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9 things to do NOW!

While I slept soundly during the night of January 21 to 22, 2012, my Twitter account got hacked.

I woke up Sunday morning to a slew of warnings from followers (thank you) and panicky emails. That’s the rub with getting an account hacked or pirated: usually you don’t even know about it unless someone tells you.

Act quickly to stop propagation

1: Change your Twitter password

2: Review the applications that interact with your Twitter account and unauthorize those you don’t know or don’t use often. If you are curious about new apps, you’ve probably approved many services to see what they offer and forgotten about it if you’ve not used them. It’s time to clean up!

3: Change the passwords for the applications you wish to keep linked to Twitter and reauthorize their interaction.

4: To be on the safe side, change all your social media passwords (LinkedIn, Viadeo, FB and so on) as well as your administrator access codes to your Web site and blog.

Deep clean your system

5: Clean out your browser’s on-line and off-line cache (if you don’t do it daily as you should!)

6: Again, better safe than sorry, run a thorough check on your PC. I use Kaspersky Pure, which is one of the most powerful and reliable ones on the market. A fully-functional 30-day trial is available for download. Checking my PC (complete analysis + object analysis) took the better part of Sunday. My PC was clean, but now I’m sure. Time well spent.

Everything returned to normal quickly, save that I was unable to send or respond to Direct Messages (DM). From the list of sent DMs, it didn’t seem like my hacker had annoyed more than 45 of my followers. False hope, apparently. Being blocked from sending DMs suggested that he indeed had reached the 250 per day limit. Monday morning, all services were restored.

Restore trust

Just because folks know these things happen (and probably already happened to them – or will!) doesn’t mean your ereputation hasn’t been affected. You need to restore your followers’ trust – in you, your Tweets and their links and in your network security measures.

7: Respond to every Tweet or email you’ve received warning you of the problem or asking if you are really behind that strange DM. If you can’t DM them back, post a public Tweet. This will help warn others and show you are taking care of the problem.

8: Start interacting again normally as soon as you’ve secured your accounts and are sure nothing strange is lurking on your PC.

9: Blog about it. Making as many as possible aware of the risks, how to prevent them and how to solve them will help stem propagation and make it tougher for hackers to get their jollies.

My take-away to myself

Thou shall not skip your monthly password changing routine, no matter what (holidays are not an excuse).

Thou shall not click on any links while using HootSuite on your cell phone outside in the cold  because your cold fingers touch the wrong link.

Thou shall test new apps, but remove their authorization promptly if you don’t use them.

Thanks, everyone, for your warnings and may this post help others stay safe!

Please share it!

Keepers and goners in 2012

For independent professionals, time is probably the most valuable commodity.

We strive to save it – by becoming more efficient and productive. We aim to invest it wisely – by targeting our social media marcomm efforts well and being active in the right professional organizations. And we aim to find balance between our professional and personal time. 

Less is more

As an increasing number of social media and professional networks compete for our attention and participation, freelancers face a tough choice: to participate lightly in many or in a more committed fashion in a few? The answer depends, in part, on your goals.

For me, social media and professional networks are a vehicle through which to engage with and ultimately meet others in person. Developing relationships takes time, commitment and regularity and I plan to focus my efforts better in 2012.

Keepers

Twitter

Twitter is a fabulous information resource. Thanks to fellow Tweeps, I’ve discovered terrific blogs to follow, gotten answers to questions in a jiffy, and enjoyed many conversations with colleagues through the workday. Better still is having had the chance to meet followers and colleagues in the flesh, especially during the Journée mondiale de la traduction last December (#JMT2011).

LinkedIn

As member number 304,812 I joined LinkedIn before it even had 1 million members, but didn’t start really making use of it until about two years ago. As of November 2011, it has over 135 million members, with about 3 million in France, making it a much more useful tool in my target market.

Société française des traducteurs

Choosing to remain an active member of France’s union of professional translators is a no-brainer! Collegiality, a lively private discussion list, a rich CPD offering and local events, in addition to group insurance plans, combine to make this membership a worthwhile investment all around.

