Category Archives: Newsletter Articles

How to Make My Web Site International – Going Global

Blog, Business Culture, Newsletter Articles, Social media

International currency

I wrote my first HTML homepage back in 1994. Back then, we were just starting with Internet based chat (IRC), conversing to people in other countries using my old Amiga home computer in University Halls of Residence. Building a homepage seemed like the next logical next step so I ‘borrowed’ some HTML from a member of my class and the rest is history. ‘Shady’s Pages’ was a combination of restaurant reviews, photos, downloadable DOOM levels I’d made and all variety of other bits and pieces. I really wish I still had a copy of it on a floppy disk somewhere!

I found it completely fascinating that people as far away as Chicago and California were reading this stuff and even sometimes emailing me to tell me they liked it. Fast forward to the future and I still find it incredible that the media we create is consumed by an increasing global audience creating a worldwide conversation.

I’ve had the pleasure to work on several international web projects over the years including for the British Council, who have offices and learners in every corner of the globe. More recently, I’m involved with the Passport to Trade 2.0 project which spreads the word about doing business in other countries.

I’m devoting this post to a few ideas about getting your message out to all the relevant parts of the world.

  1. Country specific websites – If you are serious about your website working in other countries, you can consider purchasing the relevant domain names for the countries that you are targeting. The domain names may contain a country specific site, or point to pages on your website devoted to that country in the correct language. This method is often employed by international companies, but can get to be an expensive and complex business though.

A more cost effective option would be to set up sub domains within your main website domain, e.g. countryname.yourbus.com or sub-folders, yourbus.com/countryname. With Passport to Trade 2.0 we set up Multi-User WordPress which enables us to create new sites for each relevant country in a sub folder style. Sub-folders can also help visibility in the search engines. Each country site has flags to the relevant countries, so for example, we have the following addresses:

Each country lead person has the ability to login to their own website and make alterations to it using WordPress. The decision about how you approach country specific sites will depend on the time and budget available and how important these are to your organisation strategically.

  1. Speed – Don’t be tempted to test your website on your desktop computer only and think it’s all loading quickly. If you are using a superfast broadband connection, you may be deceiving yourself. Remember that connection speeds can differ around the world and of course, many people may be accessing your website on their smart phones on a slower connection. Make sure your images and other media are optimised and are downloading quickly with not too many large items on one page. You can search Google for ‘website speed tester’, or take a look at http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ – your website pages should load within a couple of seconds. The less graphics, photographs, embeds and scripts you have, the faster your site will load and the less likely someone will leave your site before it has even loaded. Make sure your target audience can access your information quickly and easily. If your website is too slow, people will switch off quickly and the search engines will also downgrade your website, reducing the global reach of your wesite.
  1. Standards –Make sure your website works in all of the latest browsers and a few older ones. That includes Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari on the Mac, Android and Iphones. There are several excellent mobile testers, standards and accessibility compliancy testers. Making sure your website is accessible to people with disabilities. This can also help your global reach and also help your website to be found in the search engines.
  1. Language – Again, this one will depend on your budget. Ideally, you would get professional translation of your content. In the age of ever changing content, this can of course be difficult and expensive. Perhaps you need to think about employing multi-lingual staff in your communications team, or translating the key pages.

Auto-translation is another option. The biggest one of these is of course Google Translate. This comes with a handy widget to add to your website to enable people to translate your whole site into whichever languages you specify. This is very handy as it means you don’t have to re-translate your website every time the content changes. Great, job completed! A word of warning though – whilst auto-translation is improving year on year, it is still no replacement for professional translation. You should also consider using clear language; this will help more people to understand it.  Consider using for example, Simplified English.

With Passport to Trade we also created a series of animations, using visuals that would be recognised and understood in our target countries. Using animation in this way can help to deliver key messages to your target audience whatever their language.

If your website calls for people to contact you around the world – make sure you have the appropriate staff and strategy so that your target audience can communicate with your organisation in their chosen language.

