New Crowdsourced Translation Option

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This post originally appeared on my blog on Monday, May 7, 2012.

Ackuna.com logo.Many organizations don’t have the budget to guide them through a full translation / localization project, and some don’t even know where to start. In late 2009 I wrote about low/no-cost options from Google (machine translation) and Facebook (human-powered): Facebook and Google Want to Translate Your Site

A new option has emerged recently, covered in the Mashable piece Free Online Human Translation Service Takes On Babelfish, Google Translate. Unfortunately the writer of that piece doesn’t seem to understand the rigor that has to go into the translation process, so opportunities to provide a deeper analysis are missed in the article.

The service is called Ackuna, a free offering from a translation agency. Mashable’s suggestion that this service takes on the two translation giants on which most web users rely is silly — Google and Babelfish provide real-time machine translation. Ackuna does neither. Ackuna uses people to provide translation and does so at the pace of the volunteer translators.

I have already made a case against machine translation for anything other than casual or immediate needs. I almost always counsel my clients against its use, including the free Google translate widget you can drop into a web site. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s out of the scope of what I am addressing here.

Because Ackuna uses humans for translation, there are a number of questions that anyone looking to use Ackuna should ask. I detailed a set of questions in my 2009 post, but I’ll recap here (excluding the questions regarding Facebook Connect):

  1. Does Ackuna attract users who are fluent in the desired target language?
  2. Are these users willing to help translate your content for free?
  3. Is the translator a subject matter expert?
  4. Is the translator part of your target audience (including geographic and demographic breakdown)?
  5. Are you (or your client) comfortable letting unknown third parties translate your message?
  6. Is time budgeted to identify content for translation?
  7. Is time budgeted to have someone review the translation?

Ackuna’s FAQ page answers some of these questions, but doesn’t really explain how you qualify a translator. Ackuna’s translators are ranked in the site by a combination of user feedback and badges. Think upvotes and downvotes, with points determined by whether or not a translation (or a step) was accepted or not. Badges are awarded based on other translators marking submitted translations as accurate.

When it comes to deciding whether a translation is correct, assuming you don’t speak the target language, Ackuna doesn’t make any guarantees:

Use a translator’s reputation and badges as an indicator of their credibility, and take into account the comments and feedback left on each translation by other users. Use these factors and your best judgment before accepting the translation of your text.

If timing is a concern, remember that translators are providing translations because they want to. The only pay-off for these translators are badges and points. When you have no contract and no way to pressure someone for work, there is no guarantee it will ever be completed. In case you can’t wait and decide to walk away with what’s been translated so far, from the FAQ:

How do I download my completed translation?

[…] You will not be able to view a completed translation until every segment in your project has at least one translation submitted.

Not being able to secure translations can be a bit tricky, too, especially if some of your content is sensitive or personal. Given this clause in the terms & conditions, you may want to think hard about what you post for translation:

[Y]ou give the right to Ackuna and its affiliates to store your input indefinitely and reuse it at any time and for any purpose at our discretion.

Ackuna needs critical mass to produce good translations (or translators whose profiles don’t read like Hipster spam-bots). It needs many translators reviewing each others’ work to produce robust translations in timeframes that matter for businesses. Ackuna needs more users ranking one another’s work, otherwise it may be too hard to know if that Simplified Chinese translation really conveys your message properly — especially when the translators all have a similar rating. Ackuna’s bare-bones interface may not help it attract good Samaritans who just want to translate, since it’s not too easy to see all the projects in one pass (you have to page through them) and the search feature doesn’t work (yet, it claims).

Ackuna itself is not a bad idea. A translation workflow and process is a necessity in any translation project and Ackuna provides some of that. If you already have translators available to you, it might even make an effective no-cost solution to manage the workflow and get others to weigh in on the work.

What Ackuna could do is counsel its users on what makes good translation, maybe even cross-selling its parent company’s services. From there it should group translations into industries or subject matter so that those with experience in them can find content more relevant to their skills. In addition, finding a method to indicate a translator has a specific industry or region expertise and provide a ranking system for same can go a long way to helping a user understand if his or her translation is as good as it could be.

