Never before has it been so imperative to incorporate the digital economy into businesses, not only to expand the potential consumer market to a global scale, but also to increase the potential customer engagement. Common Sense Advisory report found that the total spending power of online consumers around the world is nearly $50 trillion. It’s important to not only identify, but also provide solutions for companies seeking a seamless local and global community to overcome natural obstacles, such as language barriers.     For companies seeking to increase their overall community and boost community engagement, seamless digital language translation in marketing and overall customer care are becoming essential components to deliver a truly global community. While three years ago, enterprises would have had to translate content into 37 languages to reach 98% of internet users, the current specs suggest that it takes 48 languages to reach the same amount of users. So up until now, the gap has continued to widen between community engagement and users of different languages. For the most part communities have been language specific, in which to engage in a community the user must know and understand the language of the community.     Increase Your Community Engagement   With 70% of global web users spending their time cruising the internet in their own language, and $1.7 trillion currently being spent on e-commerce, it’s not hard to validate the potential in the digital market.¹ Of the 70%, only 31% of the market is attributed to English-only sites and that metric is currently decline.  In addition, it was found that nine out of ten users in the European Union would prefer to visit a website in their own language. As this is true for the Internet, it is also true for community.   Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC reinforces the effects of digital transformation saying, "In the next two years, two-thirds of Global 2000 CEOs will put DX (Digital Transformation) at the center of their growth and profitability strategies. By the end of this decade, IDC predicts that the percentage of enterprises with advanced DX strategies and implementations will more than double."   Professional language service providers translate content outside the community. This means community managers and administrators have to pull content out of one community, translate it, and move it manually into another language-specific community. These efforts, while effective in their execution, are not efficient in terms of time. With embedded community language translation comes the rise of a real-time translation solution to effectively share content across different language speakers and create truly global communities. Globalizing digital properties such as an online community enables a wider reach, allowing for an expanded audience and shared knowledge, which opens new markets and in turn creates new opportunities.   Treat Customers With Care   Among the numerous advantages to the Internet, there is a direct link between community engagement and cost efficiency. Customer forums and communities are where consumers seek guidance and expertise from one another, by broadening the user base through seamless language translation increases knowledge sharing, overall community value and financial benefits of one global community of scale.   It is now essential to include globalization as part of your c ommunity strategy .  As globalization of content becomes more streamlined with embedded translation, communities are better able to engage globally. As a result, the enterprise can save time, cost and effort in content translation. Even more impactful, when a community is truly globalized it allows for more collaboration and can boost innovation and idea sharing.   This can happen today with the use of the Lithium Language Translation Connector developed by iTalent Corporation and powered by Lingotek’s translation management system.   For more information about how you can incorporate a globalization strategy into your Lithium Community, check out http://italentcorp.com/solutions/lithium-lingotek/ .   About Fred Walters   Fred started his high-tech career at Apple Computer where he drove development and implementation of a broad spectrum of solutions (CRM, ERP, initial eCommerce and Internet presence, etc.). He continued implementation and business development activities at Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems where led efforts to deliver Internet solutions across the extended enterprise ecosystem.   After establishing a proven track record with well-known high tech companies, Fred co-founded Before the Call, an integrated sales intelligence solution--an inaugural Salesforce.com AppExchange Partner.   Since joining iTalent, Mr. Walters leads strategic and emerging practices in social, business intelligence, mobile and cloud areas along with business development activities leveraging a long history of enterprise system implementation leadership in the Silicon Valley. ​   ¹ Localization Matters, Common Sense Advisory, Copyright © 2008 2 User language preferences online, European Commission, Copyright © 2011 ... View more