Lue lisää...]]> Have you ever considered a Search Engine Marketing campaign targeted to Russia? Russia is one of a few countries in the world not taken by all-mighty Google, therefore local search engine, Yandex, seems often comes in mind for marketing efforts. How about localization of SEM campaigns for Yandex and Google.ru, including ad texts and keyword lists?

It might be tempting to translate your English ads and keywords into Russian using automated tools such as Google Translate – so easy and you have a Russian campaign without any additional efforts. But does it really work this way?

We made several Yandex campaigns recently, some of them were in such popular fields as tourism and education. There were some interesting facts about choice of keywords for Russian users. Let’s consider some of them.

Tourism – burning tours and what’s Russian for hotel?

Everybody wants Russian tourists nowadays, but did you know that they often use different words to describe things you know well.

For example, translating accommodation types into Russian might not be as easy as it seems. There are 2 words meaning  hotel – gostinitsa which is a word of Russian origin, and otel’ which is an international one. Their meaning is more or less the same, although latter might be a bit more fancier. On the other hand, there is no commonly used translations for guesthouse (although travel geeks often use transliteration of the English word), inn, bed and breakfast – all of them are often called hotels in Russian.

It seems that independent travel among Russians is still less common than among Westeners, therefore one of the most popular keywords in tourism is tury (literally – tours, but actually meaning sort all-included trips sold by travel agencies or trip tickets). And no wonder that the thing every Russian traveler love is burning tours, which means last-minute or hot travel deals. Also remember that travel agency here is called tourism agency, boarding gate is exit to board and Russians never take the bus/plane/train but rather travel on it!

Much to think before you paste your Yandex travel keyword list to Google translate, uh.

Education – so do you study in an institute or just go to courses?

Another popular field for Russia targeted Search Engine Marketing activities is education. Many universities would like to get smart and/or rich Russian students, but as education systems and traditions differ, so do words and definitions related to education.

Thus in Russia, an institute often means a university (more often a technical one), and polytechnic institute can be actually an university of technology. Course are often understood as vocational or training courses, rather than just university subjects. Additionally, course often means study year.

Some subject names cannot be literally translated, for example word engineering is normally applied at a very narrow sense to the actual process of engineering, but subject names like electrical engineering will be translated as electrotechnics (elektrotekhnika), but mechanical engineering in Russian literally mean machine building (mashinostroyeniye). Last, but not least – theses and scientific papers are normally called works (rabota), therefore Russian students often speak about course work, testing work and diploma work. Guessed what does it mean?

As you can see, creating SEM campaign targeted to Russia, such as a campaign on Yandex or Google.ru, often requires more than just literal translation of keywords and ad texts into Russian, and the worst thing you can do is to use automated translation. Probability that it will not work, is very high! But what you would need is a person who understands both Russian language and culture and who is able to create a separate Russian campaign for you. Does this person need to be a native? This would be the best, however, person who is not native, but knows Russian at least upper-intermediate level and is well acquainted with Russian culture could also do well. Is there a need to employ a person from a specific region in Russia for a campaign targeted to this region (e.g. person from Moscow or Siberia)? In most cases, no, unless you campaign is super-local. There only small differences in Russian language across different regions and standard Russian could do perfect in most situations.

Another problem is that advanced keyword research tools are quite limited for Russian language. In most cases the best tool would still be Adwords keyword tool, as Yandex own tool have quite limited usability. Therefore, your Russian guy should often be able to think up rocking keyword lists manually, without use of the tools.

Remember that Russian culture is more different from American or British, than German or French is, therefore we suggest to use Russian SEM professional for you Yandex of Google.ru campaigns. Reach East product offered by Searchbox can be a good solution for Northern or Western European companies.

Another important emerging market is China. In the next article we will consider some localization pitfalls of SEM campaigns targeted to China.

]]> http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/localization-pitfalls-for-yandex-campaigns/feed/ 1 http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/digitaalinen-asiakkuusmarkkinointi-slaidisetti/ http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/digitaalinen-asiakkuusmarkkinointi-slaidisetti/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:39:54 +0000 Samuli Melanko http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/?p=1120 Olimme esittelemässä digitaalisen asiakkuusmarkkinoinnin ideaa innovative eTourism -tapahtumassa Savonlinnassa 31.10.2012 ja saimme synnytettyä paljon keskustelua digitaalisen markkinoinnin ekosysteemin kehittämisestä.

Monet ovat pyydelleet esitystämme nähtäväksi, tässä se on siitä kiinnostuneille.

Digitaalinen asiakkuusmarkkinointi lisää myyntiä ja markkinoinnin tehokkuutta from Searchbox

]]> http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/digitaalinen-asiakkuusmarkkinointi-slaidisetti/feed/ 0 http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/social-media-in-politics/ http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/social-media-in-politics/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2012 08:11:32 +0000 John Berendsen http://www.searchbox.fi/Artikkelit/?p=1063

Lue lisää...]]> As the campaigns for the United States presidential elections of 2013 are going on full speed, we thought it was time to take a close look on what role social media plays in politics. Fact is that politicians who would be negligent of running their campaign on social media as an extra channel would miss a big opportunity of reaching a younger public that could not be reached through other channels. Social media sites are used proportionally for political activities:

• 36% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in keeping up with political news.
• 26% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in recruiting people to get involved in political issues that matter to them.
• 25% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them for debating or discussing political issues with others.
• 25% of SNS users say the sites are “very important” or “somewhat important” to them in finding other people who share their views about important political issues.#

And as expected many politicians make use of the social media to run their campaigns. Barack Obama team paid for ”Sponsored Stories” to appear in some users’ Facebook news feeds – regardless of whether they wanted to receive them. The result was that Barack Obamas page on Facebook received more than a million likes in of day compared to 30 thousand likes on previous days.

But also Mitt Romney uses the social media channels heavily to run his campaign. He posts pictures of himself with his family at home on instagram, the Facebook-owned picture network.#

Not only in the politics of The United States of America the social media is heavily used. Also in Europe these ‘’new’’ media are used by many politicians. In The Netherlands practically all politicians use some sort of social media. An study has shown that there is a positive relationship between the use of social media and the numbers of votes political parties obtain. The 2 parties that increased the number of votes at the elections of 2012 compared to previous elections where also the parties that had the biggest increase in usage of social media.#

The above stated facts indicate that the usage of social media in politics is big and growing. Politicians use basicly all channels of social media, from blogs to Youtube accounts, to express their ideas and winning new votes. The main trigger for the use of social media all over the world in politics was the effective use of social media by Barack Obama at the presidential elections in 2008. Some even say that this was the winning element in his campaign. Many have taken this as an example and the number is growing. Social Media has become an integrated part of politics.

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1) Politics on Social Networking Sites by Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith, 04-09-2012
2) BBC News by Dave Lee, 10-10-2012
3) Social media en politiek, de waarheid achterhaald by Drs. Effing et al, 18-09-2012

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