I want to be clear that I am not criticizing Ackuna (though I could be criticizing Mashable’s presentation of Ackuna). Providing a free service for something so rooted in the complexities of human language goes beyond what its technology can do. As I have commented before about free services, you get what you pay for.

Google Penguin, a Focus on Better Content

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In late April Google activated new ranking algorithm changes intended to help rid the world of sites and blogs that link excessively, with no regard for quality; engage in keyword stuffing; an/or publish lots of meaningless content in order to get search engine traffic.

Whenever Google rolls out changes to their search/ranking algorithms, a lot of people take notice. And a lot of those people also freak out – I’ve heard stories of small businesses laying off workers in response to the Penguin changes – but I’m pretty happy about them (well, what I know about them so far), and here’s why:

They put the focus on quality content writing.

No more clogging your content with keywords, just for keyword clogging sake. Now SEO is about giving your site visitors relevant information in a clear, concise manner and using keywords when appropriate. Try to cram more in there than necessary and you might even get penalized or removed from the search results, altogether. Focusing on useful, helpful, and educational content that provides real value will keep visitors interested and coming back for more and now, maybe more than ever, it will also keep search engines happy. This is a beautiful thing.

As a writer in the digital world, I’ve spent years arguing for relevant, engaging content that really deserves to be published. At a former job, which I held from 2002-2008, my role went from that of copywriter, editor, and proofreader to something more akin to assembly line worker –  just another cog in the machine, pushing blog posts, articles and advertising copy down the pipe toward publication without any concern for quality or content. It wasn’t that I stopped caring about the work I was producing; but my bosses and our clients certainly did. More was better, cheap SEO was the way to get traffic, and, eventually, my entire department was eliminated as management shifted to a “quantity over quality” mindset that didn’t see the benefit in an editorial department.

With Google bringing us all back to well-written, truly informative content, vindication is mine! Gosh, I love being right.

What do you think of the Penguin updates? Is your company finding it difficult to adjust to the changes or has your focus always been giving the people what they want (quality!) rather than caving to the SEO gods (optimization at all costs!)?

Check out some related info:

  • Good Design Starts with Good Content – Our report on the balance between design and content details ways to ensure you’re providing site visitors with quality, readable content that’s supported by successful web design.
  • SEO Myths Debunked – We cover our favorite myths and point out how to spot peddlers of misinformation.
  • Does Google take manual action on webspam? – Answers from Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s webspam team.
  • Five Common Mistakes in SEO – With special attention paid to Mistake # 4, which starts around the 4:45 minute mark.
  • Google’s Webmaster Guidelines – Following Google’s design and content, technical, and quality guidelines will help the search engine find, index, and rank your site.

Making a Difference, One New Soccer Player at a Time

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Author: Anna-Lesa Calvert, Program Director of Buffalo Soccer Club

“Coach Tex, my mom is going to be so proud of me!”

These are the moments that, as Program Director for a youth development program, I live for. For me, there’s nothing better than a child beaming with pride because his good behavior warranted him the opportunity to play soccer with me for a couple of hours and I’m so excited that I’m about to have similar experiences in the coming year.

In November 2011 the U.S. Soccer Foundation issued a Request for Proposal for organizations throughout the country to apply for their Soccer For Success grant program. While I knew that Buffalo Soccer Club (BSC) would be able to successfully implement a program like Soccer for Success, the grant required large amounts of data collection and measurement and a dollar-for-dollar grant match. So, I also knew that in order to submit a successful grant application and bring all of the opportunities involved in Soccer for Success to the children of Buffalo, we would need to partner with other trusted non-profit organizations in the WNY community.

With that in mind, BSC leadership approached the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County to see if they were willing to collaborate with us on the grant. After seeing the value of the Soccer for Success program, the United Way agreed and we began to move forward in the grant writing process. We determined that BSC would be in charge of running and implementing the program and the United Way would help with the administration and data measurements. But, we were still looking for our dollar-for-dollar match partner.

