Ola Fiddler spoke to Bill Mair of PrecisionPresentation.com for PBLINK Stories.
Aleksandra (Ola) Fiddler has drive, determination and dynamism. She has never had just one job, doing the same thing every day. Now an entrepreneur and influencer, she prefers to adopt a portfolio approach to business, spinning several plates at the same time.
And it is working well for her. Ola is a professional translator and interpreter, accredited by the Polish Ministry of Justice, and runs Eurotext, a translation and interpretation bureau; she is a qualified teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages and is the Director of language school Total English. Of course, she is best known as the mastermind behind and in front of Aleksandra Fiddler Tłumaczenia24, the 3-times weekly Facebook channel that condenses the latest UK Government news into Polish.
Read more about the secrets of her success here.
“There’s no-one to ask, Bill, there’s absolutely no-one to ask. Because for one thing, no-one is bigger than me in the UK. And also, if there is someone who’s bigger, they wouldn’t tell you their secrets. So, I’ve learned by making mistakes.”
Her briefings, where she takes questions from those tuned in, go the extra mile, breaking down the different guidance and regulations for each of the UK nations. Scotland in particular often has different rules from the rest of the UK, while special status refers to Northern Ireland in many areas, including trade. She has done it all herself, translating it all into Polish, and continues to do so, growing her audience into hundreds of thousands.
She goes another extra mile too, producing easy-to-read graphics in Polish, condensed from the complex information from the UK government. This example shows the situation as of 4 October, regarding quarantine and Covid test rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers, by category of country, vaccination or immunity status, etc.
And here it is, kindly produced especially for PBLINK Stories by Ola, translated into English:
Ola started this channel as a bit of an experiment around 18 months ago, as the first lockdown and the early restrictions were being introduced. It was at first more like a hobby but it met with immediate interest. She realised it had great potential but would also demand a lot of time. While she estimates that she spends at least 3 hours dedicated preparation in advance of each episode, the issues are constantly buzzing around inside her head, making it impossible to precisely quantify just how much time the channel consumes behind the scenes.
On top of which, Ola has no team of researchers to collate and condense the information, no make-up artist to get her ready for the camera every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and no social media expert to handle the promotion of the channel.
She explains that there is no ‘idiots guide to social media influencing’, so she has had to learn the hard way. She says:
“There’s no-one to ask, Bill, there’s absolutely no one to ask. Because for one thing, no-one is bigger than me in the UK. And also, if there is someone who’s bigger, they wouldn’t tell you their secrets. So, I’ve learned by making mistakes.”
One mistake she doesn’t make is over-advertising. Live viewers of her Facebook show see no adverts at all, while those watching it on “catch-up” see a very short advert for 4 seconds only before the show begins.
It’s been difficult at times, but necessary to learn how to successfully monetise the channel, which enables her to keep it going
She estimates she reaches around 40% of the Polish market in the UK. With 200,000 unique social media followers, against 850,000 Polish people in the UK, with half of them children, by our estimates she is actually reaching over 45%. For businesses keen to advertise goods and services direct to the Polish Diaspora in the UK, she is the gold standard.
Happily, this means that Ola can monetise the channel, securing its place on the internet. Just as well, as people have come to rely on her inimitable flowery Polish prose to make sense of the ever-changing rules and regulations in the UK.
Aleksandra Fiddler Tłumaczenia24 fans had the opportunity to express their appreciation of her efforts via voting in the Woman in the World competition. Now, any politician anywhere would give their right hand for 89% of the vote, but that’s what Aleksandra Ola Fiddler received in 10,755 verifiable, emailed votes out of 12,000 when she won the Audience Award at a glittering F2F gala event in London
Woman in the World is a premium magazine for Polish women outside Poland. It is distributed across the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, but has global online reach.
A fitting tribute to the inspired, energetic and ever-welcome work of Aleksandra Ola Fiddler.