Ways to market yourself as a translator
by Lingo24, 15th October, 2007
You now feel that the best way forward professionally is to become a freelancer, but how do you establish your presence in the marketplace and how do you attract clients?
As a qualified translator you are in the same bracket as other professionals such as Doctors, Solicitors and Accountants; you will have spent many years and put in much hard work to get to your current level and position. You now feel that the best way forward professionally is to become a freelancer, but how do you establish your presence in the marketplace and how do you attract clients? There is no doubt that the most obvious manifestation of a professional presence is to have a website. Your website will either become your main business asset or will become an encumbrance depending on how the project is handled from its inception. It is fair to say that most unsuccessful websites were set up by non specialists. These days, anyone with an easily available set of web tools can set up a website, but only a specialist SEO proficient company can make it work for you. Why? Because there are several factors that, although not obvious, will if done correctly, boost your sites’ web ranking automatically. The first step then, is to contract a website specialist. You will need a correctly coloured, clean looking and uncluttered format. There are certain coding combinations that make your website more search engine friendly, and your specialist will ensure that your site is coded appropriately. The next step is to attend to your sites’ content and layout. Obviously, your website is your own and you may want to project some portion of your personality onto it, but be aware that there are certain tried and proved layouts that will enhance your sites’ ‘stickability’. Just one example, is not to put your personal profile all over the front page; many unsuccessful sites do this, but the front page is for what you do, how you do it and your differentiator in the marketplace. Now that your website is correctly set up, what you need to do is to actually make it rank on the search engines. Once again, your SEO specialist will attend to this for you, but basically, he will be embarking upon a link building campaign for you. Links can either be purchased for you or expanded organically, through the dissemination of original content copy. The best strategy is a combination of the two, but once again, be aware that the benefit of using a top SEO company rather than the cheapest one available, is that the good one will only purchase QUALITY links on your behalf and will hire QUALITY content writers as well. In the world of links not all links are equal and you get what you pay for! The setup stage of your marketing strategy is now complete. It is now just a matter of waiting for your links to ‘kick in’, your search engine ranking to climb and your customers to start flooding in. You may want to supplement your marketing strategy with a pay per click campaign or with some off line marketing. The former is definitely worthwhile but the latter is arguable…most large companies now have 60% of their marketing online and only 40% offline. It is worth mentioning an alternative to completely going it alone and one that is used by a great many professionals; instead of freelancing as your own corporate entity, why not freelance for one of the already established large translations agencies? The reason that many translators chose this as a viable option is that all the administration, advertising, overheads and negotiating with clients is taken care of by the agency…all you need do is carry out the work and receive payment. The important thing to ensure that you engage with a reputable quality agency (a good start is to choose on that is a member of the ATC - The Association of Translation Companies). Whatever avenue is chosen, ultimately, the standard and quality of your work will always see you succeed. That is, of course, why you chose to become a professional!
© Lingo24
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