  1. Template – Try and avoid text embedded as a graphic. Web fonts services such as Google font replacement offer a simple way to use a range of fonts without embedding text as a graphic. Similarly, be aware that translating your site into other languages may make pages and boxes longer or shorter depending on the language. Your website template needs to be flexible enough so that it looks presentable no matter which language it is in.
  1. Access – You can use your website stats to see which countries are accessing your website and how people are interacting with it. How does your site look in other countries, is it accessible? Can it be found in local search engines? Does it load quickly? Clearly the best way to test these things would be to test it from that country or ask someone to test it for you. You can also use tools such as http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/checkit.php to gauge loading speed of your website around the world. If it is important that your website is accessible in countries like China, you will have to choose your hosting company carefully. This is due to certain providers and servers being blocked by The Great Firewall of China. There are websites available to allow you to check which websites are blocked such as: http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org. Check with your hosting company and use real and automated testers to verify that it works.
  1. Search and Social Media – In order to effectively communicate with your target audience, you will need to undertake some research to discover which social media networks are being used by your audience in different countries. The Passport to Trade project can help your research. The use of different networks varies significantly from country to country and group to group. For example, in some countries, Twitter and Facebook are not the biggest networks and in others, YouTube may be blocked.With the search engines, Google is often the most popular search engine, but this varies from country to country. Research into your target audience will help you to understand where you should be placing your time and budget in order to adequately spread your message from your website to the search engines and relevant social media networks.

So that’s it, just a few things that I have picked up about going global since my first homepage graced the world. Remember to keep things simple, test and tweak responding to new information and reaching new audiences.

The slides from the presentation to accompany this post are below.

By Alex Fenton

 

Studenţi şi IMM-uri colaborând pentru beneficiul Europei

Newsletter Articles

Cum pot studenţii şi IMM-urile să lucreze împreună la creşterea economică a Europei? Un număr de IMM-uri cunosc încetinirea economică din Europa în multe feluri, nu în ultimul rând prin dificultatea de a atrage vânzări şi de a genera oportunităţile de afaceri. Pe de altă parte, există de asemenea un număr din ce în ce mai mare de absolvenţi sau studenţi care au dificultăţi în găsirea de locuri de muncă, din cauza aceloraşi dificultăţi economice. Esenţa proiectului Passport to Trade 2.0 se bazează pe relaţiile dintre studenţi şi IMM-uri şi pe oportunităţile prezentate de creştere a numărului de plasamente pentru studenţi şi internship, ceea ce dă IMM-urilor resursele adăugate necesare pentru a îşi creşte oportunităţile de afaceri şi câştigul studenţilor prin învăţarea eticii muncii şi obţinerea de experienţe vitale pentru carierele lor viitoare.
Un atelier Passport to Trade 2.0 dedicat temei Studenţi şi IMM-uri colaborând pentru beneficiul Europei a avut loc pe 11 aprilie 2013 la Universitatea Valahia din Târgovişte, în România.
 La atelier au participat studenţi de la Universitatea Valahia din Târgovişte, Facultatea de Stiinţe Economice, de la studii de licenţă, masterat şi doctorat, şi oameni de afaceri din Judeţul Dâmboviţa.
Din agenda atelierului au făcut parte următoarele prezentări:

  1. Cum pot folosi studenţii website-ul proiectului pentru a găsi informaţii despre alte tări europene pentru a studia şi a face practică. Acest aspect a fost prezentat de Milanka Dimitrova Slavova, Technology Development and Innovation – TDI Ltd, Bulgaria.
  2. Social media – un instrument util pentru studenţi şi IMM-uri. Prezentare realizată de Aleksej Heinze, Salford Business School, University of Salford, United Kingdom.
  3. P2T2.0 – prezentarea proiectului şi a conţinutului site-ului – prezentare realizată de Verena Hausmann, de la Institutul pentru Cercetarea Sistemelor de Informaţii de la Universitatea din Koblenz-Landau, Germania.

Milanka Slavova a discutat importanţa înţelegerii diferenţei culturale atunci când este vorba de afaceri internaţionale. Acest lucru a fost subliniat în mod deosebit cu exemple de campanii virale de marketing pe baze culturale, după cum a arătat studiul de caz cu privire la ROM-ul american dîn România:

Studiu de caz despre ROMul American https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt9NBtW4sbA

În acest caz, valorile culturale erau activate printr-o campanie de marketing care permitea unui brand să se re-energizeze devenind controversat. Acest lucru a fost realizat cu un număr de alte referinţe culturale, precum brandul Athenos.

