On the eve of the 8^th year, May 25^th, since starting Cloudwords, I found myself reflecting on the some of the ideas that have helped guide the company since its inception. In short, Cloudwords is in the strongest position the company has ever been – financially, strategically and poised for growth. This is great news for our customers, partners and investors.

It’s no surprise that content marketing as a process for both B2B and B2C marketers to produce and publish information to influence buyers, generate leads and increase sales has significantly grown as its own category of marketing. A key element to successful content marketing is high frequency digital content -- blogs, emails, landing pages, infographics, eBooks, and more, that is created and delivered regularly to keep content fresh and audiences engaged. And, of course, marketing automation software makes it all possible. However, the same technology that has made content marketing proliferation possible, has also made global content marketing go from hard to impossible.

"By 2115, it’s possible that only about 600 languages will be left on the planet as opposed to today’s 6,000,” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Columbia University linguistics teacher, Dr. John McWhorter. While many acknowledge that the de facto language for global communication—business or otherwise—is English, it’s undeniable that the seven billion people in the world speak a language other than English in their everyday lives. (In fact, while English is the third most widely spoken language, it’s only the native language for about 5% of the world’s population, and only about 30% of the world’s population speaks English with some degree of competency.)

As a good marketer in the digital age, you probably know how to find the right partner for a lot of your needs, from programmers to event planners. Chances are you have less confidence about how to do the same for a key aspect of your global content marketing campaign: Finding and engaging a great translator.

As you have certainly seen from infamous global advertising translations gone wrong, messaging that is incorrect as a result of poor translation or localization can undermine the entire investment you’ve made in the content and the campaign, not to mention your brand’s valuable reputation.

(Originally published in Bizreport, August 11, 2015)

How Do You Say….Marketing?