How Multilanguage Websites Can Help Preschools

Posted On October 6, 2017 By UmeWorks In Multi-language websites /

One thing that you can safely say about the preschool business is that it is always growing, and as is the case with the entire country preschools are growing more diverse. One of the greatest hallmarks of diversity in early childhood education has been the enthusiastic embrace of a multilingual classroom model. This is not only for purposes of inclusion but to prepare the preschoolers for later success in learning languages that are not their own. Shouldn’t you consider a similar model when it comes to promoting your business?

The Limitations of an English-Only website

No matter what language they speak, every parent is your potential customer. Limiting your client base to only those who speak English might end up being a larger problem than you anticipate. Although the majority of the population in America are English-proficient, according to the U.S. Census, over 20% speak English “less than very well”. The percentage is higher in urban areas, but no matter where your business happens to be located, the prospect of excluding one out of every 5 people from your services is worrying.

How Do Multilanguage Websites Work?

A multi-language website works on many of the same principles as a website that is only written in English, but for each page of content, mirror pages are created for speakers of as many languages as you would like to include. Some languages that would vastly increase your base of potential customers include the following languages:

Spanish
Chinese
Korean
Japanese
Hindi Arabic
Somali
Tagalog

With just a few mirror pages translated to these languages, you can significantly increase the understanding of up to a quarter of visitors who would potentially visit your website, and this can have a bigger impact than you know.

Unexpected Impact of a Multilanguage Website

When you think of a multilanguage website, you probably wouldn’t expect it to have much of an impact on web traffic, but rather see it as a kind of convenience. In truth, it can have an enormous effect on your efforts to boost traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one way that posting multiple language pages can be a boon, as while you may be in stiff competition for page rank against other preschools, your foreign language pages may be a first-page result when the search for the service is done in the foreign language. The value of this competitive advantage over competitors providing preschool services is immense, and shouldn’t be discounted out of hand.

Example Scenario of Preschool Benefiting from the Usage of a Multilanguage Website

Objective: To increase the number of enrollments of children in the preschool.

Situation: A new preschool opened in Torrance two years ago. This neighborhood is home to a significant number of young executives and their families from Japan who are on multi-year assignments to manage their North American offices. The most common non-English languages spoken in this area are Spanish, Korean, and Japanese.

Solution: To promote the preschool’s unique Reggio-inspired philosophy, the owners have expanded their marketing reach with a multilanguage website describing their approach and offerings in English, Japanese, and Spanish.

Results: The non-English language web pages significantly increased the website’s overall traffic, and the number of website appearances on page 1 of search engine results for “preschool palos verdes”, “preschool torrance”, “preescolar palos verdes”, “preescolar torrance”, “yochien palos verdes”, and “yochien torrance”.

The number of school tours and enrollments increased, with a significant proportion of students whose parents’ native language is not English. The Japanese parents expressed how appreciative they were to find a website written in Japanese, and how much easier it made them to learn whether the school was a good fit for their child and family.

Because of the success, the preschool plans to expand their website with other languages over time.

Get a Free Estimate to Create a Multilingual Website

If you think that a multilanguage website is just the boost that your preschool needs to fill your classrooms, contact UmeWorks for a free estimate and how to get started today! Send us a link to your website’s URL, what languages you want to add, and we’ll provide you an estimate.

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Ways Assisted Living Facilities Can Prevent Senior Social Isolation

Posted On October 4, 2017 By UmeWorks In Inbound content marketing /

You want to provide the highest possible quality of life for your senior residents. You provide them with nutritious food, access to quality health care and clean facilities. But what about their mental wellbeing?

The AARP cites a Brigham Young University study that states feelings of loneliness can increase premature senior mortality by as much as 26 percent. Obviously, a lot is at stake when it comes to feelings of isolation and loneliness. Read on to learn how to prevent senior social isolation.

How To Prevent Senior Social Isolation

Intergenerational Living Facilities

The National Institute on Aging finds that intergenerational relationships are beneficial to the elderly and can even help combat age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s. It’s becoming increasingly more common for nursing homes and assisted living facilities to partner with local colleges to offer residencies to students. The students not only pitch in and help the seniors with daily tasks, but the senior residents have access to courses, functions and other aspects of university life to enrich their social lives. This helps to connect seniors to their community and combat feelings of isolation.

