S04E06: Influencer and Social Media Marketing for LSPs

Intro

Hello, and welcome to The Translation Company Talk, a weekly podcast show focusing on translation services and the language industry. The Translation Company Talk covers topics of interest for professionals engaged in the business of translation, localization, transcription, interpreting, and language technology. The Translation Company Talk is sponsored by Hybridlynx. Your host is Sultan Ghaznawi with today’s episode.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Welcome to this episode of The Translation Company Talk podcast. Today I am going to be talking to Javier Diaz Fernandez Carvajal about social media and influencer marketing for LSPs. Language services companies are very active on social media and digital channels, but we will learn from Javi, as he likes to be called, about what works and how to capitalize and monetize on these platforms.

Javi is a Acclaro Global Brand Champion, a community builder, and a connector of people. He dedicates his time and the development of LocLife, which is the localization community dedicated to human aspects and good leadership.

 

Javi, welcome to the Translation Company Talk podcast.

 

Javi Carvajal

Hola, my dear Sultan. How are you doing? It has been a couple of years since the last time.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I am so happy that you are back on this podcast, Javi. How have you been? First of all, where are you talking to me from?

 

Javi Carvajal

No, it is good. Last time, I think if I am not mistaken, I was chatting with you from Greece because I spent a lot of time there. Today, I am home in Prague. This is Javi, a Spanish man that travels around the world and lives in the Czech Republic. I came here for one of my jobs in the industry years ago and I stayed. So, today, I am home, which is rare and strange for me.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, it is so good to hear you are at home with your family. For those people who did not listen to your previous interview or do not know you, there is not many people who do not know you, but please give them an introduction and tell us what you do.

 

Javi Carvajal

Well then, my name is Javier Diaz. I am from Spain. As I said, I came into the industry by pure and mere chance, by throwing CV’s around, one got picked. I got an interview. I arrived in this industry. I did not know much. Back in the day, my background was law. I have a bachelorette law in Spain, and I have a master’s in international business. I just turned 40 years old. It is January 23.

 

I am the classical example of a millennial that has been really well-branded, studied a couple of languages, went to university, had to go to the world that was not as we were promised and had to recycle until I got to the industry and to do what I do. So here I am, super happy, and I am really thankful that you invited me to come again. Because as I told you last time, it was two years ago, we were in the middle of the pandemic last time we talked, remember?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Yes, yes.

 

Javi Carvajal

How has the world changed. Since then.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. It has changed a lot. I mean, if you look around us, the pandemic changed not just business, but the way people live.

 

Javi Carvajal

Oh, indeed. And do you know how cool and how impacting it was to go back on the road fully without limitations last year and seeing that a lot of the connections that we have done or that I was able to do through social media, through LinkedIn, through Instagram, in our industry, meeting them in person? It was super beautiful, super impacting. Some of those people also turned to become, just became our clients for Acclaro.You know that I worked in one of the mid-sized American LSP called Acclaro. So, today we are going to chat a little bit about this.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right, yes. So, Javi, how has work been for you in the past couple of years? You talked about how things are changing. I know you are super busy. What takes most of your time these days?

 

Javi Carvajal

So, currently, as I told you, it is early 2023, It is the beginning of the year. As most of us today, I am planning for the rest of the year. But if I put it in perspective, I am building on all the things that are on all the wins and all the losses as well that I had from this last couple of years. When we last talked, Sultan, we were in the middle of the pandemic, as I said, and we were discussing how we are going to get out of this, how are we going to make business, how are we going to use social media to leverage to find new clients.

 

Well, today I can tell you that this became a reality. So now I am planning to, as I was just saying, for example, go to visit all those people that I met and some of those that became our clients. So, I am busy preparing this, organizing the upcoming events of LocLife, which is the community that I built for the localization industry, where I invite industry leaders to come and talk about leadership and the human aspects. How those are connected. So, I am preparing basically my trips, the next upcoming events. And I hope that I can say soon that I am preparing some live event as well under the name of LocLife.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Tell me more about it, what is happening on that front?

 

Javi Carvajal

For example, I am preparing for the next event, it is going to take place in late March, the next topic I selected, and probably for those who know me and who listen to your podcast and that know of LocLife, they know that we discuss those leadership aspects in our industry that are normally overseen. People do not really say, okay, this is not important, but I see there is a niche to talk about that.