Communication et Entreprise

Another keeper! The oldest association of professional communicators in France gathers corporates, public institutions, communication agencies and independent professionals. It hosts regular workshops and round tables, publishes a quarterly magazine (for which I’ve been interviewed twice!), spearheads issue-oriented projects (such as the Guide de la relation Indépendant – Entreprise/Agence), and offers a solid and diverse CPD programme in which I’ll be instructor as well as student this year.

Goners

Viadeo

I’ve been a premium member of Viadeo for the past two years (because you can hardly do anything on that network otherwise), but I shall not be renewing it, cheap as it may be. I find it cumbersome to navigate and too filled with service and product offer broadcasts. I don’t find it an appealing space in which to spend time and contribute. I’ll keep my profile alive but won’t rely on Viadeo in my networking or business development endeavors.

IABC

I joined IABC (the International Association of Business Communicators) last summer, seduced by its information and resource-filled website and incredibly rich live and remote conferences and courses. I’ve read its quarterly magazine from cover to cover and shall probably order some of its publications before my membership runs out.

It’s a great organization, so why am I not renewing my membership? Because all that drew me in is tough to afford for an independent professional. Every single conference, workshop or course (even remotely delivered) I’ve been interested in signing up for had a price tag above $1,000. Even one-hour webinars cost around $100 for members. It is an organization that seems to cater to large corporates and their managers, not SMB or independent professionals. And that’s a pity. They could, as Communication & Entreprise does, apply rate scales depending on the size of the member organization, allowing for a fruitful mix of all players in the corporate communications professions.

Klout

After reading Pam Moore’s blog article Why I deleted my Klout profile, I went ahead and did so as well. I’m not on Facebook for a plethora of privacy and copyright issues, and Pam’s article explained well the similar drawbacks with Klout.  Thanks Pam!

Explorations

I signed up for Google+ when it came out in beta, but haven’t taken the time yet to learn to use it properly. I’ll play with it before making a decision. Advice and how-to’s most welcome!

Your choices and recommendations?

Where will you invest your precious time in 2012? Do you take a “sprinkle approach” or a concentrated one and why? What networks and organizations have you found worthwhile and would recommend to others?

“Social media is a research platform.”

Love Greg Cargill’s definition. Greg is an early social media expert and currently VP for Client Services at the Blitz Agency.

He spoke at the Social Media World Forum, which took place in New York’s Javits Center November 1-2, 2011. I jotted down several take-away quotes from his session that I thought you might enjoy – and may help your business strategy evolve.

Pitching a client

Don’t pitch a strategy to a client without having sold your time to do the research.

The golden circle of why, how and what starts with “why”. You can’t define a worthwhile strategy without answering the “why” question first, and that takes research, lots of it, on variables such as culture, people, context and category.

Do the research, get paid for it, design the strategy and get the client to sign off on it *before* rolling out your marketing campaign.

What are you selling?

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Successful marketing is emotional. You need to resonate with your target audience. I’ve spoken about this often on this blog, such as here and here.

Do business with people who believe what you believe.

Choose clients, colleagues and team members who share your values and with whom there is an easy and comfortable dynamic with which to foster creative ideas.

Not 3 but 7 Ps

You’ve heard of marketing’s 3 Ps: product, price and positioning.

The 7 Ps are a golden rule to remember before launching a new project:

Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Enjoy this post? Share it! And feel free to add great quotes you’ve heard recently in the comments below.

I knew – unsurprisingly – that France is way behind in the use of social media, but did not realize quite how far behind. Many of my clients are not on Twitter, LinkedIn and Viadeo – the major professional platforms. Many of my freelance colleagues don’t even have a website. And so on.

“What you see depends on where you sit,” one of my professors at university said frequently during his International Negotiation lectures.

What type of translation needs will social media trigger? How will they be fulfilled and delivered? What are some of the key intercultural issues in their wide adoption and use? What core values do they touch on?

What would you, readers, like to discuss?

It would be great if you’d contribute your thoughts, ideas and questions so that we can kick-start a useful dialog on how our roles as language and culture experts may evolve as social media becomes more prevalent in our corporate clients’ marketing and communications strategies.

Over to you!

Independent professionals don’t have gobs of free time. Many already struggle with work/life balance issues; one of my colleagues, a French to English medical translator, often Skypes me grumbling “Gawd, it’s WDWEWDWE again!” – meaning her husband is hovering over her desk asking when and what is for dinner while she’s on a deadline. Mine occasionally quips I’m married to my computer more than to him.