Bring the Community In

Your facility may not be set up for having college students living alongside the seniors, or there may not be a close enough college, but that doesn’t mean you can’t invite the community into your senior community. Contact your local school district, boys and girls clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other community groups to find a way that they can come in to interact with your seniors. This could be a local recital for the High School Choir, a fun puppet show put on by the kids, or crafting activities for the children and seniors. Your assisted living facility could host the community with games nights and multigenerational talent shows for both residents and visitors.

You may even want to consider creating an opportunity where the younger generations come in to teach seniors how to use technology. This opportunity gives seniors an opportunity to connect with family and friends that aren’t local through social media and email as well gives the students a chance to interact with the seniors.

Provide Entertainment Opportunities

There are many ways that senior care facilities can combat social isolation, but the easiest way is to provide plenty of opportunities for seniors to socialize, both within the facility and within the local community. Some facilities have a dedicated recreation program to schedule bingo night, movie night, senior yoga or out-loud readings. All of these programs help seniors get together to converse, learn new skills and meet people, which combats the effects of senior isolation and loneliness

Communal Dining

Everyone needs to eat, so dinner is a perfect time to provide opportunities for socialization. Since eating is such a social activity, anyway – we eat meals together, we celebrate special occasions with food, we gift food items in times of need – it makes sense for residents to use mealtime as a social tool whenever possible. If your facility has the space for a communal dining room: great! If not, encourage your residents to visit the local senior center, invite a friend for a picnic or check out a local diner.

Give Residents Something to Care For

Studies show that pet therapy can have a lasting positive impact on senior emotional health, so it’s a great program to review for how to prevent senior social isolation. Consider allowing your residents to care for a dog, cat or preferred animal because having something to take care of makes a senior feel needed, and when people feel needed, they feel more fulfilled and less socially isolated. If your facility can’t support individual pet relationships, maybe you can have a facility mascot, like a cat or bird, that staff members can bring around for residents to bond with, or partner with a local animal shelter for visit days to offer your seniors the benefits of pet therapy. Even having plants to care for can make a difference.

Dr. Gawande’s book Being Mortal described an experiment of the then-new medical director of Chase Memorial Nursing Home, Dr. Bill Thomas. Noticing the stark contrast of the home to his life-abundant rural farm, Dr. Thomas brought in dogs, cats, birds and plants. After two years, research showed the number of prescriptions required by Chase Home residents fell by half. “I believe that the difference in death rates can be traced to the fundamental human need for a reason to live, ” stated Dr. Thomas.

Religious Activities

Participating is religious activities is not only good for the spiritual well-being of seniors, but a place of worship is the perfect place to foster friendships and interaction. Attending church services, events and volunteering plays a critical role in the life of a senior. It provides a sense of purpose, comfort, and fosters a social network of like-minded people. Studies have shown the lives of those involved with a religious community have more longevity on average than those who are not.

Provide Transportation

Many seniors do not drive, and lack of a mode of transportation is one of the main causes of senior social isolation. Anything that can promote the mobility of seniors and help them get around enables them to make independent choices, therefore, promoting social health.

In Conclusion

There are many factors to consider when thinking about how to prevent senior social isolation and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, so it’s important to observe the physical, mental and emotional health of your residents before drawing up a game plan. Above all else, it’s important to implement a system of social isolation identification. Often times, relatives are the first to notice that their loved ones are lonely, but some residents don’t have close family to depend on. It then becomes important to seek the help of a mental health professional to identify those residents at risk of – or suffering from – social isolation.

Are Your Potential Clients Finding Your Assisted Living Facility?

Do you already have an excellent practice of helping your residents prevent social isolation? Be sure you are letting your potential clients know. If you need help with marketing your Assisted Living Facilities online, request a free consultation with UmeWorks by clicking button below.

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Grow your Business with Multilanguage Websites

Posted On September 19, 2017 By UmeWorks In Multi-language websites /

Multi-language websites help you grow your businesses locally, regionally and internationally, or even if you have a Torrance business that can only service local clientele; reach those who live and work nearby whose first language is not English. Ensure non-English speakers can find and understand what products and services you offer in their native language.

No single language is used by more than 30% of the global population. This includes English which is regarded as one of the most popularly used languages in the world.

Hola Annyeonghaseyo Konnichiwa Torrance!

According to Statistical Data, the five most common other languages that are spoken in Torrance are:

Spanish
Korean
Japanese
Chinese
Tagalog

Of these, thousands state they do not speak English very well. Local Torrance business owners can take steps to service these individuals with multi-language websites.