Studiul de caz despre Athenos  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXoAbUlVI0

Deşi ele nu sunt IMM-uri, cele două ilustrează modul în care se poate realiza o campanie virală benefică pentru o afacere prin intermediul mediilor de socializare.

Aleksej Heinze provoacă publicul ca să determine comentarii şi discuţii perspicace cu privire la punctele lor de vedere referitoare la aplicarea mediilor de socializare în afaceri şi pentru creare a unui profil unic pentru fiecare student (student branding). Cei care au participat cel mai activ la discuţie şi au dat cele mai complete răspunsuri la întrebări au fost recompensaţi fiecare cu un tricou Salford Business School. Felicitări câştigătorilor de premii – tricouri: Tudorache Ana-Maria, doctorand la Management; Nuţă Flavia, studentă la master în domeniul Managementul întreprinderii, şi Apostolov Kiril, student la Finanţe.

Studenţii au descoperit cum se flosesc mijloacele de socializare şi importanţa crescândă a branding-ului personal (a creării unui profil personal individualizat) şi au aflat cum pot avea mijloacele de socializare atât roluri pozitive, cât şi negative în viitoarele lor cariere. În special, discuţia s-a referit la unele dintre prototipurile produse pentru site-ul proiectului Passport to Trade 2.0.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sPyh8cTNkU4

Verena Hausman a evidenţiat rolul crescând al mijloacelor de socializare pentru marketing în comerţul internaţional, ca oportunităţi de a face reclamă pentru locuri de muncă şi de a identifica oportunităţi de plasament pentru studenţi, de a împărtăşi informaţii utile şi aşa mai departe. Prin discuţii s-a subliniat modul în care studenţii şi reprezentaţii IMM-urilor pot afla informaţii despre ţara în care plănuiesc să se ducă, ca aspect de schimb cultural, dar şi ca instrument de depăşire a barierelor comportamentale.

Click for the English Version

Students & Sme’s Working Together to benefit Europe

Newsletter Articles, Student placements

A number of SMEs are feeling the economic slow down in Europe in many ways, not least through their difficulties in attracting sales and generating the necessary business opportunities. On the other hand there are also an increased number of graduates and students who are experiencing difficulties in finding employment due to the same economic issues. The core of the Passport to Trade 2.0 project addresses the vital relationships that students and SMEs have and the opportunities that are presented by increasing the number of student work placements and internships, which give SMEs the needed added resource to boost their trade opportunities; students also gain by learning work ethics and getting vital experience for their future careers.

A Passport to Trade 2.0 workshop dedicated to Students & SMEs working together to benefit Europe was held on April 11th, 2013 at Valahia University Târgovişte, in Romania.

The workshop was attended by students of Valahia University Târgovişte, Faculty of Economics, from bachelor, master and Ph.D. Studies, and business representatives from DâmboviţaCounty.

During the workshop 3 key points were addressed.

Opportunities for studying and finding a work placement in other European countries

First of all, students discovered how to use the site to access information about opportunities for studying and finding a work placement in other European countries.  This aspect was presented by Milanka Dimitrova Slavova, Technology Development and Innovation – TDI Ltd, Bulgaria.

Importance of understanding cultural differences

The importance of understanding cultural differences when dealing in international trade was discussed. This was particularly highlighted with examples of culturally based viral marketing campaigns as was illustrated by the American ROM case study in Romania:

American ROM case study  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt9NBtW4sbA

In this case study cultural values were activated by a marketing campaign which allowed a brand to be re-energised by becoming controversial. This was done with a number of other cultural references such as the Athenos brand:

Athenos Case Study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXoAbUlVI0

Whilst not SMEs these two illustrate how a good use of a viral marketing campaign via social media can benefit a business.

Social media as a useful tool for both students and SMEs

Attendees also gained insight into social media as a useful tool for both students and SMEs. This presentation was given by Aleksej Heinze, SalfordBusinessSchool, University of Salford, UK.  The audience was challenged to provide insightful comments and discussed their views on the application of social media in business and for student branding. Those who took an active part in the discussions and gave the most complete answers to the questions were rewarded with a Salford Business School T-shirt. Congratulations to all the prize-winners who are: Tudorache Ana-Maria, Ph.D. student in Management; Nuţă Flavia, Corporate Management master program student and Apostolov Kiril, bachelor program student in Finances.

