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You can now start a company on Monday and be trading with the world by Wednesday. Do you think it’s a joke? Well, that’s what Emma Jones, the founder of Enterprise Nation wrote in her book “Go Global: How to take your business to the world”. She was one of the speakers at the UKTI conference “Sell British: Using Technology To Go Global” which took place in Nottingham on 18 October. The aim of this UKTI event was to give advice to SME’s wishing to use internet technology to grow their business and trade to a worldwide customer base.

Since the UK market is sluggish, there’s never been a better time to leverage technology and look overseas. You need to get your market research right and promote yourself, for example using social networks such Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr.

It is also important to have a website with a simple, visual impact and conversion tuning, as well as a company logo, clear navigation and key words for Google. You also need to translate and localise your website, which means making it feel and look right for the target market. German people, for example, expect to find a lot of technical information, whereas British people value the sales breath of the company.

Even if English is a world language, translating your website shows commitment to your target foreign market. Ask SanTranslate, your professional translation service provider, how they can help you reach a broader customer base.

Have you ever thought that she doesn’t have a mouth and wondered why? Yuko Yamaguchi, the current official designer of Hello Kitty, entertained this question when Time Magazine interviewed her:

“It’s so that people who look at her can project their own feelings onto her face, because she has an expressionless face. Kitty looks happy when people are happy. She looks sad when they are sad. For this psychological reason, we thought she shouldn’t be tied to any emotion – and that’s why she doesn’t have a mouth.”

Manga characters in general are very innocent and subtle. Manga can be translated as “whimsical drawings” and consist of comics and print cartoons. These drawings have a long history dating back to 10th century, where depictions of animals were drawn as being part of the upper class. Eventually, these scrolls went on to be known as the Chōjū giga or “The Animal Scrolls.”

In Japan, people of all ages read manga. There are also manga cafés, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation of kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink coffee and read manga and sometimes stay there overnight. Manga represent pieces of Japanese culture and history because they take part in everyday life dealing with politics, religion, economy, family and gender and integrate it to create their stories.

Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts of the world, particularly in Taiwan (“manhua”), South Korea (“manhwa”) and China, notably Hong Kong (“manhua”). In France, “la nouvelle manga” has developed as a form of bande dessinée (literally drawn strip) drawn in styles influenced by Japanese manga. In the United States, people refer to what they perceive as manga “styled” comics as Amerimanga, world manga, or original English-language manga (OEL manga).

What’s the secret of Manga success? In the case of Hello Kitty, she speaks from her heart; she’s Sanrio‘s ambassador to the world and isn’t bound to any particular language. Even if we are in the era of high tech story lines and fancy 3D, people are still in love with the simplicity of the fables.