Training for Translators: Blog - Page 42 of 245

Nov 21 2023
Corinne McKay

Nudging dormant clients: it worked on me!

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope you’re all doing well! Here’s a resource recommendation for you. One of my favorite freelance business bloggers, Jennifer Goforth Gregory, just launched a marketing newsletter for freelancers, called GoForth and Freelance. It’s free, and I highly recommend it. Jennifer writes an amazing blog and newsletter for freelance content marketing writers, and this new publication is for freelancers in general.

This week, let’s talk about nudging dormant clients. If you’re new to this concept, here’s a blog post I wrote about it earlier this year. Basically, you want to find a reason to get in touch with clients you worked for in the past, but who you haven’t heard from in a while, remind them that you exist, and that you’d like to work with them.

You can be straightforward:
-“Just checking in, because according to my records, I passed your tests and was onboarded in June, but we haven’t yet worked together. Is there anything in the pipeline that might be a good fit?”

You can refer to the last time you worked together:
-“Just checking in, because I really enjoyed the patent translation I did for you in September, and I’d love to work together again if the need arises.”

You can reference upcoming availability:
-“In looking over my schedule, I’m available for interpreting work during the week of December 4. Unfortunately I’ve been booked the last couple of times you contacted me, so I wondered if you’re looking to fill any assignments during that time?”

You can nudge them because something changed on your end:
-“I had a large project set up for this week that ended up being cancelled, and I wondered if anything last-minute might have come up on your end?”

The point here isn’t so much the actual wording, it’s making it easy for the client to book something with you. Every year, when I tell people in my March Marketing Madness challenge group that nudging is a) the world’s most boring marketing technique, and b) the world’s most effective marketing technique, they tend to respond something like, “I don’t want to nudge, because clients know where to find me if they want to work with me. It seems pushy and annoying!” To which I say, humor me and just try it! Nudging doesn’t work 100% of the time (no marketing method does). But in this year’s March Marketing Madness, people came back with results like:

Wow, glad I tried it! A client I hadn’t heard from in six months sent me a $1,500 project
Oh geez, it turned out that the agency was waiting to hear from me while I was waiting to hear from them; glad I followed up!
I e-mailed a dormant interpreting client and specifically told them I’m interested in on-site work and travel assignments; a lot of their interpreters only want to work from home, so they immediately booked me for 10 days of work

If you’re still not convinced, here’s a story of how nudging worked on me. I tend to like to do my own household chores, but two years ago, I admitted defeat on the landscaping. We have a fairly large xeriscape (no grass, low-water) garden in our front yard, and it’s beautiful and environmentally great, but it takes a lot of maintenance. Rather than just running the lawnmower over it, you’re on your hands and knees, weeding for hours. I finally admitted that I hate yard work. I don’t love cleaning, and I’d actually much rather clean than do yard work. I had the money, so I hired a really great landscaping crew. They’re easy to work with, they show up on time, they work incredibly hard, and our garden looks so good that we’ve had people stop by to take pictures of it, plus the landscapers have gotten referrals to four other houses on our street. The only hitch is a) they’re fairly expensive, and b) I still have some guilt about not doing this work myself, simply because I feel like I should.

Earlier this fall, I was thinking that the garden could use one more good clean-up before winter. But I kept telling myself:

Weeding isn’t that hard! Surely I can just take a Saturday afternoon, listen to some podcasts, and get this done!
I shouldn’t spend the money! I have the money, but this is something I could do myself!
And yet…I “never got around to it” (code for: avoided it and made excuses not to do it).

The garden languished. And then one day, my landscaper texted me. “Hey Corinne, I hope you’re doing well! We had a cancellation tomorrow and we’re going to be in your neighborhood. If you’d like one final clean-up before winter, I can offer a 10% discount since it’s last-minute.” I admitted defeat, and told him to come over, and the garden is back to looking amazing. This is how nudging works: you slip off the client’s radar screen, or they mean to contact you but don’t get around to it, but if you get in front of them first, there’s a much higher chance that they’ll suddenly send you some work!