Many freelancers participate in forums and discussion lists, finding substitutes for the office environment we lack, asking for help and advice, staying abreast of what is going on in our chosen profession, and of course marketing. You get out what you put in, it is important to contribute regularly.

How and when you visit and respond is up to you. The time invested is manageable, and if you’re off-line a few days because you are up to your ears in work, it’s not a big deal. I contribute regularly to about 3 or 4 forums, and occasionally to a couple more. It takes me a few minutes to about an hour a day. That works, it fits in.

As a self-confessed technophile and information junkie, social media attract me as much as a box of chocolates from Christian Constant (if you don’t know this chocolatier, check him out).

For a long time, I stayed on the sidelines, with an inactive blog, a small presence on LinkedIn and an even smaller one on Viadeo. I read a lot, I remained largely silent. Shyness was, I must admit, the main reason. Many don’t comment on blogs they read for that very reason. Please don’t be shy, bloggers love for readers to comment!

This summer, after redesigning my website, I gave myself a swift kick in the okol’e (hawai’ian word for your behind) and prepared a modest professional social media plan: redesign and revive the blog, commit to posting at least twice a week, get my nerve up to comment on others’ blogs, and start to make better use of LinkedIn.

And I’ve been doing that, and enjoying it! It is a bigger time commitment than mere participation on forums, but I still have control over when these activities take place. They do not interrupt my work – translators and copywriters’ work needs concentration and quiet! – and the process of writing blog posts like this one, surprisingly, increases my concentration skills.

Admittedly, my nights have become significantly shorter…

I’d put off joining Twitter until the small lull that hits the mid-November legal holidays in France. I joined with two clear goals in mind: drive traffic to my blog and have links to interesting blog posts and articles delivered to me without spending time looking for them.

After 24 little hours since my first “tweet”, I can sense how the time-concentration issue may spin out. Real-time social media is meant to be used…in real time, if you want to be serious about it and get the benefits you seek from it. TweetDeck is chirping at me every few minutes and even if I limit my curiosity to a cursory look at the maximum 140 characters in the tweet, my concentration nosedives. And tweeting constructively means more than just posting about your new blog post (which I will do in a few minutes) or that the weather’s turned nasty (it hasn’t).

As Billing Time‘s chorus (in my book, the national anthem of all intellectual service providers) repeats, “my mind and my time are my merchandise.” I can see how Twitter can become habit-forming; I don’t know yet if it will be useful professionally. I am marginally comfortable with its inherent contradiction: increased connectivity to others, but in an increasingly deconnected way (language included). I do think I’ll have to schedule Tweet Time like dog walks and coffee breaks.

I’d like to hear from translators and freelancers who leverage all these various forms of on-line marketing and networking for business purposes. How and where do you ventilate your “2.0 time”? What tips can you share to preserve work-life balance? Are there social media you’ve tried and abandoned and why?

Digimind’s 56-page study examines in detail how new media have changed the landscape.

Web 2.0 tools have generated a new paradigm that allows customers, consumers, patients, politicians, citizens, business companies, leaders, executives, employees and trades-unionists to express themselves freely on the net. They can unite into communities, talk amongst themselves, and exert pressure on other groups. All this sharing and working together happens in real time, independently from the daily publication of newspapers or the ritual of television newscasts.

A study published on the American blog 97th Floor showed that 29 of the Fortune 100 companies were the subject of “negative” content, as shown on the first page of results found on Google, when you enter their name as a query on the search engine.

(DIGIMIND-WP_ONLINE_REPUTATION.US.2008.pdf, p.20 and 7)

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How is the role of CCO changing and how are these new responsibilities triggering opportunities for language professionals to support their clients’ needs and objectives?

Corporate communications departments are adding new media and reputation management to their basket of responsibilities at a rapid pace.

Between September and December 2008, Weber Shandwick and SpencerStuart, with KRC Research, conducted their second annual survey on the Rising CCO, polling 159 senior corporate communications professionals (101 from North America, 46 from Europe, and 12 from Asia).

According to the results, for 38% of North American respondents and 46% of European ones, corporate reputation management is now the third most time-consuming part of a CCO’s responsibilities, after media relations and internal communications. One in five European CCOs added a Reputation Management function to their department in 2008 and European CCOs expected it to be their leading priority in 2009.