It was good fortune that we coincidentally learned that the Independent Health Foundation was also planning to apply for the same Soccer For Success grant. BSC and the United Way reached out to the Foundation and our three organizations agreed to work together to make our grant application as strong as possible to benefit the students of the Buffalo Public School system. In late February our organizations learned that our application was one of only 13 in the country, and the only one in New York State, to earn one of these prestigious $300,000.00 Social Innovation Fund sub-grants.

Soccer for Success Grant Partners

Members of the team from the United Way, the Independent Health Foundation, and Algonquin Sports for Kids pose with Otis Barker, Deputy Commissioner of Community Services for the City of Buffalo, and children from PS54 at the press conference announcing the grant award on May 2, 2012.

And so, earlier this week I participated in BSC’s first major press conference at Buffalo PS54, one of the schools we’ll be running the programming from, and met the excited young man who told me how proud his mom was going to be when she learns of his participation in the Soccer for Success program. At the end of the day, this boy and other students like him are the reason Buffalo Soccer Club exists. I know that by providing even one child with such a positive experience through the opportunity to play sports and learn important life skills, we’re making a difference. And the Soccer for Success grant will make it possible for us to provide this same experience to even more children; helping them become strong, productive members of our community.

If you’d like to learn more about Buffalo Soccer Club and our programming feel free to check out the following:

Set to Give the Boot to Childhood Obesity; Buffalo News, May 3, 2012
Buffalo Soccer Club NYSWYSA Club of the Month; New York State West Youth Soccer Association; February 2012
Laying the Soil; Buffalo.com, July 12, 2011
BSC Earns National Grant; Details a previous grant win from the U.S. Soccer Foundation

Dining in the Dark

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This post originally appeared on my blog on Wednesday, April 25, 2012.


A blindfolded photo attempt of my meal, served and eaten in near darkness. Thankfully it turns out that my aim with my fork was better than my aim with my cellphone camera.

Two weeks ago our longtime client Olmsted Center for Sight (formerly the lengthily-named Elizabeth Pierce Olmsted, M.D. Center for the Visually Impaired) held a benefit dinner titled “Dining in the Dark.” The concept was quite simple and given away by its name — attendees would enjoy a meal in total darkness. Not only did my company co-sponsor the event, I attended it and had the pleasure of dining with Olmsted’s president.

The meal started off with wine and salad, which you were allowed to eat in light. Then we were presented with bibs and blindfolds, and the lighting was turned down to just the candles on the table (the servers needed to see, after all). And so in darkness we set upon the main course followed by the dessert course and wrapped up with coffee service. During the main course an Olmsted representative guided us through techniques to get the lay of the land, identify foods, cut meat, find drinks and so on. I ignored all this and dove in with my characteristic nonchalance about my meal and found myself stymied by the simplest things — it takes a couple tries to realize your knife is upside down and that you are cutting with the blunt edge and not the sharp edge.

I have spent over a decade working with Olmsted Center for Sight. I have had the opportunity to see how its clientele/constituency uses computers and surfs the web. I have attended seminars, spoken at events, been a part of lawmaking discussions, implemented software and web sites, all in my time consulting with Olmsted. I have been working with low-vision and blind users for most of my professional career, but nearly always in the form of technology. Though I had some time running concerts for thousands of attendees and making sure outdoor and non-standard venues were handicapped accessible, this dinner afforded the chance for me to experience some of the day-to-day tasks that I take for granted, but this time without sight.

This post may seem to be a little outside of my generally technical discussions here, but I believe that experiences like this are important for anybody who cares about inclusive design or accessibility. Some day everyone reading this will have reduced vision, mobility, hearing, and so on. Learning now how to design and build to support those changes serves to position future generations of developers to design and build to support the future you. That’s just a good investment in your long term well-being.

Consider spending an hour blindfolded and try to do a mundane task like get dressed, eat a meal, or even use the web to look up a menu on a web site (you’ve already seen me rant about how awful that experience is for average users). Consider limiting your movement, restricting yourself to a chair, putting in earplugs, and so on. You may find your get far more insight into daily life as well as software and web development than you expected.

If you’re still reading and also care about accessibility, then in keeping with the low vision theme of this post here are some resources to use when developing sites for the blind. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but there are links to many others within.