 

So, in the next event, we are discussing the importance of good managing up. I call this event, mastering the art of managing up. Thanks to my job, thanks to what I am doing, I am in touch with many industry leaders from the client side mainly. And they tell me how great their job is, how great their teams are, but sometimes they find the difficulties within their team for their employees to, I remember one friend saying, stop thinking like a translator and think like a manager, like a business manager.

 

So that being said, how some of the team members find it difficult to create those relationships with upper management especially, and to get done what they want to do to influence positively, and we are going to, and I said we are going to talk about influence, about properly influencing up, right, for the good sake of the company. So that is one of the things, that is the next episode that I am preparing at this point.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Again, I have invited you today to cover digital and social media marketing for our industry. Something that you are living through this every day. Most LSPs are active in one form or another online. So, Javi give us a view of where we stand when it comes to social media marketing in our industry?

 

Javi Carvajal

I really love that you point that out, most LSPs are active, but have you realized how they are active? The kind of posts they do out there, Sultan?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And yes, I mean, there is no standard. It is all over the place.

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes. It is all over the place. But I am telling you, I do analyze a lot of posts that are out there, and I follow a lot of beautiful big LSPs. You know what I mean? Sometime, to me, the thing that I miss is the factor of humanity within their posts. A lot of the post people do sound to me like a press release, some information thrown out there, we did this, this achievement, but there is a lot of the human element that is missing to my understanding.

 

That brings the problem or that brings the, I do not like to call it a problem because I do not believe in problems, I believe in issues, but that brings the issue that the audience, the targeted audience does not relate or identify themselves with that brand, that company because the message sounds like a press release. And that is what everybody is trying to or a lot of people out of the language service providers in our industry nowadays are trying to figure out.

 

And now, precisely, in this era that we live in, which is called the era of the influencer marketing, etc. Why do people still do this. So yes, there is a lot of content out there, but there is a lot of lack of humanity in the content in the content people put out there. And as I said, there are influences, and I want to point another thing out, and I think we are going to talk about this, too, they are of community building, Sultan, they are a community building community as the base for the growth of all the members for yourself, for those that are members for your business, etc. So, more humanity, I think is missing there.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Yes, well said. Javi, you are very active, as I said, on social media and constantly engaged with audiences.You build communities, I mean, a good example is LocLife, and you deliver brand messaging, and you keep it consistent. Tell me what is your strategy? How do you do that?

 

Javi Carvajal

Look, you know what I am trying to do, I really like the question, I have always been a natural user of social media, I loved it. My life has always consisted, or for the last 10 years, consisted of traveling, taking beautiful pictures, posting them there, and just because I wanted to show to those that follow me, what I was doing. And now, if I look with perspective, and to answer your question, what I do is, I really try to be natural, I really try to be consistent.

 

I think that those people that follow me and that buy from me or from my company, they knowthat I am a positive person, I travel all the time with members of the industry. I am constantly transmitting positivity, I have, you know because those are my principles. And I, on top of being natural, I try to always tell a story, I try to bring something that I also think is missing a lot in social media, especially in our industry is the part of storytelling.

 

I am telling you that I am always out there with an industry member, or we are discussing these things, I tell you a story that happened to me on my last trip, when I was visiting this person from my industry or traveling with one of my industry friends, as my last trip was a couple of weeks ago. So, I try to be natural, and I try to apply a storytelling method to do what I do.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Okay. Well, very, very interesting. Now, let us see how all your efforts, the storytelling and this brand awareness, efforts that you put in, how do you measure the return on investment or ROI from social media marketing?

 

Javi Carvajal

That is, my friend, that is the million-dollar question. And there is no real satisfying answer to that. I would say that the answer, if I am asked, and I discussed this internally a few times, how can we measure ROI? And it is difficult because if you keep using social media in a proper way, as I said, finding your voice, applying methods of storytelling being natural, at the end, you really do not know who is watching. I have seen this, ROI is completely difficult, but let me just go a little bit, tell you an example that happened to me recently. And that is ROI from my understanding. I shared it with my company, and they said that is beautiful, especially since the pandemic.

