If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I also teach my potential future colleagues. One of «my» subjects is Career Studies, where I try to give the students as much information relevant for working (not only) as a freelance translator and/or interpreter as possible. This includes, for example, how to calculate what to charge, how to write an offer and an invoice, or how (and where) to find clients.

For this last point, at least some measure of marketing is necessary, which also includes being online not only with a good website and on the pertinent platforms, but also on social media.

When we started talking about networks like Facebook and Instagram, my students thought it was strange that I was not active on the latter. I answered that I wouldn’t know what to post. After all, there is not a lot of exciting stuff happening when translating, and even the interpreting part is usually restricted by confidentiality matters, and Instagram is a visual kind of network.
All of which is true. But still, they thought that there surely were cool and interesting things of which I could take pictures or video, and post them on Insta.

I didn’t really think so, but it stuck in my mind, nevertheless.

And then, last weekend, there was the annual general meeting of the VKD, the professional association for conference interpreters in the BDÜ, Germany’s largest professional association for translators and interpreters. This in itself is worth a separate post, but that is not what I want to talk about today.

Last weekend, I started on a new adventure: I started posting on Instagram!

I had started to do little news blips with pictures on X, but then I thought: Why not do it on Instagram, instead? There are plenty of others covering this event on various social media channels anyway, including the VKD itself, it’s not confidential (or at least not all of it), and it’s definitely something that is of interest to quite a few people.

So that’s what I did.

I even figured out how to do reels and add music!

And it did not take long at all until the first reactions popped up in my feed (from my students, too!)!

I’ll be honest, I was pretty stoked! And it was so much fun, too! 😊

Check it out here: AnkeBetzAZT

Of course, now I have to find creative ways to continue posting, because otherwise what’s the point?

It’ll be a challenge, but now that I’ve taken the first step, it can only get easier from here, right? 😉

Image: by stockcam on istockphoto.com