Time to turn your eyes outward toward the world

On this morning, the night after a historic election, writing about content management lacks a certain urgency, but it's what we do here at FierceContentManagement, so today I want to talk to you about global content delivery. While the United States may be a fertile market for any business, as we have seen recently, it's subject to economic swings just like any other nation. That's why you need to be looking beyond our borders to a big blue world, but first you have to consider translation management and content management and lots of planning. If you want to go global, you need to think about it carefully and have your tools and technologies in place.

What are words for?

The first area you need to consider is translation. Your web site, your marketing collateral and all of your words need to be translated into the language of the countries where you want to do business. But it takes more than a word for word translation, it requires an an in-country individual who understands the cultural nuances of that country. For example, if your ad uses a baseball analogy, the meaning might be lost outside the United States.

Protect your brand

As you move outward, and you translate into multiple languages, you need to be sure your brand always shines through regardless of where you are doing business. If you want a clear example of how this works, look at the websites of strong brands like Apple and Google in different countries. No matter what the language and what parts of the website get translated, you can still recognize that at its core, this site is still part of the brand's family.

Use technology to help

Content management can help you with all of this. In fact, the more countries in which you have a presence, the more likely you will need technology to help you manage the process. You can use your content management system to provide a translation work flow, to provide a way for non-technical writers to contribute content to the system without IT hand holding, to move content through the process and publish to multiple sites. Without this, you are left with individual countries doing their own thing, a process where you can lose control of the message and brand. Content management enables you to maintain control of a process that could grow chaotic without it.

Face time matters

Donald Leka, the CEO at Transmedia, the makers of the GlideOS online suite of tools, told me recently his company has a five-continent plan for its products. He has developed a very deliberate strategy for his company, and he has invested time and money to forge relationships on the ground, in countries where he wants to do business.

"The way you do it," he says, "is you spend a lot of money to travel over there, getting to know people and forging relationships. Almost every time we do that, we have a good relationship."

In this context, your content management system and your translation vendor cannot replace good, old-fashioned relationship building. But once you have established a foot hold in a given market, the technology can help you manage the relationship and your business. You can't translate into multiple languages and do it well without help. So this morning as you turn your eyes outward toward the world, remember that it takes a combination of good will, hard work and technology to get you where you want to go. - Ron