 

Well, in our industry, we have always been pretty spread out, company members in Asia, in the US, in Latin America, in Europe. And the other day, and not counting this, I was in one of the conferences in our industry, and one of our clients that I had never met came to me, not one, more than one, but I am telling you about one specific case. I am, Javi, I really love the trips you are doing. I really love how you are, this uplifting post that you are doing, keep doing this. That is ROI. That is ROI. Because in the end, it is organic, it is not measurable, it is organic, but then here you are, you are getting the conversation from a prospective buyer. This person that is going to buy from you one day is talking to you, telling you these beautiful things. That is ROI. How measurable is that?

 

I am sorry. There is not a tool, things that you can do. I mean, little things, yes, try to note, for example, those little advances, those posts you do, those little conversations you have in a CRM, but that helps to keep a little bit of an order. But to be honest, from my understanding, the ROI is what I have just explained and not measurable in the classical metrics that you can go to a platform and say, oh, this is ROI.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And you are right. I mean, there is a matrix for ROI and then there is the human element to it where you get organic feedback and people actually tell you how much of a difference you are making, and you build business as a result of that. A common mistake in our industry is that we are all trying to market to each other.I mean, we, you know, it feels like every translation company wants to impress another translation company about how great they are doing. What is wrong with that approach? For example, you know, I have not heard many translation companies saying how they are making a difference in the insurance industry or technology industry and so forth. Everyone is talking about how great their translation memory system is or machine translation is or things that only resonate to us, not to people outside our industry who are buying our services.Tell me about that. How are you going to change that?

 

Javi Carvajal

Look, I believe, that you have a point here, totally Sultan. And I covered this in LocLife many times. It is maybe related to the lack of empathy that people can have, how to impose ourselves, how big they are and stuff like that and not how amazing they are, how amazing other achievements instead of coming to somebody and asking what you need, what is wrong with you once you have developed true relationships.

 

To me, the key to avoid this marketing to each other would be perhaps applying a social selling methodology based on true relationships, people within our industry and outside of industry, once you build those relationships with a high level of empathy, the sale is done, the social selling methodology applies. I want to buy from you because you listen to me or whatever. That is, I think that factor might be missed in many times, on many occasions. Not all the sales departments might have this, that might be the point that we are covering now.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Understood.

 

Javi Carvajal

What do you think? Do you see it like this as well as a bit of perhaps lack of empathy?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I think so. I think we all try to have a bit of an ego. We think that, you know, if I am talking in this language or in this terminology, or if I am using this terminology, everyone must understand me, not that everyone will understand me, everyone must understand me, which creates a bit of a disconnect because the buyers have a choice of choosing which supplier most resonate with them. So, if you are selling to someone, my personal opinion is that you need to speak to them, you need to appeal to them. You cannot be talking about ice cream ingredients when you are selling ice cream to a child. You have to talk about how tasty it is.

 

The problem is that we are doing, we are talking about the ingredients and not the colour or, or the aspects of the ice cream that would appeal to a child because I am not actually, comparing our customers to a child. It is an analogy that shows that everybody has a different language. And I think that as an industry, we need to change this, and social media presents us thatopportunity.

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Except that right now we are still focused on the same stuff. I mean, not disrespect to any of our associations. Every association that I go to, they are talking about the same thing. Oh, here you come, you will learn about the industry. You will learn. We are the voice of the industry, but our industry does not need a voice. Our customers need a voice, and we need to speak in that voice. Nobody is doing that.

 

Javi Carvajal

So, the lack of empathy is what I have been telling you. It is clear.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right. Right.

 

Javi Carvajal

And this is something that we can discuss as well. Because if you want to change it, you need to be empathetic. You need to find your purpose and understand your audience.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let us move on. Let us shift our focus on how we should do social marketing. I mean, there are a variety of ways to connect with people socially. Since you are an expert in this area, how do you suggest people should prioritize the different platforms and build strategies around that? I mean, LinkedIn is a lot different than Facebook and that is different than Twitter and Twitter is much more different than TikTok.

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes. That is a good one. First of all, I will discuss today, what the methodology that has worked for me and what I am trying to implement through LocLife, what is working for us. Because you know, the first thing I am going to tell you, Sultan, is that one has to find a purpose, what is that you are, what is your passion? What are you good at?

 

How do you project that passion? How do you transmit it to others? That is, although it sounds crazy, that is so easy to do. If you go out there and you ask a lot of people, most of the people, regardless of, they are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s, can you believe they still have not found your passion? Their passion?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right.

