5 ways content writing can help your Localization team or your LSP strategy

Whether you are part of an internal Localization / Globalization team, or if you are an LSP providing localization services to your clients, you will have seen yourself many times in conversations explaining the value that your team brings to the product.

You will have explained the differences between transcreation and translation, the importance of internationalization when we are designing a global product, or why Machine Translation is not always the solution that a stakeholder needs to localize their product.

Much of the work that those of us who work in this industry do has to do with evangelization and explaining the impact of what we do and why we do it. Ultimately, what we seek is to educate our stakeholders, whether internal or final customers. What we are looking for is that they perceive us as experts and that they trust our criteria, our advice.

Today I want to share a very powerful strategy that can help you build that image of Localization experts, this strategy is… create content.

Content writing is the act of writing the words which are part of your digital product or part of the services you offer. Generally speaking, content is crafted by either a copywriter, a content writer or localization specialist creating post, articles or any other written material

Creating new, frequent, and insightful content is a very good practice in the Localization industry. Many localization teams choose not to allocate the time and resources towards content creation, and in doing so they often fail to create the conditions to be perceived as experts. 

You might think that you don't need to sell the services you do to your internal stakeholder because the work you do speaks for itself. Or maybe you are an LSP and you might think that writing content might be not a good use of your time, but think about this, while content creation might not be traditionally considered to be a sale technique… in fact, it is!

When you strive to create specialized content localization your personal / team Brand takes a new dimension. Here are 5 reasons why I think Localization professionals should see content creation as a fundamental part of evangelization (selling) strategy

1. You’ll be seen as a Localization expert

Blog posts, articles, webinars, videos, case studies, or newsletters are very powerful types of content to show to your potential clients that your team/you are an expert in the field. This idea needs to be sold! (and again selling Localization internally is important! Let’s not consider selling just the relationship of a client buying localization services from an LSP, internal teams need to promote aka sell also their services) 

2. You’ll be seen as someone to trust 

When you create localization content on a topic that you master, you are projecting yourself as an expert in the field. Imagine that you are explaining in a series of blog post how to deploy a TMS in your software development workflow, and then you write about how to automate metadata updates for mobile platforms within your TMS, and then you write about how to incorporate machine translation into your localization workflow … when you create all this very useful and insightful content, customers (either internal or external) will feel inclined to trust you, based on all the wisdom and knowledge that you have shared.

3.- You define your brand’s voice

Every business, every product, every service provider, or localization team has a voice. And if you’ve put no time or resources into your content writing, probably your voice is fairly inconsistent.

One of the great benefits of content writing is that it gives you a voice in the world! 

When you consistently create regular blog posts or other types of content, eventually you’ll end up offering a sense of consistency to your brand, to your service and you’ll be more recognizable. This might help to make customers engage more easily with you.

4.- Brings visitors to your site and build engagement with them

Your website or internal newsletters should be visually appealing. At the same time, the content well... should also have relevant content. Content has the power to drive visitors, engage them, and convert them into potential clients.

5.- You’ll ensure your product or service is properly understood

When we write content we are increasing the chances that our stakeholders really understand the service/product we offer. Sometimes we are so absorbed with our work that we lose perspective, and when we face creating content from scratch we force ourselves to explain well what we know how to do so well. Creating content is a great way to think out loud and will help us explain to our customers what our products/services do and why they need them in their lives!

Final thoughts

It's true that creating quality content takes time, but think that producing pieces of high-quality content will enable you to communicate the benefits of your product/service. With the right content writing strategy, you’ll be building trust, expertise, and planting the seeds for a very fruitful relationship!