Your professional translator

Hi everybody! I am so happy to see you again! Today is my happiest day in a loooooong time - the end of Delia's school year! Yay! Parents love summer vacations just as much as kids do :) A few good things happened since we talked last: 1. I had a webinar on ProZ about Google Plus and what it offers to us, translators. In spite of some unexpected sound problems everything went excellent! 2. A few days before the webinar I was interviewed by Maria Kopnitsky about my experience as a translator, trainer and social media enthusiast. Here is the link . Hope you like the post.

Many people in November take the 30-day gratitude challenge. This morning I read a new post by Judy Lee Dunn " Can You Name 99 Things You Love in 10 Minutes? " and I immediately felt inspired to try. Especially given the fact that I've written a post about gratitude a very loooooong time ago. So let's see how many things I can come up with in 10 minutes. Some things stay the same as they were 2 years ago, plus there are a few more:

Today when I opened my email the first thing I saw was a message from Google+. It said that from now on all Google+ users can get personalized URLs for their profiles. If you remember, until now your Google+ address was a strange and long combination of numbers. All you need to do is click on "Get custom URL" button in the message and you will be taken to a new page where you need to type in your cell phone number. Don't forget to choose the appropriate country. They will send you an SMS with the code that you need to type in a separate box and that's it! You have a custom URL! Mine is https://www.google.com/+OlgaArakelyan

Remember I promised to share useful links? I've been reading cool stuff on marketing recently, so I thought I'd share it with you. Maybe you will find this info useful for your freelance translation business, too :) So here's the list:

After two years of blogging I can definitely say that I love it. Can't imagine my life without it now. And there are some pretty serious reasons why I wouldn't give it up. Would you like to know them? Then read further :)

Sometimes learning to use social media feels like wandering in the deep forest. Have you ever felt that way? No wonder that you can make a ton of mistakes in the process. I have made quite a few, that’s why I want to talk about it today. I am also inviting you to participate in the discussion, share some mistakes you've noticed and possibly ways to avoid those mistakes. 1. No interaction. Social networks were made for interaction. That's why they are called "social". Social media marketing is not like posting an ad in a newspaper. Solution: The first thing you need to do after creating your own profile is finding people who you would like to connect with. Read carefully what they post, ask questions, share your comments. When you get fans/followers/people who add you to their circles you also need to interact with them. The resources you share may be very useful, but interaction builds a personal bond between you and your audience. That bond is priceless. It ca...

Some time ago I noticed some of my colleagues on Twitter and Facebook publishing interesting links via scoop.it . I remember clicking on the link for the first time and seeing something like an online jornal with lots of other links and pretty pictures all in one page. I liked what I saw, but didn't register there. It was a bit later when one of my friends asked if I was using scoop.it and was very surprised that I wasn't because it's almost a must for a freelance professional. That's when I got "hooked". I registered there in the last days of January and at the same time investigated what the others are saying about it.

I think one of my big mistakes last year was that I almost stopped writing posts where I shared useful links. I have made a decision to resume this practice. The first link collection has to do with Facebook marketing for translators. (After all, I am a marketing translator, aren't I?) Actually, these links can help anybody who wants to build a great page and attract many loyal followers.

Dear readers, I am so happy to greet you now in 2012! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! In my next post I am going to share our celebration with you ;) The past year was very interesting. It was challenging, but also rewarding. It was in 2011 when I started receiving more comments to my posts and now my blog gets more than 2000 visits each month. I am so grateful to all my readers! This blog wouldn't exist without you! You rock! I'd like to share the most popular posts from 2011 with you. Some are quite logically popular, others - well, frankly speaking, I didn't quite expect them to be so interesting, but it was a good surprise. So, here's the list:

First of all, I need to say that this is by no means a paid post. I am sharing it because I believe it could be useful to other Twitter users, too. Several weeks ago I read a guest post by Leo Widrich in  Daniel Sharkov's blog called " Top 7 Twitter Tools To Cover All Your Tweeting Needs ". I knew I needed to find a way to stay active on Twitter and yet gain some extra time to balance my work and time for myself and my family. Needless to say, that post came right on time!

Hi there! Glad to see you again! Remember my first post about social media marketing ? It's time for the second post in the series :) What I write here is solely my opinion  based on various posts, journals and other materials studied in the past year or so + my own small marketing experience. What's the most important thing in social media marketing? You need to show that you are an expert. There are literally thousands of possibilities for translators now thanks to the Internet. You can answer questions on LinkedIn, take part in terminology discussions on various translation portals and other networks; you can start blogging or tweeting about translation, or make your own Facebook fan page and publish relevant links there. And this is by no means an exhaustive list of options! Whichever way of promoting your skills you choose, it will help your prospective clients understand where your interests are and what fields you are most experienced in. You will also get to know ...