How to Make Your Content Appealing to International Audiences

Consumers can come from any place in the world, which means that every one of your potential customers (aka the people reading your blog posts, clicking on your calls-to-action, and visiting your website)might live in entirely different time zones or speak a variety of languages. So once these people access your content, how well will it appeal to them?

As you gain more international traffic, you’ll want to ensure that you can turn this into leads, which means keeping your global audience in mind as you publish your content

Below are some tips that may help you build your international audience with appealing content.

Recognize Culturally-Rooted Content

When creating content with a global audience in mind, you should be conscious of the way your cultural norms are incorporated. For example, every time you post a piece of content, picture you reading it aloud to an individual visiting your country for the first time. Did you include concepts or terms that demand additional explanation or context? Then, search your content for culturally-rooted details and have a brief description or note for your international audience.

Be Conscious of Seasonal References

A post published in the winter in the Southern Hemisphere might speak about the bitter cold and snowstorms, but also around that time, the folks in the Northern Hemisphere might be taking school vacations and eating ice cream.

Of course, you’re free to write about the seasons, but make sure you’re aware of the seasonal references you’re putting and how people from the other side of the earth might interpret them. If there’s anybody on your team that’s in charge of localizing everything in your content, consider flagging the seasonality of a blog post, for instance, so that they can update your content. Or, you can also try publishing and promoting it at a more fitting season for the target audience.

Keep Units of Measure in Mind

Do you go above and beyond for your audiences? Consider tweaking your content a bit to make it more international-friendly by introducing units of measurement that is not just specific to a single set of countries.

Create Call-To-Actions (CTAs) Taking Translation into Account

You’ll want your international audience to convert just as well as your national visitors, so it’s imperative to double-check on your CTAs, making sure they will be effective for other countries and languages

Suppose you’re thinking of translating your content at some point in time. In that case, you can “pseudo-localize” by including 40% more characters in the text to guarantee that it’ll fit when translated into most languages. In addition, you’ll want to leave more space on the buttons and reduce the surrounding graphics to make sure the text will fit when it’s localized.

Each CTA should, ideally, separate the image layer from the text layer to allow quick translation. Also, doing this can be an excellent practice for SEO overall since search engines don’t usually pick up images embedded with text. Assuming you can’t separate the image layer from the text layer. That being the case, any images containing text will demand to be separately created for every language, which is expensive and time-consuming.

When devising a CTA that you will localize later, leave at least 40% more space than what you would usually leave to enable text expansion in other forms of languages.

table, man typing on a laptop, a cup of coffee

Discern Date Differences

Not all countries in the globe have weekends on Saturdays and Sundays. Additionally, some countries have lunar-based calendars. So if you can do it in a way that feels natural, try avoiding such references while creating your content.

Forgo Images with Text

If you made an effort to translate your content into a different language, you wouldn’t want to pair that post with a picture in the original language. Either your visitors feel like you didn’t create the content for them, or they will grow confused.

If possible, pick a source image that will resonate with your global audience. However, if you do require one with a text in it, inform your translator of the alternative types of pictures that might work so they can choose a different one.

Properly Translate the Keywords 

Keywords that place well in your region might not do well in others, as well as their direct translations. However, finding the correct keywords and optimizing your content for these keywords will warrant an SEO boost.

When negotiating that cost of translation as part of your localizing content, consider selecting a keyword relevant to the source country. 

Provide Translators the Permissions and Tools to Liberally Adapt When Required

There are times when elements in the content don’t exactly make sense for your target audience. That being so, it’s essential to inform the translator about what they can do and how far they can go in customizing content for a particular audience.