Students discovered how to use social media to their advantage;  the increasing importance of personal branding and how social media can play both positive and negative roles in their future employment. In particular the discussion was based around some of the ideas which were developed  for Passport to Trade 2.0 project website.

Businessculture.org ideas examples on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPyh8cTNkU4

Finally, Verena Hausmann, Institute for Information Systems Research at University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany in her presentation highlighted the increasing role that social media plays in international trade marketing, as well as opportunities to advertise vacancies, or to identify student placement opportunities, share useful information and so on. The discussions highlighted the need for students and SMEs’ representatives to know basic information about the country they are planning to visit as a matter of cultural exchange but also as a tool in overcoming behavioural barriers.

Click here to read this article in  Romanian.

Balkans business culture: lessons from 5 neighboring countries

Business Culture, Newsletter Articles

Balkans business culture: punctuality, taboos and more

Business culture plays a major role in international business. A good knowledge of foreign business culture is very important in establishing initial business contacts. It also helps students looking for placements and internship opportunities in European countries to integrate faster into working and social life.

One of the main tasks of the Passport to Trade 2.0 (#P2T2) project was the development of European Mobility Framework (EMF) website content related to the cultural and business environment of five European neighboring countries from the Balkans region – Bulgaria, Romania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Turkey, and Croatia. Country specific research and the preparation of the EMF proved a lot of business culture similarities among the countries in the region.

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Balkans punctuality in business meetings

Time keeping in business has always been an important issue. Punctuality for meetings is taken seriously as it indicates respect for your meeting partner and shows that you value their time. Generally, up to 10 minutes late is acceptable, over 10 minutes late necessitates a phone call to your meeting partners to let them know that you are on your way. If you are over half an hour late it is probably worth re-scheduling the meeting. In the private sphere of life people in these countries have a more relaxed perspective on time, where a 15-20 minutes delay is to be expected and not unusual; in part this is also due to infrastructure issues – buses and trains tend to rarely run on time.

Balkans business dress code

Business representatives pay meticulous attention to their appearance. Therefore formal dress code should be adhered to and is not to be taken lightly. Formal for men would mean a jacket with shirt and tie or a suit and for ladies, a formal dress or also a suit. Business people in the Balkan region like to show their business counterparts that they value the chance to meet with one another face-to-face to develop business relationships.

Balkans taboo discussion subjects

While the number of taboos in the five countries is decreasing, business people should pay attention to some issues that are considered inappropriate and should be avoided. In Turkey family is considered sacred and should not be disrespected. In Croatia it is advisable not to talk about money or personal problems since it is viewed as a sign of weak character. The Romanians believe strongly in fate, chance and luck. Respect their habit to wish themselves luck in any action undertaken – even seemingly mundane actions like sneezing and hiccupping can take on a superstitious meaning. (when selling, buying, hiccuping, drinking, sneezing and even instead of “good morning”). In FYROM,if you have been invited to a business meal your host will continue to give you food and drink and insist on paying for you; it is considered impolite to refuse this hospitality.

Body language in the Balkans

The non-verbal language has also a lot of cultural resemblances.  Quite often people in the region stand close to business partners during a conversation. An arm’s length is generally considered an appropriate amount of personal space when speaking, particularly when interacting with colleagues and acquaintances. Compared to other people in the region the Bulgarians have different head gestures to indicate “no” and “yes.”  Shaking your head from side to side signifies “yes” and an up and down movement means “no”. In Turkey people tend to greet each other with a two-handed handshake or by a kiss on both cheeks.

Balkans customs of gift giving

Gift giving is generally not practiced. Small presents like souvenir representing the business partner’s country are acceptable. A gift that relates to the home country is preferred in the regional business etiquette.  In the five countries the first meeting is more social than business related. Business partners need two or three meetings before they are able to decide if they are going to do business or not. Establishment of personal relations with a client is very important before doing business. Business lunches and dinners are considered more of a social occasion and a good way to develop relationships. Meals are generally very rich. The hosts in the region will often put more food on the table than can be eaten. They are proud of their cuisine and like to show off.

