Over half of the internet consists of English-language content despite English speakers making up less than 20% of the world’s population. The other 80%+ crave content, like blog posts and videos, in their native language. This situation presents an opportunity for content marketers to satisfy global market needs while attracting new customers and establishing their brand internationally with localized long-form content.
In this article, we’ll explore long-form content localization, common types of content you’ll localize, how it can boost your business outcomes, and how the right technology can overcome any challenges you may face.
“Localize it”: What is long-form content localization, anyway?
As the name suggests, long-form content is content with a higher word count or a longer run time. Instead of short-form content like a 280-character X post, it’s a 2,500-word blog about marketing strategies. Instead of a 20-second TikTok video, it’s a 20-minute YouTube tutorial. It’s longer because it covers subjects with more depth than brief clips or social media posts allow. It’s usually more informative and helpful, too.
Content localization allows you to reach new audiences around the world.
Content localization is updating your content to make it more relevant to different regions and languages. Sometimes, it means creating something new for one market that meets the needs of that target audience but is irrelevant to others.
Imagine an international hardware retailer who markets with do-it-yourself content. If they have successful holiday decoration tutorials, they might localize their content by translating the language, changing the measurements, and only mentioning materials available locally. They might even create unique posts for holidays specific to one market.
As you’ll see, long-form content localization is a lot more than just translating blog posts. Read on to discover its value in practice.
Long-form content in a short-form world: why localization can be your winning edge
Creating and localizing short-form content is cheaper, easier, and faster. In a post-Twitter/X and TikTok world, it can feel like attention spans are shorter. So, wouldn’t it be a waste of your limited marketing budget to include long-form content? Not at all.
Localizing your content can improve your global search engine rankings.
Longer content is an essential part of any robust marketing strategy. You build awareness of your brand and business over a series of key buyer moments by creating posts, videos, and/or podcasts that seek to educate, inform, and support your audience instead of focusing on conversions.
You establish authority and trustworthiness when they view you as a go-to resource. You also develop a healthy ecosystem of internal and external links over time. All of this serves SEO, which can mean more traffic, engagement, and sales.
It’s not an either/or between long- and short-form. A secondary perk of long-form content is that you can repurpose it for short-form content. Pulling a quote from a blog to turn into a post on X or LinkedIn or creating a short clip from a longer podcast or video can build interest, drawing the audience to your website or channel to engage with the full version.
Localization translates these benefits into more markets. Even if you create the most helpful comparison page or tutorial in the world, you’re losing substantial potential revenue if the posts are only in English.
Despite native and non-native English speakers only making up 1.4 billion of the estimated 8.2 billion people worldwide, over 50% of websites are in English. Additionally, a survey showed that 65% of participants had a preference for content in their native language, and 40% wouldn’t buy anything if it were not in their native language. There is an opportunity to cater to large markets who want more content in their language.
This image illustrates how underserved speakers of languages other than English are online.
(Source)
Your competition is seizing this opportunity and seeing results. Research by Unbabel shows that 84% of marketers reported localization had a beneficial impact on their company’s revenue growth and 42% localized their content marketing material.
To also see your revenue increase, it’s not enough to simply localize content – it requires forethought and a strategic approach. One of your first considerations is which audience(s) you will target. Part of this involves deciding to create multilingual content, multi-regional content, or both.
Multilingual content is determined by language as opposed to the reader’s locale. A company has one website, and its users access it from the same country, but they can choose different languages. For example, consider a Canadian business with English and French versions of their site. Google would present results that match a searcher’s native language, so the business would need to optimize content and SEO for both languages to increase their chances of attracting an audience.
Multi-regional content is determined by the reader’s locale. It’s still one website but adapted for target markets in different geographic locations. For example, an ecommerce jewelry store might focus on appealing to both US and German customers. They would need to translate product pages, adjust currencies and measurements, change seasonal offerings, etc. If they had a blog for content marketing purposes, they’d need to localize their posts to appeal to multiple markets.
While detailed planning is necessary, no matter if you choose a multi-regional or multilingual approach, long-form content localization is simpler when utilizing resources like localization strategy templates and technology like Translation Management Systems (TMS).
The next step in crafting your strategy is choosing what content you want to localize.
