Digital Makeing, Upcycled.

As a content developer, the thought of having anything less than a perfect translation of what I’ve written seems blasphemous. Afterall, I likely spent days/weeks/months working on the document. I did my research. I wrote. I refined. I edited. I refined again. And then, when I decided the content was as perfect as it was going to be, I declared it finished. The thought of having my writing translated into multiple languages and published without verification seems unconscionable to me. On the other hand, as I really think about the issue, it is obvious how expensive it is in both dollars and time to translate content into multiple languages and make sure that the translations are accurate. There is definitely an appeal to running the content through MT software and simply publishing what comes out, without post-editing. And for people who cannot read English, I suppose a case could be made that having some type of translation, even poor translation, is better  than  ...

People often ask me if optimizing their content is worth the expense (both time and money). My answer is, unequivocally, “yes”. Sometimes, the reason is quantifiable in dollars. You can add up the savings with an abacus or a calculator. Sometimes, the reason is more esoteric. After all, how do you quantify cognition? And all of the time, the reason has to do with your brand. Here are my top three reasons to spend the time and money to optimize your content. Reason #1. Optimized content is easier to read. When you optimize your content, you eliminate words that don’t add value to the sentence. You also apply magic secret #1 – you make your sentences shorter. Recently, I had a customer joke with me about how much “smarter” his company sounds because their sentences are longer. He was being facetious. No one sounds any smarter because they used 57 words in a single sentence. For example, which of the following options is easier to read: For more than 15 years, our sis...