In general, people in the region are very hospitable, friendly and helpful. If a foreign partner wins their trust, they can rely on successful long-term business cooperation.

Social Media Results: Lessons from social media optimisation in practice

Newsletter Articles, Social media

Social media is increasing in popularity for business as well as private use. What would be a better way to see how we can achieve results from social media than by administering a survey that targeted social media users around 31 European countries? The aim for our survey was to get at least 50 responses from each country – 35 from students and 15 from small and medium enterprises (SMEs). So, overall we aimed to achieve 1550 responses to an online survey.

With internet penetration in European Countries being over 63% of the estimated 821 million people, and over 250 million estimated users of Facebook alone (Source Internet World Stats http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm) surely it can’t be that difficult to reach at least 1550 responses to a survey which asks them to share their views on social media usage and etiquette. Our survey was designed to be as short as possible and electronic, allowing participants the flexibility for filling it in when it is convenient for them.

Social media optimisation – networks selection

We developed a project Twitter account [https://twitter.com/Passport2Trade] and a Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/passporttotrade2] with a plan to regularly post project related updates and develop a community of interested people in the project and its results. LinkedIn was also considered but since there are so many different professional networks which exist for professional networking in Europe and the consequent lack of access from members for example in Xing in Germany and Vladeo in France it was dropped. Additionally, both Facebook and Twitter allow members to see the message without having to sign up to the service thus making it more accessible to our target audiences of the project. Similar considerations would be applicable to any SME considering engagement on social networks in Europe unless you are targeting a specific country and community of members.

Social media strategy

Our initial strategy was simple – identify the relevant networks and post messages on these networks to ask for the survey participation. We have soon realised that this simple strategy did not work. For example when using Twitter and speaking to anyone who is talking about #Estonia to signify that we are contributing to the conversation on Estonia we did not get many replies. So we had to change the strategy. We realized that it was essential to develop first the relationship with individuals in that country and then to ask them for help. This was simply done by re-tweeting some else’s comments about their country and speaking to them directly about a topic that was of interest to them. For example if we identified someone who contributed to the #Estonia hash tag we then addressed the twitter account directly using their @name to get their attention. By using someone’s user name did get results. People were engaging with us back and asking for more information about the project. Once the lead was created via Twitter we have then taken the conversation to email and through email and were necessary using Skype and Telephone to clarify any points needed.

Social media strategy results

So, the lessons from our project when you are considering your social media results are as follows:

  1. Be clear what you want to achieve as a result of your social media engagement (in our case it was to raise awareness of our project and gain responses to an online survey)
  2. Select the social networks which your target audience are likely to use (beware that in Europe there is a variety of specialist networks don’t just expect all to use Twitter and Facebook!)
  3. Engage in conversations with others first to establish a relationship – reply to others questions, contribute to the topics that they are interested in – develop your social capital with them. People are more likely to help you once you have helped them.
  4. Use networks specific community building techniques – for example on Twitter – Re-tweet tweets of others, create lists of people, follow people and tweet them directly using their @name
  5. Only once you have established a relationship and understand who the other social media user is ask them for help – in our case it was to fill in an online survey. In your case it would be develop a business opportunity etc.
  6. Thank and recognise people for the help you receive – we have a list of voluntary advisory board members as well as three Amazon vouchers which were used as a “Thank you” to randomly selected volunteers who have helped us in the project – http://www.slideshare.net/AleksejHeinze/businesscultureorg-passporttotrade-20-survey-winners

The key finding which is perhaps not surprising after all is that our results show that in countries where no personal networks of the research team were present there was a complete lack of response, suggesting that there is a need to develop networks initially before meaningful information exchange can commence. The project was successful in attaining more that the set target of 1550 responses but the 50 responses per country were difficult to achieve.

Read more about this project and the results of the survey in this article – Aaltonen , S, Kakderi, C, Hausmann, V and Heinze , A Social media in Europe : lessons from an online survey , in: 18th UKAIS Annual Conference: Social Information Systems, 19-20 March 2013, Worcester College, Oxford, UK. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/28500/

You could read the article also in Italian.