 

Javi Carvajal

How are they going to be? Well, it is true. This is unfortunately a very bad aspect in life. If you ask me, and I was telling my friend the other day, what is your passion? I was, I will reply to you within a second. My passion is knowing the world, connecting people, traveling, visiting them. If I can connect, connect. And if I can help them, help them. This is a true passion. It is bringing me doors, it is open, it is open doors for me. It is open doors for my profession, for my development and it is bringing business to my company. Can you believe it? So first, everyone should find a passion. Everyone should find a way to, I mean, what they are best in and project it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right.

 

Javi Carvajal

And then once you have found what you, come on nowadays with all those social media platforms you, you refer to, and especially our industry is very focused on LinkedIn. It is very strongly on LinkedIn know how to use that tool. And I am telling you, there is quite a couple courses out there, a couple of indications that can help you to improve your social media writing, the message you can communicate, the ideas you can transmit.

 

So, once you have found that purpose, without selling it, find the proper way to transmit those ideas that is consistent. And then, the last thing that I would suggest is, as I said before, develop storytelling skills, and it is not difficult because if you check any movie, let us check, for example, let us go to Star Wars or whatever. It is always the same. There is a lost hero who you can think it is your client that finds a master like Yoda, which is you who helps him realize and achieve his thing. And how do you tell all that story is a good way to apply storytelling, marketing storytelling, methodologies and thrive nowadays.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. I mean, it is about connecting with people because at the end of the day, people buy from people. Now let us, talk about a typical LSP. What does engagement on social media and these channels, what does it look like and what does it mean for an LSP when you talk about engagement? How should they target audiences? I mean, they have to decide who they want to speak with.

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes. So, as I said, my friend, everyone’s voice or everyone’s target, it is not all different, but everyone has tofind, first of all, that right audience, which surprisingly, a lot of LSPs do not even find it yet or have not found it. A lot of language providers have not found who they want to sell to, maybe they are, instead of being focusing within the focus. So, the message they produce might not be the correct one for everybody. So, you have tofind the right audience, find the right message, build, sorry, pardon me, for, before that, I would like to say, before finding the right message, I would like to say build and nurture that audience.

 

Once you have found it, build and nurture it. And then once that, that goes to the point that I said before, and sorry for the mixing, that goes that message that might be a bit different depending on who is listening. What is the kind of content that should be included in that message? I am trying to do a lot of leadership talks to spread leadership content that gets to leaders, potential leaders, or those who are starting leadership, or those who are there, who at the end come and talk to me and they ask me, oh, what does Acclaro do, and they end up doing business. So that is the kind of thing, the content, developing it.

 

And I tell you one thing that, we discussed before is rule once you have done these four steps, rule number one within the content created is, you cannot sell, you cannot sell, or you cannot speak in content about the achievements of your company. Nobody likes that.And a lot of people still do.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Yes, yes, I noticed that it is a very common trend, and you cannot be simply saying how good you are when the focus is on the customer. Now, there are social engagement ads, promoted content, and so on and so forth. What works best for LSPs when it comes to social media?

 

Javi Carvajal

Look, I am going to tell you what works best. No, I am kidding. I am not going to tell you what works, for me, but I saw, I really like a lot the role of a proper community builder that can use the platforms out there to transmit the content that I told you before. That is what I think works the best. You mentioned it before, it is engagement, whether it is engagement ads, promoted content.

 

What people do not normally follow is brands, is ideas, and of course, other people. So how about if an LSP or each LSP will have their own community builder, there is beautiful people that are doing it out there, for example, also my friend, Jan Henry, who is the promoter and the creator of the community of LocLunch, look at the thing he has done. Those things work really well, and the reach can be very big in an industry as tight as ours.

 

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Sultan Ghaznawi

Let us focus on a specific social media platform. Let us look at LinkedIn. That is where most business folks hang around. It is a platform where we are all used to, and you are very active on LinkedIn. How can LSPs take advantage of the organic content and opportunities to develop more business on LinkedIn?

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes, I tell you one thing, you need to spend hours and hours and hours there. You need to put together once, if you follow the type of advice that I shared before, that works for me, finding that audience, nurturing the audience, creating the right content, be consistent on that platform post to regular post.

