Although running a blog might seem like “just a hobby” for many, it is, in fact, quite a hard labor that often brings disproportional results. Blogging is a kind of absolute freelance journalism that is often done by one person exclusively for those who are interested. With the complete freedom that blogging provides comes the complete responsibility for this blog and its potential success. The blogger needs to make quite a lot of effort in order to attract more people. However, there are a couple of shortcuts that have a very strong potential of expanding the audience, are cost-effective, and require relatively less effort. One of such shortcuts is making the blog multilingual.

Multi-what?

One of the reasons why a multilingual blog has such a strong potential is because by adding the content in another language, you expand your reach to the audience that speaks this language. And this audience can be a big one. And the bigger the audience, the more traffic your blog gets. And so on, you probably got the point. Still, making your blog multilingual, i.e. available in more than one language, is not the easiest feat to handle. You might even need to search through IsAccurate to get the specialist that will help you not only translate your original posts but also localize them or create completely original ones. In addition, you might try some of the following tools to get the overall sense of how a multilingual blog works, manage your multilingual content, and get things organized before you address the serious help.

1. Google Trends. This free and easy-to-use tool is great for tracking down the traffic that goes to your blog and observing the potential demand for the languages that you might need to consider. Essentially, the tool shows the number of users that visit your blog page and the general information about them, such as their country of origin, approximate age, and gender. This is how you know, which language you should adapt your blog to in the first place and what kind of content you need to produce.
2. Answer the Public. This is a great tool to track the popular keywords in different languages as well as the overall algorithm of the user’s digital behavior regarding a certain topic. This way, the tool is great not only for defining the requests in different languages but also for understanding, which topics are trendy in which languages, as well as what kind of content is demanded.
3. Google Docs. If you’re not using or never even heard of Google Docs and other cloud services, it’s time to start using them actively for good. Being a highly secure and powerful cloud technology, Google Docs, Tables, and Presentations are almost perfect for content management and storage. The only thing required from you is a moderate self-management skill.
4. Machine translation tools. Although many argue against them, they are great, especially when you start and have at least some basic knowledge in your target language. Such tools are usually free to use and are quite powerful, so getting the idea of your future post in another language is not a problem for them.
5. Memsource. This is a great additional tool for you and your translator. When it comes to topical content (and your blog is likely a topic-based one) translation memory tools are the lifesavers. In order not to translate similar portions of the text or search for certain terms over and over again, translation memories store such chunks of content and help you to get on track whenever you start a new post.
6. Screaming Frog. One of the most powerful and classic SEO tools, Screaming Frog is commonly used by bloggers in order to check their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts in multilingual content. You have to let the tool know that you have different language versions for your blog, and it will check whether all these versions are equally effective in attracting the desired traffic to your blog.
7. Ahrefs. A tool similar to Screaming Frog, Ahrefs remains extremely popular among SEO specialists, bloggers, and translators alike. This tool analyzes any webpage or site to detect all the keywords used. Combining this tool with Google Trends and Answer the Public will allow you to understand whether you are on the same page with trends and other users on the internet.
8. Hreflangs Tag Generator. Another great tool serving as an addition to the Screaming Frog or Ahrefs tool. It is used in order to generate proper hreflang tags (responsible for the display of the different versions of your WordPress blog). It is particularly useful when working with SEO tracking tools because it lets Google know that you check different versions of your blog, so you won’t get penalized by Google for too many requests.
9. Workflow organization tools. Using tools that help you organize your work protects you from any significant plan changes and simply eliminates chaos in work when it comes to team cooperation. Such tools include Trello, Jira, and WhenIWork, to name a few. This is an invaluable tool, especially when you grow bigger and work with somebody else.
10. Multilingual plug-ins. If you work with WordPress, you can use a variety of language plug-ins developed specifically for this platform. Their unbeatable advantage is that they are integrated into all WordPress processes and specific, allowing you to organize literally everything you read above.

Multi-Blog

By making your blog multilingual, you essentially create new blogs for every language. This, in turn, provides a great opportunity to potentially reach the same audience as your original blog has. Just imagine, basically multiplying your audience by the number of languages you adapt your blog to. Considering that this method is relatively cost-effective and requires mostly organizational and creative skills, this is a great deal with a truly huge payoff.