Going native: Types of long-form content you can localize
You likely won’t need to localize everything, but you will need to tailor your approach to the content format you’re working with. The most common types of long-form content are:
- Blog posts like:
- Information roundups
- Inspirational and useful resources
- Step-by-step walkthroughs and tutorials
- Glossary terms and Wiki-like pages
- Case studies
- White papers and reports downloads
- Videos and podcasts
Your competition is seizing this opportunity and seeing results. Research by Unbabel shows that 84% of marketers reported localization had a beneficial impact on their company’s revenue growth and 42% localized their content marketing material.
To also see your revenue increase, it’s not enough to simply localize content – it requires forethought and a strategic approach. One of your first considerations is which audience(s) you will target. Part of this involves deciding to create multilingual content, multi-regional content, or both.
Multilingual content is determined by language as opposed to the reader’s locale. A company has one website, and its users access it from the same country, but they can choose different languages. For example, consider a Canadian business with English and French versions of their site. Google would present results that match a searcher’s native language, so the business would need to optimize content and SEO for both languages to increase their chances of attracting an audience.
Multi-regional content is determined by the reader’s locale. It’s still one website but adapted for target markets in different geographic locations. For example, an ecommerce jewelry store might focus on appealing to both US and German customers. They would need to translate product pages, adjust currencies and measurements, change seasonal offerings, etc. If they had a blog for content marketing purposes, they’d need to localize their posts to appeal to multiple markets.
While detailed planning is necessary, no matter if you choose a multi-regional or multilingual approach, long-form content localization is simpler when utilizing resources like localization strategy templates and technology like Translation Management Systems (TMS).
The next step in crafting your strategy is choosing what content you want to localize.
Blog posts, glossary terms, and Wiki-like pages
You need to adjust international SEO research and optimization strategies based on each market’s preferred search engine. In some countries, users might prefer local alternatives over Google – or it might be banned. When it comes to search engine choice, Chinese consumers prefer Baidu, South Korean consumers favor Naver, Czech consumers like Seznam most, and Russian consumers use Yandex most.
You’ll also need to make sure the secondary research you cite and the external links you place are trusted and familiar to the local market. On average, American consumers trust Gallup, but EU consumers might prefer Bruegel for topics like “future of work.” For Baidu SEO best practices, you’ll want to avoid any external links to sites that are banned altogether.
Knowing local consumer habits, shared knowledge, and regulatory environments is a requirement. Like with the screw example, your localization team must account for industry-specific standards.
Case studies, white papers, and reports
You should source primary research from local businesses and industry leaders because data and insights from one market may not match another.
A way to boost your credibility and reach in new markets is to seek local companies who are willing to collaborate and co-brand. You can also craft a positive brand image by engaging directly with local communities through events and sponsorships to get your name out there. This can help generate data for studies and reports.
Videos and podcasts
Much like reworking your SEO strategies for local search engines, you’ll need to upload to the right platform for your target country. In China, where YouTube and TikTok are banned, video platforms like Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), Youku, and BiliBili reign supreme. This market turns to Ximalaya more than any other podcast platform.
You’ll need to find the most popular creators in each market’s niches. In some cases, translating subtitles might work. But if you want to do a sponsored post, a local favorite will carry more weight than subtitling an existing video.
Your video team must consider preferences like video editing, songs, sound effect usage, etc. When converting your long-form videos into short-form, this will be especially important for platforms like TikTok/Douyin where trends differ based on language.
Now that you know how to localize different content types, it’s time to see how they can improve business outcomes.
Using long-form content localization to boost business outcomes
Other marketers are localizing long-form content and seeing results, but the amount of time and effort it requires can make it a hard sell to senior-level management, who will want a justification for every cent of your marketing budget.
Luckily, plenty of brands have overcome localization difficulties to get the business outcomes they want, providing the evidence you need to justify the marketing spend.
Let’s look at some examples of companies that get it right.
Business outcome: attracting new audiences
It’s challenging to pull in audiences from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Standardized content makes no real impact because it fails to resonate with local nuances and preferences. This results in a lack of engagement and backlink acquisition.
To attract new audiences, you must make content that appeals to them.
When Netflix wanted to expand internationally, they didn’t stick to translating their most popular US shows. They created a lot of local content, too. In 2016, North American content comprised roughly 80% of Netflix’s production budget. They’ve increased their international production spend to the point where it’s projected to be over half the total budget in 2024. It’s paid off – 70% of subscribers are located outside of North America.