 

And here is the most important thing, interact with that people, go to see who comments and send them a message that is private, care about them, how are you doing, are you good, and those things that require a lot of time and dedication are what are the end payback in business for that LSP. So, starting with naming a person, spending a lot of following the advice that I gave, and spending really a lot of hours there and taking care of the people and, you know, connecting with them really. That is what works.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

It makes sense. Yes, absolutely. Javi, people are obsessed with numbers on social media in terms of, you know, how far it reaches and so forth. Everyone wants more connections, more likes, more followers, and more visibility. What is the right combination? What numbers and statistics actually matter for you to get your message out through the content that you publish?

 

Javi Carvajal

Let me tell you one thing, from the very beginning, numbers do not matter that much. It is quality and it is the real relationships that you build through social media that you nurture with people that you probably had seen before that matter. Those are the two factors that matter. Let me tell you a story, I did not multiply by three, my number of people, the connections, and followers that I have on LinkedIn, they were incrementally going up.

 

And for the last two years, what I have been doing has brought benefits to Acclaro last year. We brought a lot of almost 20 to 25% of the new business came through my doing through LocLife. And I was not very focused on numbers. And on the other hand, I know that there are other people that focus on growing their audience and they have a different purpose, and they still have not met their goals. What matter is really the quality of the audience, really the quality of the relationships you can build with that audience. That is what really matters.

 

It is always better to have a good person that you know that you can make friends with and that is closer to buy from you than having these 10,000 or 20,000 people that follow you, that all they do is comment and you do not get fulfilled, you do not get your business coming from them. So that is the advice I would give.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

All right, Javi, how do you create an influencer for your business? Do you have to team up with someone who is a rockstar in your client’s industry? For example, if you are an LSP, would you rather be associated with an influencer that is very popular and specializes, for example, in healthcare or legal industry, I mean, they have their own cheerleaders there, if you will, on social media, or do you have to find an influencer that is promoting similar LSP services to others?

 

Javi Carvajal

Wow, look, do you know that I really do not like the term influencer. When I think of influencers, especially coming from our industry, I think of somebody that is promoting a bikini or some certain products or a perfume or whatever. And I really like two words and one I mentioned it before, one is the role of the community builder and the second word that I want to bring up now is the word of the connector. I think in an industry such as niche as ours and so connected and so, let us call it small.

 

And based on what I have been saying, the importance of building those relationships, quality of those relationships, I would rather focus and or call for the importance of a connector. A person that really connects, for example, versus an influencer, to me an influencer, as I said before, is that kind of person, but a connector, I would differentiate it from an influencer in the, for example, in the fact that a connector really cares about what is going on with the community, what is going on with the people there who lost their job, who can they help with or who, when they got a new job, needs a new vendor.

 

So, that is what really makes the difference in our industry, like ours, rather than teamingup with somebody that, you know, or they are not influential or somebody that tells you, hey, I am going to turn you into an influencer, but do you understand how we do business in our industry? Do you understand the voice that I want to have? It could be more complicated. So please, everyone find their industry, their connector within their LSP.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I noticed that in social media, you know, it has become very personal, even on that business front, people constantly deal with, you know, or talk about personal things.How does it pay off when people bring in personal or unrelated stuff, off topic stuff to the context of business?How do you monetize on that type of content?

 

Javi Carvajal

That is the key to this all, Sultan, I think, and I mentioned it before, people are interested in people, not in companies, and especially, I did not say this, in an industry like ours, which at the end, we all want to translate the client’s content. So, the more you are able to create an image, create interesting personal content, of course, with a certain type of career, I do not want to be posting about my girlfriend or my relationships or what I did, drinking cocktails last weekend on certain channels, not on another, then the more I it is going to work. So, there is always a leverage.

 

And I am going to tell you another story about my trips, for example, I am lucky enough to have the role of the connector community builder, I am lucky enough, as I said, or to beautifully be building around the methodology of selling or of storytelling. And I am able to travel a lot with where to visit friends in some part of the world, mostly in America, or in Europe, or to travel with them. I travel a lot with a great friend of mine who is a director of organization in the industry.