If you have a nudging story, let us know about it in the comments!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!

Nov 14 2023
Corinne McKay

What does “always be marketing” mean?

Reader asks: what does this marketing advice even mean?

This week’s post topic comes from a reader:

“You talk a lot about how we should always be marketing our freelance businesses. But what do you really mean by this? Are you constantly applying to agencies and contacting direct clients? Or do you mean something else?”

It’s an excellent question, so let’s take a closer look.

“Always be marketing” isn’t an original idea. One of my favorite podcasting freelancers, Melanie Padgett Powers, says this on almost every episode of her podcast The Deliberate Freelancer. It’s a common notion, that a freelancer should always be doing something to market their freelance business. But, what does this mean in practice?

To answer this reader’s question, no, I am not constantly applying to agencies and contacting potential direct clients. I have enough work, and although right now I’d like to find some new translation clients, I actually don’t want a “2,500 words for tomorrow” type of client, because I have a lot of interpreting work and I don’t want to do five or six hours of translation on a typical day. For me, “always be marketing” really means “always be hustling and keeping the business juices flowing.” To me, this is how you avoid the peaks and valleys/feast or famine phenomenon, generate a steady flow of work, and make sure that you have enough work in the pipeline so that you’re working on what you enjoy and are good at, rather than what you grab out of desperation. In the past few weeks, here are some things I’ve done that I would consider as marketing or business development

Followed up with some speakers from the ATA conference with whom I wasn’t connected on LinkedIn
Sent a paper thank-you card to a new client who paid me for the first project
Worked on a Facebook page that I’m creating for my official document translation services
Recorded a presentation on pricing your services in the age of AI, for the AI in Translation Summit (not an affiliate deal)
Put a couple of college foreign language students in touch with one of my managing court interpreters, to observe a trial that will use interpreters
Nudged two interpreting agencies from whom I’d like to get some work
Started investigating the possibility of advertising my official document translation services in publications for French-speaking expats
Submitted a couple of conference presentation proposals
Contacted a couple of AIIC members for advice about finding sponsors for my AIIC membership application
Set up a book translation profile on Reedsy and responded to two requests for samples
Sent a couple of LinkedIn connection requests to immigration attorneys in Colorado

As you can see, these aren’t actions that are traditionally considered “marketing,” but they are things that get my name out into the translation and interpreting worlds, make people more likely to refer work to me, and position me as someone reliable and trustworthy. They plant seeds that may come to fruition tomorrow, or months to years down the road. I think that these are things that every established freelancer should be doing, to avoid the “wither and die” phenomenon that afflicts a lot of people who get complacent about their workflow.

Here’s another truth: If you don’t have enough work right now, you should really always be marketing, as in constantly applying to agencies and contacting direct clients. I made a lot of mistakes when I was a beginning freelancer, but here’s one thing I did right: every second that I didn’t have work, I marketed. If my goal was to have 10 hours a week of paying work and I only had one hour, I marketed for nine hours. That’s the strategy you should pursue if you’re looking for more work!

I hope these tips are helpful; if there’s anything you want to add, just post a comment below.

Nov 08 2023
Corinne McKay

How to prepare for (and pass!) an interpreting exam: master class next Wednesday

This month’s master class, How to prepare for (and pass!) an interpreting exam, is next Wednesday, November 15. The live session runs from 12 noon to 1:30 PM New York time, and registration ($75) includes the recording.

This class is based on my experience preparing for and passing (on the first try!) two sets of court interpreting exams, and my Master of Conference Interpreting exit exams. We’ll discuss how to create a training plan for any type of interpreting exam, why so many interpreters fail interpreting exams, how to use the best available resources to prepare, and how to set yourself up for success on exam day.

I taught this class at the recent ATA conference and it went well, so I’m excited for this online version! You can read the full description and register here.

Nov 06 2023
Corinne McKay

Where is social media headed?