This handy video shows you how blind people use the iPhone 4S. It’s worth a couple minutes of your time.

This link isn’t a resource, instead it’s a story of a police department using its forensic techniques to help save 26 pages of hand-written content after the blind writer’s pen ran out of ink.

Doing (and Feeling) Good – Social Media and Cool T-Shirts

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Thanks to Algonquin’s corporate membership, I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with the Buffalo Chapter of Social Media Club for a while now. The opportunities offered through SMCBuffalo, to network and learn more about Buffalo’s ever-evolving social media community, are always enjoyable and I’ve been able to help plan and attend events like TacoVino and beSOCIAL, which are great learning experiences and a lot of fun.

Taco Vino Logo

Easily my favorite connection made through SMCBuffalo, though, was getting the chance to meet Dan Gigante and to become one of the participating artists for his “buy one, give one” organization, You and Who, which sells one-of-a-kind designer t-shirts that help worthy causes in cities across the US. Every time a shirt is purchased, You and Who gives the same shirt to someone in need through their collaboration with charitable organizations in the t-shirt designers’ cities.

You and Who Buffalo Tree Shirt

Back in 2010, I designed a t-shirt for Algonquin Studios employees to wear in a local charity 5k. My design wasn’t used come race day, but when I met Dan, I realized it could still be put to good use through You and Who. My “Buffalo Tree” design fit the organization’s “New Beginnings” theme perfectly and became one of the first shirts made available through You and Who. Now, for every Buffalo Tree shirt sold through You and Who, a shirt donation is also made to one of five charitable organizations in the City of Buffalo. In addition, my “artist earnings” of $1 per shirt sold benefits Buffalo Soccer Club (the pilot program of Algonquin Sports for Kids, a 501(c)(3) organization founded by Algonquin Studios) with donations around $75/month.

Buffalo Soccer Club offers low and no-cost soccer programs for urban children in the City of Buffalo, encouraging participants to develop good physical health, positive levels of self-esteem, and core ethical principals in a safe, fun environment. And, while I’m really no good at playing soccer (trust me I’ve tried), the connection I made with Dan through SMCBuffalo gives me the opportunity to contribute to Buffalo Soccer Club, local charities, and my community at large in a much bigger way than I could personally afford to.

I feel lucky to be a member of an organization like SMCBuffalo, where I can connect with so many smart, fun, and creative people in my city. And I appreciate the opportunities at Algonquin Studios, where I can use my own creativity on projects that benefit so many different people in my community.

Updating My Web Site? Yeah, I’ve Been Meaning To Get To That…

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I’ve been wondering – how many people out there would remember to check the batteries in their smoke detectors if it weren’t for daylight savings time?

Every six months, I spend a minute or two on a Saturday night trying to remember if I gain  or lose an hour that weekend. Shortly after figuring out if I’m jumping ahead or falling back this time around, I inevitably hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head saying, “Every time you change the clocks, make sure you also remember to change your smoke detector batteries.”  Day-to-day family life is pretty crazy for me these days, so I’m not 100% certain I would remember to change those batteries if my dad hadn’t hammered it into my head for years. And I’m glad I remember, because my family and my house are pretty important to me!

While I’m willing to bet most people would agree with the idea that if you run a business of any kind these days, you need a web site. But the time frame for how often you need to update (or outright change) your web site is probably far less agreed upon than say, how often you need to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Most people might argue you should mix things up every two to three years, but I’ll bet there are some who would say you can go longer.

At the risk of sounding like my mother, technology is hard to keep up with. What’s new and fresh today will be old news in a short period of time. The truth is, if your web site is more than two years old and you are not planning to update it, or the technology it rests on, you’re probably behind the times (and your competition). For example, if your site doesn’t automatically adjust when it’s viewed on a cell phone or tablet, what are you waiting for? Your site won’t develop a mobile-friendly version of itself. How about an even more basic question – are you still sending content changes and updates to your web vendor or “tech guy” instead of using a quality CMS in-house? Well, guess what? You’re essentially hoping the smell of smoke will get you out of bed late at night, because you’ve neglected your smoke detector maintenance.