 

And I tell stories that happen to us there, or conversations that we have. And that people feel like, oh, my God, this guy is having this problem as well. Oh, my God, this guy, he bumped into this other person the other day.And by coincidence, that is funny. And that keeps your audience engaged, and not that they are waiting for you to post the next thing, but once you post, they read. So, that is what works, the human part, because we follow people.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I see that you are constantly looking at that aspect of resonating with people, connecting with them and understanding what they care about. And again, marketing of any kind is of topic or content, or service is about raising awareness. I think we all agree on that. How do LSPs have a creative engagement? For example, do they get people to visit their websites, attend their events, read their posts? What is the right combination? What should LSPs be placing in front of potential customers that they would say, okay, you know, for this industry, I am interested in their webinars, or I am interested in and learning more a little bit, you know, this is something that we all focus on right now is educating our customers. And by that, I mean, it is like most companies talk about translation memory and machine translation and how great human translation is. But do customers really care about that? Are we actually presenting them with the right information?

 

Javi Carvajal

Look, I would say that really whatever suits you best, whatever works for one. But we have seen in, you and I know, that most of the, let us call it leads or prospective clients that come to one do not come through visits on the website. They come through references to come through conversations through chats on LinkedIn, etc. So, I would say that to create engagement, the best thing is to properly learn how to use social media, how to put the right content under how to attract interest for people, to for those prospective clients to follow you and to have those real good conversations and never force it.

 

So, there is always, of course, you always need to have a website, but I think, and once again, let me focus again and say it again, because I do not think I said it enough times. The role of a connector for this, for this particular situation we are discussing is key, right, to keep, you know, the things moving. Okay, come and check this, look at the website, that is the point.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What do you make of the new platforms popping up like TikTok? How can LSP type businesses benefit from these emerging social media platforms?

 

Javi Carvajal

I mean. I never opened a TikTok account. I do not have TikTok. But I am, but there is one thing that I want to touch upon here and it is, first of all, let us say the following, find whatever platform works for you. If you think that your clients are on TikTok, if you think that your clients are on LinkedIn, if you think your clients are on Facebook, find it and use it.

 

But here is what I want to add as well, lose the fear of projecting good content and good messages regardless of the platform. I want to say this because a lot of, and I mentioned before, a lot of the content we are used to find on the platform that most of us are using in the industry, which is LinkedIn is always communications and a press release and that is not cool. So, once you find the platform, please do not be, do not be scared of transmitting human messages there. It works. It really works. So yes, do it. It can be.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

No, I agree with you. But as you know Javi, the world is changing. I mean, a newer generation is taking over in business, whether it is on the supply side or provider side, and there is the millennial and the generations after that, that will be active. And most of them, TikTok is from a platform where they will be getting a lot of the information from whether we like it or not. And similarly, Instagram, there is a bunch of other ones. I am not particularly a social media savvy person, but there is a potential use case.

 

There is a potential goldmine of opportunity to reach out to the new buyer of our services. And since you are so active, what do you think? Do you think we can capitalize on these new platforms by teaming up with people who are already successful, or do you suggest that we establish new ways of raising awareness through these platforms? Because at the end of the day, as you say, when it comes to social selling, it is all about the human experience. You know, for example, yourself, when you are traveling, you are posting pictures of yourself on a mountain, a beautiful landscape. How can you leverage that on these new platforms?

 

Javi Carvajal

I have seen a couple of examples that are very good in our industry from one person, I am thinking of one right now who is posting the same content on Instagram, on LinkedIn and by her posts. I said her. So, it is a female on her posts. She says, find me on TikTok here. So that is working out for this person very well. So, as I said before, learn to use it, use it the way you think it works. And if you want to repeat the content platform over platform, it is doable. On teaming with other influencers, this is, I would always prefer to build it by myself to spend the real time building it by myself.

 

I know it is a pain sometimes and it requires a lot of time. And some of the companies that pay your salaries are not willing to spend that time. So, it is an extra work, experiment it and do it little by little. That is the way to get a good use of social media. It is very interesting to see how this person, for example, I do it almost all the time because I sometimes use photos for Instagram and then I use them on LinkedIn and on Facebook. So, you know, it is the message, it is not the channel. So do not be scared of the channel, the way it is, you think suits your voice. It is your, your message.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

People have a very short attention span Javi. It seems like scrolling takes away all their focus from the content itself. How do you get them to find your content and more importantly to read it and then interact with it?

