Wednesday 14 September 2016

Avoid These 5 Social Media Mistakes for Enhanced Results!

Social Media has a pivotal role to play in modern day digital revolution. No business strategy is complete without considering the impact of social media on their marketing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have become an indispensable part of core business marketing plans. Social media truly has the power to make the change, a change in your favor!



Social media has given the businesses a platform to directly connect with the users through tools such as comments, sharing, re-tweeting etc. Even though social media has the potential to make that big difference to your business, yet many businesses continue to make a few conspicuous mistakes. These mistakes not only hamper your goodwill online but also can turn customer opinion against you. There are some common mistakes that organizations continue to make on social media. Here is the list of the mistakes that should be avoided at all times under all circumstances to boost sales and enhance profits:

1. Ignoring Customers

It is a nightmare for a company to ignore its customers/target audience/target group/community and fail to respond to their queries/questions on time. No matter how offended you feel as a business about a critical opinion from a customer, you ought to keep calm and respond. Remember it's the customers' satisfaction that matters and not yours. After all you are in the league to earn happy customers. Therefore, ignoring your customers and being indifferent towards their feedback, queries, questions and opinions is sure to hurt you in the long run. Social media bridges the gap between brands and end-use-customers. Ignoring them reflects poorly on your ethics and standards. Follow the cardinal rule-Respond to every single feedback on social media.

2. Avoid Online Spat

As much as you are in awe of social media, it relishes the sight of others fighting online. And when you are in the capacity of a company or a representative, it is best for you to avoid indulging into unsavory fights on social media. Make sure that as a brand you are not involved in an ugly spat online. If you vent out against your customers online, you only end up losing your brand value. Such public fights dampen your brand's image. Remember, arguing on a public platform with a customer will reflect poorly on your brand.

3. Missing: Company Website Link

Every company strives to create unique social media content across company pages on different social media platforms. However, amid the excitement of publishing the most unique content, they often commit the mistake of not adding the link to their company website! Having a link increases the chances of your customers visiting your website. If the link is missing, you end up losing a potential opportunity. You should make sure that the link is published on your blogs and other social media content for the convenience of your customers. The link adds a personal touch to the browsing experience and makes an organization look more human.

4. Negative Employee Engagement

One of the most prevalent yet most ignored facts about social media is the negative involvement of employees! Many organizations commit the blunder of omitting their employees at the time of creating social media strategies and plans. There is no denying that employees are the valuable assets. They are the ones who help organizations achieve success. Their contribution acts like a motivation for them and at the same times helps serve the purpose with their inputs.

5. Undermining Email Potential

Many businesses have started ignoring and undermining the potential of the email. Let's not forget that email is the oldest form of social network and still the most powerful and compelling way to establish a connect with the customers! While social media platforms win the bigger share of the pie, email stands to lose its charm and continue to be meted out with step-motherly treatment today. All the while the fact remains that customers who receive emails are likely to responds positively than customers who receive social media feeds. Let company's take note and vow to put emails to the best of their use and capacity!

Keeping a track of social media is fine but much worthy is the lessons that you learn from your social media mistakes and a pledge to never repeat the same.

Monday 21 March 2016

Importance of Feasibility Analysis in Localization

How many of you agree that feasibility analysis is an integral part of localization and needs to be included before working on any of the localization assignments? While most of you may choose to agree or disagree according to your own convenience however, as a matter of fact, having a feasibility study conducted right before taking on an assignment is fruitful in more than one ways for the team in delivering on-time and accurate results.


 Before we proceed further, answer this. What exactly is feasibility analysis? For your reference, let us decode it here. Feasibility analysis or feasibility study is no rocket science. It is defined as the process of assessment of the  practicality of a proposed project. The aim of feasibility study is to look into the objectivity of a new project in terms of monetary compensation, delivery deadlines, challenges and resources available. In short, this whole thing is about gauging through the strengths and weaknesses of the business proposal and taking a viable decision basis various factors including threats and opportunities. Feasibility study helps understand the success rate of the project and its impact on the credibility of your own organization.

Having said that, we all are aware that content plays a key role in localization. Do you know content complexity issues dampen the spirit of localization team? Are you aware about content challenges? Well, content is indeed the crucial part of localization and more often than not localization experts face hurdles in translating content. The first major challenge is imposed by the local culture. Beyond doubt, all content has to be translated keeping the local language, culture, flair and flavor in mind. As a team member you have to be careful about words, phrases, graphics, gestures etc to ensure that your translation makes sense to the locals in terms of meaning and sentiments. This is important to gain the confidence of the people of an unknown territory to be able to market your product/service and penetrate deeper to create a stronghold against local players.

Another point, which holds importance here is translation productivity. Localization sure is an extensive task and the team has to justify the work done against the compensation received. Hence, it is always a point of worry for localization experts to do justice to the productivity against tasks allotted.

Do you know it takes immense perseverance to battle ones internal conflicts and external challenges to churn out results within the frameworks of the pre-set expectations? Quite sure, you do! Another hurdle in translation is created when translators are not well versed with a certain language, which consumes lot more time in researching about that language and local culture.

One more factor that downplays on the morale of the localization team is budgetary and deadline estimates. Does the thought ever cross your mind, would the allotted budgets be enough to suffice the resources needed for this particular task? Has the thought of meeting specific time lines ever bothered your peace of mind? If you are a localization expert, we are confident in saying that you may have, at some point, encountered such situations. In the first place it is really difficult to chalk out a budget plan with sheer confidence. Localization is a relatively difficult task and involves various unprecedented phases that are tough to underline right at the beginning. At the same time the team has to consider resources and other factors to arrive at deadline conclusions. Delivering the results on time is a huge challenge and if you are unfit to meet your own words, it hampers your goodwill in the market.

All these factors play a vital role during feasibility analysis and hence it's importance in localization is justifiable! It helps consume less time and resources and churn out better results within the given time deadlines.