Regardless of how long you think you can go without paying it some attention, the sales call to see if you are ready to update your web site should be viewed like daylight savings.  It’s a subtle reminder, me calling to say “Hey, Busy Person! Don’t forget about this important part of your business.” When you get the call, even if you aren’t ready to deal with it then and there, ask me to call you back on a specific date in the future (sooner, rather than later) and put that call on your schedule now. It will help you make sure that your site update doesn’t get put off longer than it should.

Hmm. Maybe I should change my phone sales pitch. “Hi, this is Tom from Algonquin Studios. Have you changed the batteries in your smoke alarms and when would you like to begin updating your company’s web site?”

White Water and Software Support

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The view from my weekend office - Lower Falls, Genesee River, Letchworth State Park

Some people may not know this but I have two jobs.  My full time job here at Algonquin Studios, as a Software Support Representative, and my part time job, as a weekend warrior guiding rafts on local white water rivers.

At first, you may think these jobs are completely different from one another.  At one I’m in an office, sitting at a desk and computer with Wi-Fi easily accessible; at the other I’m outside, sitting in an inflatable rubber raft that I could easily pop with the knife I carry, without the ability to make a phone call (even if I carried my cell phone with me).  But in reality the jobs are quite similar; it is my responsibility to make customers happy and ensure they have a good user experience.

Here at Algonquin Studios, my goal is that our clients will be smiling when they hang up the phone with me.  People call in with a problem – the problem can be as small as not knowing how to print an invoice or a bigger issue that takes my team a few days of research, to figure out exactly what happened, before we’re able to get back to customer. Whether it takes me 5 minutes to resolve the issue, or 5 days, my ultimate goal is the same – helping the client and providing quality service.

When rafting, my ultimate goal is no different – to give the guests in my boat a fun, safe trip down the river and have them smiling when we get to the “take out.”  Whether it’s 35 degree day, with snow falling, or an 85 degree day, with the sun shinning, I’m doing everything in my power to give my guests the best user experience I can.

At both jobs, I’ve got a team of individuals backing me up to help accomplish our common goal.  We work together asking and answering questions, learning from each other, and helping each other out so we we’re always getting better at what we do.  And, at Algonquin, there’s never an answer of “sorry, we don’t know the answer” or “sorry, we can’t help you,” we’ll always get back to the client, even if we don’t have an answer right away.

At the end of the day, regardless of which job I’m working, I’m fortunate enough to say that, along with my clients, I’m always smiling too.  At the end of a long day on the river, I smile when I hear the excitement in people’s voices at the end of a white water trip, as they recount every rapid and say they can’t wait to call their friends to tell them all the details. And, when I’m catching the train home after a day at Algonquin Studios, I’ve always got a smile on my face because I know that I worked hard and was able to help my clients handle the bumps in their operations and achieve their goals for a successful business day!

Productivity In The Office

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If you’re like me, you have a lot to do in a day. You’ve got meetings to attend, emails to answer, phone calls to make, and various other tasks to complete–and those are just the things you’re expecting.

Over the last five years of working at Algonquin Studios, my responsibilities have increased and my days at the office have become more and more hectic. For me, that can be a big deal. I like to be organized. I get satisfaction from completing tasks. I like to give my client first-rate service. I like to be productive.

Regardless, the craziness of a day at the office often threatens to blow all of that to pieces. Sometimes, you receive more emails that you can realistically answer in one day. Sometimes, your day is filled with unexpected interruptions. Sometimes, you may have so much to do that it’s simply overwhelming.

Over the years, I’ve learned to combat the urge to plunge into the mayhem head first. I’ve learned how to stay organized and calm through the storm of insanity that gathers in my inbox. Most importantly, I’ve learned how to be productive when distractions mount.

Here are some of the things I do to keep perspective and be productive:

Make To-Do Lists

I like making lists. I use them to keep track of the various tasks that I need to complete in a day or in the next week. Every morning, I make a new list with the tasks that I need to do that day. Sometimes, a few of those tasks are carried over from the day before and that’s okay. I don’t always get through my list, but just making it gives me a plan for the day.

