Are there Facebook networks for professionals in the translation, localization, and interpretation industry? Yes. Do translation professionals gain any business benefit from those networks? Or are those networks only useful for shooting the breeze?
A few ways to quickly connect on LinkedIn and benefit professionally from that social networking site were highlighted in the list of the Top 5 LinkedIn Groups for Translation, Localization, and Interpretation. Is it worthwhile to network professionally in a similar way on Facebook?
Check out he following example. Translation is largely a B2B industry, and an article on the Community Marketing Blog recently noted after testing the benefits of Facebook, "there is little question that in a business to business communication the best place to build relationships is either LinkedIn, twitter or email." This assertion was made after a bit of a competition was organized to test the value of these social networks.
Out of the many social network choices for reaching business professionals, LinkedIn stands clearly above Facebook, twitter, Google and email according to findings from a recent Blog-Off contest. LinkedIn dominated hands down with 55% of 2,350 directly referred URLs (separated from the 6,000+ total page views) over two weeks in a Blog-Off contest that involved 12 marketing and social media thought leaders. Facebook eked ahead of twitter with 13% of direct referring URL's versus 11% from the rapidly growing micro-blog site....If you still don't believe me that Facebook is not really the place to grow a translation-related business then join the top translation-related Facebook groups and see for yourself:
Read the rest of the article here on the Community Marketing Blog.
- Leave translation to translators!
(7900+ members, 60+ discussions, 470+ wall posts) - Translation Jobs
(5400+ members, 110+ discussions, 780+ wall posts) - Interpreters and Translators
(4600+ members, 60+ discussions, 390+ wall posts) - Soy traductor(a)/intérprete, no un diccionario
I'm a translator/interpreter, not a dictionary
(3400+ members, 4+ discussions, 160+ wall posts) - Spanish Translator
(2600+ members, 10+ discussions, 90+ wall posts)
(Note that these numbers refer to total discussions and wall posts, not just recent discussions as measured for the Top 5 LinkedIn Groups for Translation.)
Facebook has many more users than LinkedIn, and Facebook's top 5 translation groups are much larger than LinkedIn's top 5 Facebook groups. So why would Facebook be less valuable? It's really quite simple, and probably more than obvious. Because of each site's targeted focus, it seems that LinkedIners tend to link to colleagues and business relations while Facebookers tend to connect to friends and family. The natural result is that people will then look to LinkedIn for business networking and Facebook for social networking.
LinkedIn group discussions and news seem much more professional and useful to group members overall. Facebook group discussions and wall posts are largely just a mess of freelancer advertisements to other freelancers. Facebook group posters write "I translate from language x to language y and I'm available for work" but the message is only seen by other freelancers, and I'm guessing that group members to not check the discussion boards often if all they see are these advertisements. Please don't misunderstand, some of these groups still offer value to someone. Here are some of the benefits that translation industry professionals appear to be gaining from Facebook:
- Making a statement "Facebook style"
Translation professionals like to make statements to their social networks about who they are professionally, and joining a group is something announced on one's feed and in one's profile. Some of these top groups simply make a statement about the members' beliefs or identity. - Driving web traffic to the home page of the group owner
Other groups appear to be directing traffic to other online networks. For example, "Spanish Translator" is clearly directing traffic to http://www.english-spanish-translator.org/, a translator forum, and at least one agency is using a Facebook group to recruit freelancers. However, I would bet that the "Spanish Translator" group on Facebook benefits more from the actual Spanish Translator Forum than vice versa. (The real forum boasts 30,000+ total members and 6,000+ active members.) - Marketing to freelancers
Some discussion posts and wall posts are clearly advertisements selling dictionaries and other products to freelancers, and they might generate a few clicks. - Posting freelance jobs
The "Translation Jobs" group above appears to at least produce a few posts showing jobs and openings for freelance and full time translators. But this group appears to be better for sharing leads than actually promoting oneself and expertise as can be done through LinkedIn.
How effective is Facebook at providing the above benefits to many users? I don't know. Do you have any experience generating good results (or no results) from Facebook? If so, please post a comment here. I would love to hear that I am wrong and that someone in the translation industry has seen wild success thanks to Facebook.
5 comments:
The quality of connections seems to be much higher on LinkedIn than Facebook. What you say about people on Facebook connecting to family and friends vs. colleagues has been true in my experience.
Hi Adam - Thanks for the good post! We have found that LinkedIn beats Facebook by a wide margin when it comes to bringing traffic to our blog.
I am not sure about Jlibbey's comment regarding higher-quality connections being formed on LinkedIn. It's seems that the connections are different - personal on Facebook, more business oriented on LinkedIn. And it's the business-oriented folks that would be interested in blogs such as yours and ours.
I would also question the assumption that the size of the group is a real indication of influence or value.
For me, the quality of the discussion and professional focus would be of much greater value than group size and many discussions which get no take up or connect with the members in any way.
But I also agree with ForeignExchange that the networks have very different focuses and it is personal on Facebook, more business oriented on LinkedIn" which only make them different, not better or worse.
I am the founder of the Leave translation to translators group.
Obviously, Facebook is not a professional networking site and I do more of my professional things by other means. But I would still day that the group is effective, having even been mentioned in a recent article in a linguistics magazine.
The group is a platform and a statement. People have found jobs via it before and it has been used as a platform where research in the field was promoted.
I am intending to look into starting a petition to the EU government or maybe individual regional governments once we have reached around 10,000 members. The main focus of the group is to raise awareness about our profession - I have had enough of being seen as "someone who just speaks English".
So, basically, while the group is not as effective as a site such as ProZ, I would still say that it serves a purpose and has had some minor effect. (Plus, I'd originally anticipated to get maybe 30 or 40 members in total).
Hi, I've been wondering what the public opinion is...and I have some insight now. I agree on the difference in "professionalism" between Facebook and LinkedIn. I use both, as well as Plaxo. They all add some value to my real interest: connections. What Facebook has done for me is show business people as real people, if you know what I mean. It's great to see that someone who can appear as not very friendly via email proves the opposite via FB. If it has helped grow my business I doubt it, but it certainly helps meet a lot more people than LinkedIn, and make a more "personal" kind of connection.
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