Advantages of multi-language websites

Reach a broader market beyond only those who read English.
This can be both those who live and work locally to your business, such as in the Los Angeles South Bay, that speak a non-English language, or those who live outside the U.S.
Edge over the competition
A multi-language website gives you an edge over competitors. With a multilingual website, non-English speakers can more easily learn about your products on your site, and even shop online if you have a multi-language ecommerce site. You can build a customer base and use marketing strategies in their language to win customer loyalty before your competitors catch on.
Cost effectiveness
Once the translation is implemented on your site, the cost of maintaining a multilingual websites is not significantly higher than a single language site.
SEO
Using the search engine optimization (SEO) strategy works very well to increase website traffic. It works even better for multi-language websites to increase your chances of being found by local non-English speakers when they search keywords in their native language.

Could you use a multilingual website? Questions to ask yourself:

Would local residents who happen not to speak English be interested in my product or service?
Do I, or can I, provide a product or service that specifically meets the needs of those for whom English is not their first language? This could even be instructions you provide in their language, making it easier to do business with you.
Can my product or service be delivered to customers outside my immediate location, possibly even to another country?
Does the selling of my product or service rely heavily on continued dialog with the prospective client? If yes, do you have anyone in-house at your business that can fulfill this communication? If not, consider having printed multi-language brochures or flyers ready. For large ticket items, you may consider hiring a translator. (We can help!)

Types of Businesses that Benefit from Multi-language Websites

Here are some examples of types of local Torrance businesses that could benefit with having a multi-language website:

Preschools: Executives from headquarter countries, such as Japan, are sometimes relocated to the LA South Bay for a number of years to manage the North American offices. The young families may need a preschool they can trust and having a website in Japanese to understand the mission and values of the preschool can help the executive family find a school they prefer to nurture their children.
⇒ Learn More
Intellectual Property Legal Firms: Documents need to be translated into the language of the country of which the patent is held. Explaining this service is available at your IP firm on your website will help prospective clients know you can help them. And we can help with the document translation as well.
⇒ Learn More
Catering and Wedding Cakes: Enable non-English speaker to select and order their menu and cake selection on your website in their own language.
⇒ Learn More about how a Catering business may benefit from a multi-language website
⇒ Learn More about how a Bakery may benefit from a multi-language website

English Language Schools: These potential students want to learn English, but don’t yet have it mastered, or they wouldn’t need a school, right? Help them find you and understand what your classes cover in their own language.
Immigration Services: Help prospective find you by having web pages with keywords in their language.
⇒ Learn More

Build or Extend Your Website with UmeWorks

Grow your customer base: Perhaps you already have a website but you want to cast the net wider and reach potential users in Torrance who speak other languages.
Start wide: Are you starting a new business and you want to reach both English and non-English speakers?

UmeWorks will build you an attractive and effective multi-language website. Working closely with our local translation partner with 55 language translation capabilities, we will provide an accurate translation of your website content that included a secondary review to ensure accuracy of translation, grammar, and punctuation.

Robotic translation applications provide literal translations which often do not convey the writer’s intent. Nor can they capture rhetoric or beauty of a language. Those may be sufficient for single word translations, e.g., of a menu button, but not for a coherent flow of information and understanding about your business.

If a multi-language website could help your business grow, CONTACT UMEWORKS for a quote to create a multilingual website for your business.

CONTACT UMEWORKS

My “Mad Men” Donald Draper: Uncle Bill

Posted On August 8, 2017 By UmeWorks In Inbound content marketing, Plum Picks /

I am often asked how I first got into web design. When they do, I tell them about my Uncle Bill.

Depending on which generation you are, you may remember ads for Bisquick, Mutual of New York, Alcoa, Bell Telephone System, Crisco and Kleenex that ran in the ‘60s and ‘70s. You may also remember the many family-centered sitcoms of the ‘70s.

I grew up watching these sitcoms and seeing these ads. My sisters and I liked a particular sitcom called Family Affair that featured a character named Uncle Bill who lived in New York City. Whenever we watched it, we would point and say, “Look… it’s Uncle Bill!” Although my own Uncle Bill also lived in NYC, he was actually less like that character and more like Darrin Stephens from Bewitched. Those more familiar with more recent TV programs would know more what I am talking about if I compared him to Donald Draper from Mad Men. Both characters were New York advertising executives on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

Mad Men Work

A few years ago, I had the privilege of going through Uncle Bill’s portfolio with him. I have so much respect for his creative genius and how much work it took to produce such quality design work in his era.