If you’re an interpreter or an aspiring interpreter, this month’s master class is for you! On November 15, I’m teaching How to prepare for (and pass!) an interpreting exam, a 90-minute webinar for anyone interested in creating a training plan for a court, conference, or medical exam. There’s also a bonus class this month: on November 16, I’m teaching Breaking into the book translation market for ProZ.com, but registration is open to anyone.

A participant in my online course alumni group recently asked what I thought was going to happen to Twitter/ X, which got me thinking about the changing social media landscape. So, let’s dive in: Where do I think that social media is headed?

In general, I’m someone who likes social media. I’m on Facebook and I enjoy using it to keep up with friends, plus it’s the main communication platform for the animal rescue group that my family volunteers for; I’m on Instagram for really no particular purpose except that I find it interesting. I mostly follow yoga and vegetarian cooking accounts, and I mostly post about travel and my foster cats. Like pretty much everyone else, I’m on LinkedIn, and I was, until recently, quite active on Twitter.

But, as tends to happen in the world, things are changing. I used to love Twitter as a “virtual watercooler,” and as a way to get real-time updates from news sites and local government entities (“Where is that smoke coming from?,” type of thing). When I met interesting people at conferences, I would typically connect with them on Twitter and possibly LinkedIn, but Twitter was my main social media outlet. That all changed in the last six months or so, and I noticed that the vast majority of my new Twitter followers appeared to be bots, or people with zero connection to translation or interpreting. I got fed up with this and decided to delete my Twitter accounts, which I did about a month ago. I hemmed and hawed about whether to just stop posting, but I decided I wanted nothing more to do with Twitter, and it’s actually been really liberating.

At the same time, I feel like Facebook, weirdly, is having a moment. I think that Facebook now (again, weirdly, considering some of Facebook’s history) seems like the more sedate, sane social media platform, and a lot more people seem to be using it for business. Believe it or not, I’m actually in the process of creating a business Facebook page to market my official document translation services.

The question is, with the downward slide on Twitter, (which, by various measures, has lost half to two-thirds of its value since the Elon Musk acquisition), what’s the alternative?? I actually asked this question on LinkedIn, and the answers were interesting. People said things like:

There isn’t really an alternative; Twitter’s real-time, short-form content isn’t happening anywhere else
Maybe try Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon
LinkedIn may become more Twitter-esque (people posting more frequently and including more lighthearted content) now that Twitter is X
Smaller communities like Discord servers may become more active
Even smaller communities like WhatsApp chat groups between you and a very specific group of colleagues may become more popular

Here’s my case for social media: despite all of its downsides and potential toxicity, social media is a really great way to stay connected. As a simple example on the personal side, when I ask people who aren’t on Facebook, “How do you stay in touch with peripheral friends: former coworkers, old neighbors, college roommates, etc.?” they mostly respond, “I don’t stay in touch with them.” And if you don’t want to stay in touch with those people, (or the professional equivalent: people you meet at conferences, people you work on projects with), no problem and you do you. I do enjoy those kinds of connections, and in a day and age where it’s become much less common to call someone just to talk, or to e-mail someone just to catch up, I enjoy that aspect of social media.

But, social media is undeniably changing, particularly with the Twitter-induced fragmentation. Here are a few phenomena I’ve observed lately:

People seem a little fed up with the superficial nature of social media; it can seem hard or even odd to put your struggles as well as your successes out there, and places like Discord servers or smaller chat groups seem more conducive to this.
My sense is that LinkedIn is gaining traction, but/and LinkedIn has never been truly welcoming to freelancers. Witness the fact that when you write someone a LinkedIn recommendation, there is no option for, “I worked with this person as a fellow freelancer,” and instead you’re presented with options like “We worked together in the same group,” or “I managed this person.”
People with online businesses seem to be realizing that you don’t own your social media audience, and social media platforms are zero help if you get hacked, even if you have millions of followers. There are times when I feel a bit outdated because I mainly communicate with my Training for Translators audience through e-mail (currently 4,000 subscribers) and my blog (about 5,000 views a month). But then, I see debacles where people with (literally) millions of social media followers are hacked, or locked out of their accounts. Plus, the social media platform’s entire business model is that you have no way to contact your subscribers off-platform. This makes me even less inclined to cultivate a large following on social media.

