadn't.

In our work, social media is vital; it is a very friendly, personal way of interacting with our customers or our clients' customers and it's really useful for communicating all sorts of messages.  However, with power comes responsibility; the positives of this story are that it might just make a few people think more about that responsibility...

International Online Marketing

Despite the snowy conditions and being woken by Leicestershire's earthquake in the night, I was pleased to get to the e business club's session on International Online Marketing early this morning in Nottingham.  The speaker, Mike Hunter from www.betterlanguages.com was excellent and made some really useful observations about search engine optimisation for websites targeting overseas markets and about translation procurement.  There was a real distinction discussed between UK based websites with foreign languages incorporated and those domains registered and hosted in the target country.

During the last seven years, working with client World Market Center Las Vegas, I have learnt an enormous amount about use of language, translation sourcing and best practice and copywriting for foreign markets and it's something I'd like to make more use of across different marketplaces.  I have always loved languages, was bilingual English and Welsh from the age of four and quickly adopted French and then Russian at senior school where I also studied Latin for a few years.  Unfortunately, my Russian has deteriorated the fastest because I simply don't use it enough and would probably have to start from scratch if I ever needed it for work.  Since then a smattering of Italian has seen me through a few wonderful holidays plus some really exciting work projects and my children have reminded me of what little German and Spanish I remember as they seek my advice on homework.  The world wide web has certainly made the world seem so much smaller - next language on the agenda for me is Portuguese with potential projects on the horizon in Brazil.