STAR TS Translation Services Blog

On Friday we attended Enterprise Ireland’s Social Media club #eismclub in EI’s Headquarters.

Captain Pat O'Connor and Damien Mulley discussing Social media policy.

Two fantastic presentations from Captain Pat O’Connor, Spokesperson & Media Relations, Irish Defence Forces and Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications on how to create, roll out and manage your social media presence. As you can imagine for the defence forces this would be a tricky and sensitive area. How do you allow people to blog/tweet and socialise whilst protection national security interests and peoples public/private interests. Captain O’Connor spoke excellently about how they manage this balance. They defence forces have a very well thought out policy and process for publication of information. His presentation was open and he shared a great many valuable lessons with everyone in the room.

Damien spoke about how to manage your presence and policy -and the key elements you need to have in place for a successful social presence.

1. Very important to remember is that in today’s world a Tweet carries the same weight as a Press Release. Captain O’Connor spoke about how some of the defence forces tweets had reached the news before the officical press releases – so you need to be careful how and about what you tweet.

2. So you need to have a Social Media Policy in place. A great site for lots of examples/templates for free social media policies is http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

3. You should assign people as social media commentators and train them accordingly.

4. You should register your social media profile on all the various systems even if you don’t plan to use them. It can be an expensive and long process to get them back if someone cybersquats them.

5. Have an emergency response policy for social media. This is important to ensure you respond accordingly to manage situation. One company who had their database of clients “hacked” immediately sent out press releases about their “data breach”. This was picked up quickly by the search engines so discussions where about the “data breach” and not the “Hack”. This was a much softer message and a great PR win for them.

6. Finally ensure you tie your business strategy in with your social media strategy. Know your audience/customers, where they are (on what platforms), how they communicate and publish appropriate messages for them. Just like any offline marketing strategy you need to know the who, what, where and when of your messages.

Enterprise Ireland – eMarketing Workshop

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dublin 20 / October 2011

Today we attended an excellent event on international web design, marketing and communication run by Enterprise Ireland in the Crown Plaza in Blanchardstown.

The opening address was by Jennifer Condon, Divisional Manager of EI who spoke about the importance of the web in driving Irelands future success.

Aileen O’Toole director of Amas spoke about the growth of the internet and ecommerce sales for Irish companies. Some facts included:

• 72% of households access the internet at home, a very high penetration.
• Your online presence will directly impact your offline sales.
• 90% of people surveyed in Europe prefer to browse websites in thier local language – so translation is important.
• Bad translation will lose you business and advised against using free tools like Google Translate.

Next up was Gareth Dunlop who gave an amazing presentation on how Content Is King!

Gareth Dunlop and Damian Scattergood discuss the advantages on good online content.

Gareth’s presentation style is very relaxed and direct to the point. Creating good content is important. He showed us an example of a stock photograph of a group of people used on 10 different websites. “Surely these people don’t work for all these companies” he said! Creating your own photo’s and content shows an honesty that comes across to your customers.

In the old days websites just had the basic’s – visitors to your site now demand content they can use – however as Gareth says…

Internet Simplicity if Very Difficult to achieve.

Ed Field CEO of Digino Marketing speaking to Damian Scattergood at Enterprise Irelands eMarketing Workshop.

Ed Field from Digino Marketing followed with the next step – communicating your message to your target audience. I found this very thought provoking. Ed had a slightly different spin on the classic USP. We all talk about Unique Selling Points and Elevator pitches, but at the end of the day Ed asks…

What are you brilliant at?

Its amazing how a simple question can show up answers. We all struggle to define what our USP’s are, but I can tell you instantly what we can brilliant at. “We are probably the best technical translators in the world.”  We are excellent at technical documents and technical marketing. Now how do I get that message across on our website and marketing material. Certainly its a lot easier than defining a USP statement.

When clients visit your website you have to get their attention in 6 seconds – and convince them in under 3 minutes. So there is no space on your website for fluffy text. People just want answers. When was the last time you visited an airline website to see what planes they have – never? You just want to buy a seat. Does this apply to your business?

Now – once you have all this sorted out on your website – can you now do it in 12 languages? That was John Coburns topic International Search Engine Marketing

Wow – it was an excellent morning, plenty of thought provoking ideas and work for us to do on our own export sales.

Irish Presidential Debate in Irish. Or was it?

What did you think of the debate last night? Cad a cheapann tú?

Its interesting that Michael D. Higgins was the only fluent Irish speaker in last nights debate. Did you see the debate? What did you think? Should our president be fluent as Gaeilge?

We wanted to wish a big congratulations to Ratoath mens tennis team on their victory in the Dublin Lawn Tennis Council Senior League victory last weekend.

The team was captained by our very own managing director Damian Scattergood. The leagues are played over a 3 month period and Ratoath successfully topped their group to reach the finals. It was a long summer with plenty of hard work from all involved. Plenty of summer teas, making sandwichs and hard tennis. The over 35′s team are delighted to win the tournament and rest their aching limbs again. Photographs courtesy of Simon McDermot.

The winning team are:

Mark Whitbread, Simon McDemot, Damian Scattergood (Captain), Stephen Foley, Dave Curley, Pat McDermot and Tommy White (The Super Sub).

Winning Team: Mark Whitbread, Simon McDermot, Damian Scattergood, Stephen Foley, Dave Curley

The finals where against Trim 1st, formidable opponents who had one the league a few years earlier. So it was going to be a tough battle from the start. Trim started strongly taking all the first sets in every match. Dave and Stephen where ahead in theirs but the Trim team proved too strong and edged ahead to win the first doubles in 2 sets.

