Two-Year Blog Anniversary: Top 10 Posts

To celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Acclaro blog, our editorial team selected the top 10 most popular blog posts from the past two years, based on page views. Here are the first five for your reading pleasure:

1. Hidden Localization Lessons at IKEA, by our Marketing Director Stephanie Engelsen. “International packaging can be very complex,” she says. “IKEA has found a way to simplify the process and get it right across the 40+ countries where they have a retail presence. On the shelves, their products make sense to shoppers in Prague, Stockholm and Los Angeles, thanks to their use of universal symbols.” IKEA can teach us many lessons about minimizing the cost of localization.
2. How To: Capture the U.S. Hispanic Market. Given the soaring population and purchasing power of U.S. Hispanics, this post is a practical one for all American businesses that want to expand their customer base at home. Tapping into this unique demographic may be as straightforward as speaking to them in the right language. This blog post provides a lot of useful stats while presenting strong arguments for localizing marketing campaigns and other content specifically for this Spanish-speaking segment.
3. Q&A: Doing Business in China. Written by Jon Ritzdorf, who has an M.A. in Chinese translation and serves as our globalization architect, this post explores the latest Chinese trends, social media, cultural considerations and norms for translating business-critical content into Chinese. Jon also explains the differences between simplified and traditional Chinese, which are important for companies expanding into Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Singapore.
4. Mobile App Growth Driven by Emerging Global Markets. A hot topic in business circles, the surge of mobile phone usage in emerging economies represents great revenue potential for app developers, advertisers, eCommerce and eRetail companies alike. One takeaway from this article is that skyrocketing mobile app usage gives rise to increased demand for marketing translation — one of the core translation services and specialties at Acclaro.
5. Advertising in Europe part one and part two. This virtual bike tour of Berlin follows the trail of German outdoor advertising and explores the strategy behind the language choices in each. Subway, Beck’s and Apple are a few of the companies spotted on this trek through Berlin and their advertisements serve as real-world lessons in localization.

Here's the full list of the 10 most popular blogs, including posts on marketing translation errors, crowdsourcing, LinkedIn news, Pepsi’s global campaigns and localization team management.