I feel that we have yet to see a true successor to Twitter, and I really miss the community of translators and interpreters that once existed there. At the same time, I’m enjoying the more personal groups that I’ve started to be a part of, and I’m enjoying LinkedIn more, posting more often there, and posting some “not strictly business” things (I’ve started adding photos of my foster cats to my Training for Translators posts!).

If you have thoughts on the new social media landscape, feel free to add a comment!

Oct 31 2023
Corinne McKay

American Translators Association conference wrapup!

I spent most of last week at the 64th annual American Translators Association conference in Miami, Florida! TL:DR version: it was great! With 1,300 attendees, it really felt like “the beforetimes,” after a fully virtual conference in 2020, a hybrid conference in 2021, and a smaller in-person conference in 2022. It feels like the ATA conference is back!

Longer version: I posted some photos on LinkedIn, and here’s a wrapup of how things went:

I arrived in Miami on Tuesday evening and taught a three-hour AST (Advanced Skills and Training, which happens the day before the conference) session on Wednesday. The topic was, “How to prepare for (and pass!) an interpreting exam,” and I think it went well. I’ve taught this twice as a two-hour online class and twice as a one-hour conference presentation, so it was nice to have the extra time to go into more depth on some topics and actually practice the interpreting practice techniques that I talk about in the presentation.
The main conference ran from Thursday through Saturday, and I presented another session (Aiming for six figures as a freelancer), moderated the Presidents’ Panel (featuring the presidents of the other T&I associations represented at the conference), and participated in a panel with Jessie Liu, Rony Gao, and Robert Holloway, on getting started in T&I. I was happy with how all of these sessions went!
Then, amid the many opportunities to socialize with colleagues (some of whom I hadn’t seen in person since before COVID), I managed to attend a few sessions! I like to mix things up at ATA, because there is such a huge variety of topics. I went to a couple of interpreting sessions, and a couple of literary translation sessions (my back-burner idea for my third iteration as a language professional, after I someday retire from commercial translation and interpreting). My favorite was probably the panel on bidirectional interpreting (interpreting from and into your native language) featuring Robert Holloway, Laura Burian, and Celine Browning.

Other observations:

Miami is an excellent city for a conference. The hotel’s specific location (at the intersection of multiple busy streets) isn’t particularly scenic, but it backs directly to the Miami river, and you can easily walk to the more scenic waterfront, or to multiple hip neighborhoods with a lot going on. Miami is definitely a food town! I didn’t have a bad meal while I was there, including at the hotel restaurant!
As mentioned above, people really came out in force for this conference. Considering the lingering COVID situation, economic uncertainty, people’s fears about AI incursion into our work, etc., I think that 1,300 attendees was a great turnout. Huge kudos to conference organizer Veronika Demichelis, ATA President Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo, and the entire ATA team for all of their work to motivate people to come.
The ATA conference model may be changing. Personally, I’m almost always pro-change, or at least pro-innovation, so this issue (discussed at the Annual Meeting of all members) didn’t freak me out. That being said, it’s the case that while ATA conferences are usually planned around five years in advance (the timeline required by many large conference hotels), the only conferences currently on the schedule are Portland 2024 and Boston 2025. Current ATA Treasurer John Milan fielded a question about this at the Annual Meeting, and said that while the current conference model is successful, it’s also very expensive, and ATA (like probably all established professional associations) faces the issue of how to attract and retain new and younger members, who may not be as interested in a four-day conference at an expensive hotel. There’s no decision yet on what a different conference model might look like. Just in terms of data points, NAJIT does a hotel-based conference but it’s a lot shorter than ATA’s (preconference workshops on Friday, conference Saturday and Sunday); some of the European associations do conferences at a university in the summer, with no host hotel at all; or who knows what other options might be discussed. Point being, if you want to attend an ATA conference that uses the traditional model, make plans for Portland or Boston, because things may change after that!

I’m really glad I attended ATA64, and it was also great to see so many Training for Translators class participants there!!