Block Out Your Calendar

One of the easiest ways to get behind on work is to allow yourself to get overbooked. Each week, I look at the tasks that I need to complete and block out time on my calendar to work on those tasks. Each morning, I review my calendar and update it as needed to correspond with my to-do list.

Does it really matter if I send this email or make that follow-up call right at 1:00? Most of the time it doesn’t, but blocking out my calendar keeps me (and my co-workers) from scheduling more appointments than I actually have time for.

Complete One Task at a Time

Multitasking often seems like the perfect solution for achieving the mounting responsibilities of your day, but research shows that it doesn’t really work for most people. The NPR.org article, “Think You’re Multitasking? Think Again” puts it well:

“People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, “The brain is very good at deluding itself.”

Focus on one task and work it to completion before you start the next one. You’ll be more productive because you’ll be able to give your full attention to one thing and you’ll get the satisfaction of completing that task. It may mean ignoring your email or your phone for periods of time, but, in many cases, it’s worth it.

Take Occasional Breaks

I find that if I plow through the day without taking the occasional break, I’m burned out by mid-afternoon. Take a few minutes to recharge and between tasks. Get up and stretch or get a drink.

Along the same lines, use your lunch break to re-energize. Move away from your desk and allow your mind to focus on something else for a little while. Personally, I like to read during my lunch break.

Synopsis

These are some of the things that help me make the most out of my day and hopefully these tips can help you stay focused and increase your productivity, as well. If not, then hopefully they’ll get you thinking about what things work best for you. Let me know if you have tips or tricks that you use to get the most out of your day.

The Often-Overlooked Value Of A Quality Support Team

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My team and I are software support representatives – when end users struggle with issues they can’t resolve themselves or encounter bugs or glitches, they call us.  We’re the first line of defense – being there for our customers and putting their minds at ease.  Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot about why the position I hold is necessary (and I’m pretty sure the developers we help would agree).

Frustrated customers don’t remain customers for long:

This one should be fairly obvious.  If a product or service you’re using causes you more grief than benefit, you’ll probably stop using it.  When a support call comes in, it’s the support representative’s job to provide the feeling that someone associated with the product cares about the customer’s issue.  If the end user is forced to leave a voicemail and wait for several hours before hearing a response, they might begin feeling like their problem will never get fixed.  No one ever wants to feel as if they are being ignored when they have a problem; letting customers fend for themselves is bound to have them looking for alternatives.

Support representatives are the face of the company:

Support reps are frequently the first people to have contact with a customer, and first impressions can be everything. A positive experience can make the customer feel confident that their issue will be addressed quickly.  A negative experience, however, can deter the customer from calling again.  Although support representatives often make up a very small part of a company, they’re usually closely associated with a customer’s opinion of the entire organization.  When a customer hears my voice, they have something tangible to associate with their product and my demeanor can set the tone for their continued relationship with the company.  Ideally, you want the person on the phone with your customer to be caring, kind, and patient, so the relationship will be as well.

Developers often don’t mix with customers:

While it’s not true in every circumstance, there are a lot of developers who don’t necessarily want direct contact with the customer. Certainly, it’s tough to concentrate on coding if your phone is ringing several times an hour, but developers can also suffer from being too “sophisticated” for their own good (and the clients’) – since they’re surrounded by colleagues who understand complex processes, it can be difficult for them to put a description into layman’s terms for an end user. Software support provides a bridge between end user and developer; the reps have enough technical know-how to work with the developers on more complex issues, but can easily relate to struggling (and, sometimes, impatient) customers.  Plus, I know some developers who just “don’t like talking on the phone” and that’s not the kind of person who should be communicating with customers on a daily basis.

Support representatives take pressure off developers:

This is obviously related to my previous point, but important nonetheless. When a customer loses patience (and nearly everyone does, at some point), they can lash out.  Support representatives are trained to handle this pressure and work to prevent it from reaching the developers. The goal of the development team needs to be producing quality software; the goal of the support reps needs to be managing the expectations of customers and helping them resolve problems quickly and with minimal pain.

