Your Color Almost, But Different: Why Localizing Content Without Personalizing It Is A Bad Idea

Localizationis a hot topic among software manufacturers who make tools that they claim can help you provide your customers with relevant, laser-targeted content. More than ever, it seems, these firms are hyper-busy trying to get your attention. From webinars to white papers, from free trial software to conference presentations, from text messages to Twitter tweets, localization software vendors are vying for your attention in hopes you’ll finally make the move to localized content.

Localization software and services vendors usually hail from the translation industry. Some claim to have created entire suites of tools designed to assist you in adapting your products—and product information—for non-native customers, especially those from other nations and cultures, who likely don’t share your native language. Sometimes known as internationalization and localization, this type of service (and the software tools that make their home in this space) are indeed valuable. They can help you adapt products and services for sale in specific regions of the world and help you address locale-specific concerns, including translation of text and other content types. Unfortunately, that’s not really helping us solve the real problem: delivering the wrong information, to the wrong people, at the wrong time, and often, in the wrong format.

What these software and service vendors can’t do is help you provide personalized content designed for individual people in your existing customer base. Sure, some of them are happy to sell you the types of software you’ll need to manage personalized content. But, it’s up to you to make the effort to discover everything you can about each member of your target audience and to use that information to create relevant content that will resonate with each person you’re targeting.

Continues @http://www.thecontentwrangler.com