Dave Curley and Stephen Foley playing for Ratoath 1st

Mark and Damian meanwhile where struggling in their match losing the first set 6-2. However pure grit and determination proved worthwhile as they fought back to deliver a tie break in the second. Meanwhile Simon and Pat stormed through their 2nd and 3rd sets to get victory. 1-1 in games so it was down to Mark and Damian.

You could feel the tension in the club. Trim stormed to a 5-1 lead in the tie break and it looked like all was lost. Winning 6 clear points in a row Ratoath turned the game on its head to win the tiebreak 7-5. The game was all to be played for again. Again trim pushed hard breaking Damian’s power serve to go 2 love up in the final set. Mark dug deep for his serve to get it to 2-1 and then with a flourish of excellent competitive tennis Ratoath won the next 5 games in a row winning 6-2. Phew – what an amazing win and hard days work. Well done Ratoath!

Ratoaths Number 2 team Mark Whitbread and STAR's managing director Damian Scattergood planning their next move in their tight 3 set victory. 3/6 7/6 6/2

Pat and Simon McDermot show the tension of a tight game.

Damian Scattergood hits a high smash at full stretch dead center of the racquet.

How can you verify VAT numbers for a VIES report?

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/

I came across the very useful web site, where you can validate the VAT number of any company in the EU.  For VIES reports it’s a must. Just follow the instructions and leave no spaces between the VAT numbers. Just choose from the drop down menu’s. You enter your own companies VAT number and choose the country where your company is registered. Then enter the VAT number of the company you are looking to validate.

You can check one EU country at a time, which I found useful. It saves you having to re set the drop down menu each time you check for a vat number in a particular EU country.

We use this ourselves for our VIES reporting – so we hope you will find it useful too.

Damian and Imelda,

STAR’s Finance team.

VAT Numbers – normally have the following formats:

Germany    DE + 9 numeric characters
Austria       AT + 9 numeric and alphanumeric characters
Belgium    BE + 9 numeric characters
Denmark  DK + 8 numeric characters
Spain         ES + 9 characters
Finland     FI + 8 numeric characters
France     FR + 2 figures (informatic key) + N° SIREN (9 figures)
United-Kingdom GB + 9 numeric characters
Greece     EL + 9 numeric characters
Ireland    IE + 8 numeric and alphabetic characters
Italy        IT + 11 numeric characters
Luxembourg LU + 8 numeric characters
Netherlands NL + 12 alphanumeric characters, one of them a letter
Portugal PT + 9 numeric characters
Sweden SE + 12 numeric characters

This month we have a very interesting article from a company we work with Tenego Partnering. Tenego Partnering drive sales for high growth technology companies in international markets through partnering.

In this guest blog Donagh Kiernan the CEO discusses how partners can accelerate your business.

Can Partners Accelerate Your Business?

When you’re ready to accelerate your business growth, then accelerate through partnering.

A simple concept: If there are businesses operating in your target market, and these businesses have relationships with your target customers, who possess the right capabilities to assist you selling your products.

Then the fastest way to bring your product to the market is to identify those companies who have the right relationships and the right capabilities, to work with them and share the gain. In working with them, you need to understand how the partner sells.

You don’t just want access to their current customers but also you want to know that they are seeking to grow the customer base of your type of customer.

Also you don’t have to depend on one type of partner, you can have different partners bringing different capabilities, market sectors regions, or even directly competing partners in an ‘you eat what you kill’ arrangement.

Direct Sales delivers the full margin of the sale, but with the enormous cost of learning the market, building credibility and relationships to make sales happen, makes perfect sales sense.

Partnering is more cost effective and once you’ve learned what works for your business, you can scale much faster that direct sales. Get plugged into a ready-made sales force that already exists in the market and work with them to sell your products.

Do pick the right partners and work closely with them for early wins. sharing your knowledge of how to sell your product, and their knowledge and access to the market.

To see how partners can help accelerate your business, call us today on +353212307117 or email us at newsletter@tenegopartnering.com

For more information on partnering, check out  www.tenegopartnering.com

Article Published courtesy of Tenego Partnering Ltd     www.tenegopartnering.com

Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) Level 1 training and certification 2011

Registration is now open for Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) Level 1 courses offered online and onsite in Silicon Valley, Boston Area, and Barcelona in 2011. Click here for more details.

• The CLP Programme sponsors include Alchemy Software Development, Multilingual Computing Inc., SDL, and Aquino Translation Software.

The courses consist of a combination of ten self-learning online modules and a four-day onsite intensive training and examinations session.

• Introduction to Information Technology
• Localisation and the Software Engineering Life-cycle
• Software I18N Enablement and Character Handling
• Localisation Kitting and File Preparation
• User Interface Localisation Tools (PC)
• Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) Tools (PC)
• Introduction to Terminology, Term Bases, and Terminology Resources
• Introduction to Test Plans, Scripts/Cases, Bug Reporting, and Classification
• Introduction to Website Localisation
• Introduction to Localisation Project Management

Certification details

• There are two different registration fee levels; one including distribution of permanent licenses for successful participants, and excluding software licenses.
• All successful participants will receive TILP Level 1 CLP Certification.

If you cannot make it this year, please forward to other friends, colleagues, or organizations that might be interested.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

We hope to see you at one of the course locations!

TILP Event Planning

www.tilponline.net