5 Tips for Effective Multilingual Blogging [List]

It seems that English is spoken by everyone, but actually, English only comes in third as the most spoken language worldwide after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.  Online, English is the most used language, however, it is only used by 27% of people, meaning you are losing out on a massive three-quarters of the internet. If you don’t want to miss out, it is important to consider blogging in various languages, especially if you are the kind of blogger who wants to make a profit.

Blogging in two, three or even more languages will help you reach a much wider audience. It might seem a hard task at first, but with the right steps and tools this can be made a whole lot easier and far less stressful.

Cross the language barrier

If your only language is English, then multilingual blogging will be a bit more challenging. But even for those who speak two or three languages already, having to translate each of your blog posts can be  a hazard. For bloggers speaking the language of the country they desire to target, tools like Google Translate can be great to quickly translate and correct grammatical errors that come up. They can really save you time and money.

Still, tools like these are not completely reliable, as errors do occur and meanings can be lost. Therefore, English-speaking bloggers should consider investing in a professional translator as badly written posts can cost you your reliability. If you want your foreign blog to be successful, invest some money into good translation in order to have quality content.

Be local

If you’re blogging in English, your current domain is most likely to be ‘.com’. Going local and investing in country specific domains (such as ‘.de’ or ‘.fr’ , for Germany and France) will help you to gain both more credibility and more readers.  Plus it will help with the positioning in the local search engines, since local sites are favored over foreign sites. It will also make you and your blog a more reliable source to your readers.

Recycle your posts

Going into new markets means more work and more writing, which can be time-consuming as well as taking your attention away from your English blog. However, if you already have a blog in English you might as well reuse those old posts and reach new audiences in your foreign language blog. Sometimes you might have to adjust the post to fit the culture (change local examples or find appropriate pictures if needed), but it still saves you having to write articles from scratch.

Say it clearly

Try to be as clear as possible, avoiding slang, figures of speech or words that can only be understood in certain regions. Remember that in English when there is more than one way to say something, try to choose the word or phrase more commonly known. For example, the phrase “let’s eat something” can also be expressed as “let’s grab a bite”. It sounds nice to say the latter one, however, the first one is understood even by those not living in an English-speaking country. This is especially true for the posts that are going to be translated through translation tools, since these do not recognize slang, and it is far more likely that the meaning will be lost in the process. This will ultimately result in more revision and editing.

Make a buzz

Blogging isn’t enough to get readers, but as a blogger you probably know this already. It is important to use social networks to spread the word about your blog. Use the social networks that are commonly used in the country you write for. For example, if you target Germany, it would be a good idea to have a profile on www.meinvz.net or to have your Facebook bio translated into German. Also try finding relevant people from the countries you target on Twitter, and follow them and some of their followers. Interact, and try to get their attention, whatever language they speak!

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About the author:
Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, a global translation company specialising in website localization and optimisation. Lingo24 has been helping some of the world’s biggest global brands with their localization campaigns since 2001.  Follow Lingo24 (@Lingo24) on Twitter.

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