This shift leads to a reshuffling of the weight of various communications tools used in corporate communications. Media Relations remain the most relied upon resource for 84% and 74% of North American and European CCOs respectively in 2008. However, 18% of North American CCOs, but only 7% of European ones, responded social media/blogging were among the top three tools their department relied on most.

Looking forward, roughly 25% of global CCOs claim the blogosphere will be a significant challenge for their departments, with 30% and 26% of North American and European CCOs respectively expecting social media/blogging to grow most in importance in 2009. As a result, 41% of North American CCOs, but only 22% of European ones, added a social media/blogging function to their departments. It seems some corporate communications departments are going to have to play catch-up in 2010.

The challenge is indeed daunting. It calls for

the capacity to handle the extremely large volumes of information being broadcast: every second in the world, an average of 1.4 blogs are being created, 15 posts added to blogs, 160 instant messages exchanged, more than 500 webpages added or modified and more than 1,000 videos exchanged on YouTube… Even if you continually select which sources have potential influence, a huge amount of power is needed to process these sources.

(DIGIMIND-WP_ONLINE_REPUTATION.US.2008.pdf, p.31)

Weber Shandwick and EIU’s June-July 2008 survey “Risky Business: Reputations Online” points out nearly 60% of global executives expect their on-line reputation management to become more rigorous. This suggests corporate communications departments will need to become more systematic in monitoring and responding to Internet buzz as well as more proactive in their Web 2.0 participation.

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How does this changing landscape open opportunities for language professionals – copywriters, translators, or intercultural specialists?

Traditional media afford companies the leadtime necessary to “get it right” if they so choose. Smart ones, recognizing the added value of communicating with foreign stakeholders in their own culture and language, make it a point to “think internationally” from project start. For others, producing materials such as their annual report in other languages comes as an afterthought. Rushing the translation/adaptation phase often results in lack-luster and sloppy copy that affects a company’s image.

The increasing role of social media and blogging in corporate communications compresses the timeline drastically. Moreover, it raises specific new challenges for companies acting internationally.

[R]eputation is no longer based purely on what is said in the mainstream media, but increasingly, and perhaps primarily, on what is communicated on the internet. Companies need to professionalize their internet intelligence and integrate it in their mainstream media surveillance processes, turn it into a real “management tool” for corporate communication and products.

(DIGIMIND-WP_ONLINE_REPUTATION.US.2008.pdf, p.32)

Integrated web intelligence services can help companies survey and classify the increasing volume of data sprouting on the WorldWideWeb, yet addressing a potentially harmful buzz or leveraging a burgeoning positive one still calls for interculturally specific human assessment and response.

Language professionals with the right industry expertise are choice partners for corporate clients operating internationally. Beyond their traditional role of crafting or translating copy used in traditional media (press releases, static websites, annual reports, brochures and so on), language professionals can offer new services to their clients, such as:

• Defining corporate editorial and language charters, to ensure harmony in tone, style, and terminology regardless of author or publication platform
• Monitoring and analyzing specific influential blogs and social communities, or even acting as moderator or discussion leader for company/brand on-line communities
• Collaborating with in-house project teams responsible for writing blog posts, responding to comments and taking part in social media platforms to produce multilingual adaptations in almost real-time.

Clearly, a compressed time-line combined with the need for innovative language services will change the traditional (often time-consuming) modus operandi between client and specialist, typically based on a quote for a particular document and set of specifications. This piecemeal approach is not suited to the changing paradigm. Both parties need to rethink how to work together, with a broader scope and longer view. Package-based and/or subscription types of business models are one alternative.

Companies need to recognize professional language and cultural services are an investment in their image and their turnover. Re-polishing a tarnished reputation on the Internet takes time and costs a bundle: digital archives are eternal and Web surfers unforgiving.

The frontier between traditional and new media is starting to look like lace.

How are language experts and their corporate communications clients working together to leverage the opportunities offered by this changing space?

Special thanks to Elizabeth Rizzo, Vice-President, Reputation Research at Weber Shandwick in New York, for sending me the full presentations of two surveys referred to in this post, “The Rising CCO II” and “Risky Business: Reputations Online”.