It’s no coincidence that the most profitable companies have excellent support teams to back up their excellent products.  Now more than ever, these companies have come to realize that without a strong, committed support team, there would be no customers to support.  Don’t underestimate the value of a great relationship with your customer!

Building A Brand: Some Thoughts From LMA12

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At last week’s Legal Marketing Association annual conference, I was lucky enough to get away from our exhibitor booth to attend a breakout session entitled The Evolution of the Law Firm Brand: How to Promote Individual Attorneys within the Parameters of the Firm’s Brand.*

Obviously, I don’t work at a law firm (though I did spend some time in my mid-20s at an old-school firm where the senior partners still smoked cigarettes in their offices and called members of their all-female support staff “baby.” Yes, I’m serious). But, I am responsible for helping to craft the Algonquin Studios brand and for translating it into “outbound communications that strengthen the firm’s marketing message” (stolen directly from my job description), so I figured I’d be able to find some interesting overlap in the marketing messages from this session, as they apply to a law firm or a professional services firm – and I was right!

Some great insights from the session:

For Law Firms

  • There are too many law firms, with too many lawyers, in the mix these days. Legal marketers need to focus on differentiating their firms and attorneys from the competition.

How We Can Apply it at Algonquin Studios

  • Similarly, there are many web and technology companies to choose from these days and our work is frequently commoditized. Clients are often looking for the best price rather than the most helpful service or reliable vendor. It’s important that we strive to constantly distinguish ourselves from the competition and show prospective clients how we’ll bring real expertise and value to our relationships.

For Law Firms

  • Focusing on individual attorneys’ personal brands, rather than pushing the firm’s brand, becomes incredibly important when you consider that 56-75% of legal site traffic happens on attorney bio pages.

How We Can Apply it at Algonquin Studios

  • A quick look at our analytics information shows that, while they don’t pull in the same super high percentage of traffic as bio pages on law firm sites apparently do, our principals’ bio pages and the AS “about” page both consistently rank in the top five for page views on our corporate site. Creating quality content for these pages – content that demonstrates our knowledge but, more importantly, helps site visitors feel connected to us – is not only smart, it’s vital to the success of our company.

For Law Firms

  • In order to make bio pages successful and accomplish the differentiation needed, the attorney and their personal story need to come through in the biographical content.

How We Can Apply it at Algonquin Studios

  • We need to humanize our professionals; allowing prospects to feel like they really know us, understanding what we can do for them and what a relationship with us will be like before they ever call our office or come in for a meeting. Site visitors should be able to tell what we do and, perhaps even more importantly, what we love about what we do.

For Law Firms

  • Legal marketers need to remember that it’s their job to facilitate, assist, and coordinate the creation of thought leadership content at their firms. And, they need to resist the urge to author content on the behalf of their attorneys.

How We Can Apply it at Algonquin Studios

  • In an ideal world, there would be a ton of people here at Algonquin able to pitch in on our content creation efforts. But we’re all incredibly busy and finding time to compose a blog post or co-author a report is tough. This is where our own marketing team comes in – encouraging folks to contribute, managing our editorial calendar, reminding authors of upcoming posts, offering to do preliminary research, and more. Sure, it might be easier (and possibly less time-consuming) to author it all ourselves and slap someone else’s name on it but the content we create needs to have a personality. And that personality needs to be genuine, which can be hard to pull off if you’re pretending to be someone else!

My takeaway from this session was that, while we’re on the right path, we’ve got some real work to do on the Algonquin Studios corporate site and in the creation of our thought leadership materials. I’m pretty excited about working on our brand and our corporate personality… and helping the talented individuals who make up the great team here at Algonquin work on theirs, too!

*Moderator: Adrian Dayton, CEO; Adrian Dayton & Associates
Presenters: Aden Dauchess, Dir. of Digital Media; Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP
Robert Algeri, Partner, Great Jakes Marketing
Peter J. Winzig, Dir. of Mktg. & Corp. Development; Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., LPA
Joe Calve, Chief Marketing Officer; Morrison & Foerster LLP