You see, in Uncle Bill’s time, the advantages a designer now enjoys just didn’t exist. It was an exhausting and time-consuming process to produce workups for clients to review. Every part of the design, including the lettering, needed to be done painstakingly by hand. A summer class in drafting gave me an idea of how much work it was to do all the lettering by hand. There were none of the thousands of font options and low-cost stock image libraries we have today.

William Shiozawa was a great illustrator, manual typographer, and master of presentation. It is my honor to be able to show you some of his work.

Not only did I enjoy seeing these outstanding designs my Uncle Bill created, but I got to hear his stories from Madison Ave.

One of my favorites he shared is the story behind a magazine ad campaign he was creating for a brand of women’s shoes that had a unique rubber sole. His innovative ad layout showed the front and bottom of the shoe on successive pages. To get the best illustrations, my uncle hired an artist who was as known for his great shoe drawings as he was for his unusual hairstyle. The artist turned out to be Andy Warhol.

“Mad Men” can keep Donald Draper. I’ll take my Uncle Bill any day. William Shiozawa was kind, gentle, intelligent and talented.

William Shiozawa attended the art school in Oakland, CA where he grew up. After serving in the US Army during the Korean War, Uncle Bill returned to his passion for art and enrolled at Art Center in Los Angeles. He then landed a job with an ad agency in New York City and continued as a “Mad Man” until 1980 when he retired and moved to Los Angeles. He didn’t hang up his pencils though; he continued to enjoy drawing portraits with a community drawing club.

Every day in my business is a tribute to “my Donald Draper” who inspired me with his work in commercial art.

Examples of How to Use Co-Marketing Effectively

Posted On May 30, 2017 By UmeWorks In Inbound content marketing /

Co-marketing is a channel of marketing that takes advantage of the symbiotic nature of products, services, and businesses, and harnesses their brand power to produce a partnership which gives the individual businesses a greater audience while sharing their marketing resources. Brands that complement each other can take advantage of this exciting form of publicity to boost their own marketing.

Here are several examples of how you can use co-marketing effectively so that you and your partners can produce win-win business results.

1. Co-produce a newsletter

When producing a newsletter together, focus on areas of mutual interest to the readers. This gives your readers a broader perspective and more interesting articles to enjoy unlike just having a newsletter talking about a single company. A good example is a hotel and boat rental company co-producing a newsletter that talks about the local tourist attractions.

2. Cross-promote your businesses on social media

Social media is a powerful tool and if two companies have an established media presence, they can then leverage their partners’ social media followers to increase their exposure to new customers.

Examples of how to use co-marketing effectively on social media includes creating different and creative messages that relate to your partner to promote their brand or shine a light on an activity they are doing.

A good example is a partnership between St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a non-profit and Red Frog Events. The hospital posts a shout out to Red Frog Events, thanking them for contributing to their new therapy wing while Red Frog Events posts a tweet touting the opening of a new therapy wing at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Red Frog Events benefits from goodwill generated by taking part in a worthy cause while St Jude Children’s Hospital gets exposed to potential donors.

3. Co-sponsor a good cause

By doing this, you will be able bring more attention to a cause you support. And both businesses will benefit by getting the attention of potential clients who also care about the cause.

A good example is a “donate and dine” arrangement with your local blood bank. A restaurant can organize a blood drive, with a blood mobile in your parking lot. As a thank you to donors, you can provide a free dessert or appetizer when they come in to eat afterward donating. This draws more people to the cause while exposing them to your business and its involvement.

4. Structure cross specials

Other examples of how to use co-marketing effectively include having your companies using each other products during sales. This will expand your customer base to uncharted territory and you can split the costs with your partner. An example is having your co-marketing partner reward their customers with your products or services, this will lead to more referrals and their customers will become your potential customers.

5. Use each other’s assets

This is one easy way of taking advantage of your partner’s resources. Examples of how to use co-marketing effectively by using each other’s assets include having a pop-up store in a retail outlet where you can market your products. Offer free samples and engage with clients, and you will be able to leverage the brand power of the retail store and the trust and loyalty it has created with its customers to acquire more clients for your business.

You can also share your media space where you can talk about each other in newspaper articles, mentioning each other’s strengths and achievements. Having another business or company talking about you shows people that you are a strong brand with a solid reputation.

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