5 Steps to a DIY Global Content Operation

2 min read

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As a marketer tasked with expanding to new markets, it might seem like you’ll need to spend a lot of new resources and talent to build your global content operation. But it ain’t necessarily so.

With what you already have, plus a good plan, the right tools and a dose of patience, you can build a great “DIY” operation.

DIY at work is pretty much like DIY in your home workshop: Get a plan, study it, make sure you’ve got everything you need to start, and then take it on step by step. Our basic plan, which is detailed in The DIY Guide to Taking Content Global, has just five steps that will get you results:

#1)  Strategize it! Work with your people in every region to link business goals, customer needs, and regional considerations to a content strategy for all the relevant markets and languages. Remember – this is a global operation, so don’t try to create the strategy from headquarters. That’s like forgetting half the parts for your home DIY project: Neither of them is likely to hold together well.

#2)  Design it! You’ve got a strategy – that’s the big picture. Now, lay out the parts, the content. Make sure they all fit together, and that when you assemble them you’ll get the outcome you want. Make sure to consider all the regional needs and demands and come up with guidelines for everything. You’re doing the equivalent of mixing English and metric measurements in one home project, so you need to have a way to keep the whole thing aligned. Remember the old carpenter’s wisdom: Measure twice, cut once.

#3)  Build it! Pull your team together – after all, you need a lot of different expertise for a big project, right? – and create the content, the channel strategy and the workflow. Make sure everything from the channels to the copy and design work is relevant to each region and handled by the right expert. You’re building something to suit a unique space, so you want folks looking at all the angles to make sure everything fits perfectly.

#4)  Deliver it! Get the content out there and in front of the people who need to see it. And remember that this is a pretty big undertaking, so just like a big home project, it makes sense to have some extra hands to deal with the load. A translation automation platform like Cloudwords can make this a seamless process.

#5)  Check it! You’ve put version 1.0 of your global content operation into play. But you’re not done yet – you still need to see how well you did. How are things working in each market? What went right and what do you need to fix? These answers are vital because they go right back to step one; just like a home DIY project, maintenance is what gives your work longevity.

Again, technology like the Cloudwords dashboard can help you understand results and make changes.

Written by Cloudwords