Business outcome: increasing revenue and sales
If your localization efforts so far have only resulted in limited sales, it’s likely that your content isn’t effectively communicating your product benefits and value propositions.
To increase revenue and sales, you must focus on localization quality.
monday.com wanted to expand from English to eight other languages. They took a quality-over-speed approach, hiring in-house localization managers, and localizing everything they could, including their app, customer support, YouTube videos, and blog posts. They accounted for SEO differences and even adjusted their marketing materials based on feedback from local businesses. It’s been such a success that they’ve added five more languages using the same method.
Business outcome: boosting brand visibility
It can be hard to get your brand recognized internationally, let alone do so while maintaining a consistent image. Adapting to individual markets means changing your approach in every country and language. It can seem like consistency is impossible to balance with the specificity required in localization.
To boost brand visibility, you must combine standardization with localization.
Airbnb has done this and seen the payoff. In 2022, they ranked #1 for travel and hospitality and #3 globally in Byte Level Research’s globalization report – a dramatic increase from prior years thanks to their dedication to localization.
A look at Airbnb Japan’s Newsroom. (Source)
Part of their strategy involves their blog, Newsroom. Some posts are included across languages, like those relating to Disney and Pixar-themed locations. There are language-specific posts, too, like stays for Japan’s summer music festival season on the Japanese blog and Airbnb’s efforts to boost Chinese-US tourism on the Chinese blog. They even have separate English blogs for the US, AU and NZ, Ireland, the UK, and India with different posts.
Part of what made Airbnb’s localization efforts so successful was their use of localization technology.
There’s an app for that: using tech to simplify long-form content localization
To get the business outcomes you desire from long-form content localization, you need to account for common challenges all teams face in this process: speed, scale, quality control, and collaboration. Using the right TMS can help you overcome these challenges.
Challenge #1: Speed
Long-form content localization takes time to do it right. There is a risk of going so slow that your localized content fails to keep pace with your English content, making your international product seem lower quality.
Automation can help.
Lokalise has automation features that speed up your team’s routine work. There are many ways that Lokalise can automate your workflow, including using machine translation (MT) during the design phase, translation memory (TM) that acts like a database for already translated text, and the ability to set autofill rules for dialects of languages to speed up same language localization (e.g., US and UK English). These features are one of the reasons why Revolut saves over 100+ hours a week with Lokalise.
Challenge #2: Scale
If you’re a company localizing a lot of languages and/or content, doing it at scale can be a problem.
A TMS paired with the right content management system (CMS) integration can improve scalability.
CoachHub was localizing its content into ten languages, including long-form content like articles and course materials. However, they were dealing with a slow, manual process that left room for errors. Since they’ve started using Lokalise with our Storyblok integration, they’ve scaled to 20 languages while gaining back 25% of their time and increasing customer satisfaction.
Challenge #3: Quality Control
Localization teams that aren’t careful run the risk of producing poor-quality content. With longer content, the amount of translation only increases this risk, especially when it comes to maintaining standardization of brand-specific terms and industry jargon across languages and translators.
Lokalise has built-in QA features to minimize the risk of low-quality content.
Combining TM, AI translations, and a glossary means your long-form content will have quality and consistency. Active Campaign found this true when they saw their Spanish blog traffic increase 73% YoY with the new users to match.
Challenge #4: Collaboration
A lack of coordination between global and cross-functional teams can cause inefficiencies in your workflow and sabotage quality.
Lokalise puts your whole team on one platform that is built for collaborative localization.
You can integrate your productivity tools for tighter project management, chat with your teammates, easily review each other’s work, and more. Argos Multilingual and Planday took this even further with Lokalise’s Slack integration and webhooks to change a process built around a “dreaded Google Sheet” into a collaborative dream that turned 24-hour bug fixes into 15-minute ones.
With long-form content localization, you need every advantage to keep up with the competition. Lokalise is your secret weapon for global content domination.
Kickstart your localization strategy with Lokalise
Long-form content localization can help bring in new customers, increase revenue and sales, and transform your local brand into a worldwide household name. Lokalise can help you produce high-quality content quickly and collaboratively at scale.
The best part about using Lokalise for your content marketing needs? We’ve just made it easier with our new marketing and support project type, enabling you to work on your blog posts, support content, and more in a smoother, more collaborative way – all in one place.
Start your free trial today.