 

Javi Carvajal

I have done, I mean, I learned to use social media, as I said, in a way that, for example, I do not, I try to not post endless 30 minutes kind of Bible posts. I do them sometimes long, but not as long. So, you know, and using a lot of point by point as well, I try to do so people have a quick look, oh, here is a point, a second point, a third point. So, I try to do that a lot, especially on LinkedIn, on this platform that, as I said, for our location industry, we are all there and all connected.

 

So that is a good way of, that is working for me, for people to read my content and to read my stories more than my content, let us, let us call it stories so that I prefer the word stories, the stories I tell.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I understand. I understand. Javi, do you think that LSPs need specialized and dedicated social media and digital content support, someone who is constantly looking after that, should this be outsourced, or can it be learned and, or developed in-house?

 

Javi Carvajal

Yes, yes, the role of the content creator and the role of the user of social media. It is something that should be a whole role for one LSP. I understand that this might be more complicated in one of, in some of the big ones, which are very complex themselves, but in mid-sized companies, like the one I work for, or other smaller companies, this role is key.

 

I vouch and I advocate for people to choose a person within the company and make it the champion on my end, as you have probably seen, I created this role itself, global brand champion. I just said it before, but it is never bad to repeat it. I prefer to learn by experiencing doing good, doing bad rather than externalizing all these services. It is risky when you externalize the whole thing, who understands your voice better than yourself? Nobody does. So, externalizing all of the services might be complicated and pay not back as well as you expect, turn your content or your stories into mere press releases that do not say nothing to the audience.

 

On the other hand, once you have found those things, there are different services that you can externalize. I do not know; I do a lot of videos. I have somebody that helps me create those videos. I share with other people as well. I have these ideas for content posts that I am going to talk to people about this, what do you think? And they give me their opinions. Once you have found your voice and you have an idea of what you want to comment, some of the services might be externalized, but let us say some of the logistical services, okay? Does it make sense?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Of course. Javi, tell me how important it is to be consistent with the type and frequency of content or stories as you call them on social media.

 

Javi Carvajal

On a scale from 1 to 10, a 20 consistency is what matters the most. And I am talking about, once you have learned to use the platform itself, the platforms yourself, be consistent, post consistently, tell your stories consistently. And what is most important, talk to the audience, to the people in your community consistently,care about them. It is extremely important.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Okay. I understand. And I agree with you. And in closing, Javi, what advice would you give LSPs trying to market and promote your services through social media?

 

Javi Carvajal

What are you waiting for to be human, find your voice, be consistent and invest real time in this if you are not doing it? Do not just use social media as a side thing to your business. Trust me, the future of or the future, not the future, the present of sales and of human marketing and of social selling are in the good use of social media.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Javi, as always, it is really interesting and fun to speak with you. And there is a lot of for language companies to learn about marketing and innovative ways across the social and digital channels that are popular and trendy these days. And you covered quite a bit of them. So let me thank you for all the information that you shared with us, and I hope we can do this again sometime.

 

Javi Carvajal

Definitely, I am open to chat with you because I think you have also built a beautiful community of followers. I know that people really appreciate what you are doing, bringing these chats with industry known people, Jessica Renato, Anna, Kerry, all these people that come and share their beautiful ideas and the ways of doing it in their industry. So, I am always happy to come back. If anything.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I appreciate that.

 

Javi Carvajal

You know where to find me on LinkedIn. Looking forward to coming back.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you so much Javi and I look forward to speaking with you again. I hope that this year of 2023 brings you a lot of success, happiness, and health.

 

Javi Carvajal

Thanks!

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

No company can claim successful marketing today if they are not leveraging the power of social media. Brand influencers bring in a lot of value in the form of connecting buyers to products and services. Language industry is no different except in the sense that most of our services are delivered and consumed in B2B settings.

 

However, at the end we are all people, and we need to know what is available to us to use as a service and this is where social media and influencer marketing comes in handy. As Javi said, we must be in front of our potential customers all the time and engage them. We must remember that bad news spreads faster than good news on social media. Influencers and marketing solution providers offer ways to maintain transparency, show integrity and deliver genuine user experiences starting with targeted marketing.

 

This brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Javi and please do follow him on social media if you are not connected to him already. Do not forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your platform of choice and give this episode a 5-star rating.

 

Until next time!

 

Outro

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