In the summer of 2012, I woke up to the importance and omnipresence of social media for business. Since then, it’s been a very steep learning curve for me and resulted in several important changes for LAT.
Taking part in social media turns each member of a company into a marketer, from the CEO to the last recruit. CEOs need to take time to share their vision. They need to be transparent about the raison-d’être of their company. Each organization has a unique story: from the idea that lead to its creation to the daily activities, decisions and challenges it faces as a team. This is therefore the first of several blogs I am committing to write on a regular basis, to share this story with my team, with our clients, and with readers who share my passion for the infinite opportunities that languages and cultures have to offer.
In the last 12 months at LAT we:
- Built a marketing team
- Wrote a new marketing plan
- Changed the name of the company
- Rebranded our corporate image
- Built a new website, in three languages
- Set up social accounts (in various languages) on:
- YouTube
- Google+
- Slideshare
- Weibo (China)
- VK (Russia)
- Organized and hosted webinars to share and brainstorm ideas with marketers from various cultural backgrounds (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, French, English, Russian)
Embracing social media in a diverse marketplace like Canada and the US requires companies to rethink their marketing strategy. Since people in our cities speak many languages, come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and use social media from other countries, we need to adopt a multicultural marketing approach. Cultural Marketing is the natural evolution of the translation and marketing industries. Both fields need to work together to adapt marketing strategies to a multicultural audience.
LAT is a boutique company that caters to the translation industry and offers cross cultural marketing. We have a small but excellent and highly collaborative team which consists of two groups of professionals: Translators & Marketers. I’m very proud of each one of our team members and of the work they do. I want them to also be proud of LAT, its vision and its mission. It is this vision that I want to share with you here, precious readers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, members of our Google circles, groups, or meetups, to share this exciting experience as we make our way into this new landscape we call CULTURAL MARKETING or, more precisely, Multicultural Marketing.
My first stop, now that we’ve completed the steps above, is in Toronto. I’m here for the next few weeks to open our office, hire new staff members, and work with business groups and associations to encourage and foster greater integration between members of the business community. Business circles are reminiscent of a high school cafeteria: the Chinese group over there, the Indians over here, the Koreans, Japanese, Filipino, English, etc… each in their own group, co-existing in complete isolation. These cultural bubbles sustain their own members and perpetuate themselves over time, but can you imagine what would happen if they started to merge? How much more interesting it would be! That is where social media translation and cross-cultural social media comes in.
Source – mypolice.ca
Success in business comes down to two important factors: connections and markets. You want to export to China? You need connections. You won’t succeed on your own. So why not build those connections right here? Engaging with business communities allows you to leverage local connections to reach international markets. It’s a win-win proposition. And LAT’s commitment is to facilitate these interactions by:
- Providing translation services into Chinese, Punjabi, Filipino, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and more.
- Fostering engagement between various ethnic communities with multilingual social media
- Providing interpreting services at meetings, social functions, conferences, etc
- Providing language and cultural training
