I recently got a Facebook friend request from an ex-boyfriend and this made me wonder…

Things didn’t end well, I hadn’t spoken to him for about 6 years and we both avoid attending events if we know the other person will be there. I think, it is pretty safe to say that we are not friends. Where does this phenomenon come from that people feel that, although they would not like to spend any time with someone face to face, it would be perfectly normal to follow their every day activities through Facebook, MySpace and Bebo?

I’ve also heard of incidences where bosses or HR managers were questioning employees as to why they didn’t accept their Facebook invitations or dared to put them only on a limited profile. Does this really mean that we now live in a society where nothing can be “private” anymore? I am very aware of this, as I carefully think of what I tweet about on my Twitter account http://twitter.com/felicitasbetzl , which is public. I am also on LinkedIn and Xing and both profiles are public. Is that not enough for my professional network to be satisfied with?

I also hate company Flickr accounts, where all of a sudden pictures of yourself appear from a Christmas party, which you would have never even shared with your friends. Businesses make certainly good use of social media platforms but I think they should also take into account that some people may not be as “open” to sharing everything, even if it is just a picture of yourself with a doublechin. Those pictures should reflect a company’s image and those accounts should be looked after carefully.

The bottom line here is really that I think there is a great need to define where the line requires to be drawn. Especially young web companies should look “fun” but the wrong pictures can put maybe some serious clients off right from the start.

written by Feli \\ tags: facebook, flickr, Social Media, twitter

This morning I was going through my Twitter follower list and did a little bit of “spring cleaning” of the list of people I follow. When checking the tweets, which mention my name I found this:

unmasker@felicitasbetzl was judged unworthy http://is.gd/1IXxM #unmasked

Of course I had to check who deemed me to be “unworthy”! So what is the point of Unmasker?

Unmasker attempts to expose those people who write generic, disingenuous crap in their Twitter bio.

Original, honest bios go to heaven, buzzword laden rubbish is sent to hell.

My current Twitter bio goes as follows:

Felicitas Betzl is an Online Marketing Consultant currently working in Barcelona, with 6 years experience in SEO, PPC & Social Media.

The Unmasker thinks it should go more like this:

Felicitas Betzl Is An Online Bullshit Waste-of-space Currently Working In Barcelona, With 6 Years Experience In Seo, Ppc & Bandwagon-jumping.

I really had to laugh out loud. It reminded me a little bit of Bill Hicks who said “If you work in Sales or Marketing, kill yourself”.  Afterwards it gives you 2 buttons to click:

1. F*ck off: which redirects you to the Unicorns and Rainbows on Demand website
2. Bring it on: where you can tweet the rewritten bio or make another.

On the Unmasker website you can also see:

• Most recent Twitter bios
• Most popular Twitter profiles
• Top Angels
• Top Demons

I’m not going to change my bio just yet, so I guess I’m going to hell but I think it’s going to be much more fun there than in heaven anyway!

written by Feli \\ tags: Social Media, twitter

Well, it´s the 1st April and everyone´s on the edge, expecting a prank or two.

It´s not even 11am, and so far I´ve already encountered 2 viral campaigns, which will probably be spiralling around the world today.

1) Expedia´s Flights to Mars for 99$

2) Twitter add on Shouttr, my personal favourite made by the Softonic team in Barcelona.

I´m sure we´ll see a few more today!

Happy Fool´s Day!

written by Feli \\ tags: shouttr, Social Media, viral campaigns, you tube

I am expanding my online marketing service offering, since I´m becoming quite a social media fiend these days.
These new services will receive soon their own pages but I shall give you a sneak preview…

1. Online Reputation Management for companies and individuals
2. Social Media strategies

I would normally file the latter under SEO, but since everyone´s talking about social media and buzz marketing, demand increases in these areas alone and I am receiving a fair amount of enquiries for those type of services.
You can view the full list of my online marketing services here.
Please don´t  hesitate to contact me for further information!

written by Feli \\ tags: online marketing services, reputation management, Social Media

I came across an interesting article on the German newspaper website “Die Welt” explaining an incredible social media success. But not the marketing kind.. the social kind.

The social networking site Facebook managed to save a French company from complete collapse.  After the suicide of the French shipyard owner Joel Gamelin in La Rochelle, his company faces a collapse and salaries were unlikely to be paid. In his suicide note the father leaves a note for his daughter Fanny Gamelin saying he’s sorry for having been unable to save the company from bankrupcy.

His daughter took the opportunity and published with the help of the family lawyer a press release on Facebook on the 23rd February 2009, pleading for people to donate 1 Euro each, in order to be able to pay for the salaries. Within days alone they managed to collect 201,000 Euros from 6,795 generous people via Paypal.  The workers of the shipyard have already been paid and the rest of the money will also be set aside for the employees. This is the first time (at least as far as I know) that a social network has been able to help a cause, whereby actually banks and the government have been replaced.

This only shows how powerful social networks can be, something which should not only be exploited for marketing purposes but the greater good.

That was a bit deep

written by Feli \\ tags: facebook, french company, gamelin shipyard, Social Media, social networks

This post about how to promote an Etsy shop online,  is inspired by my friend Mairead, who decided after 10 years working in the financial sector to pack it all in and dedicate all her precious time to her real passion – making handbags!! I really admire her dedication and guts to leave her job and just go and be her own boss at Breagha – Handmade bags.

Now Mairead doesn’t have her own e-commerce site and sells her bags on Etsy, a website, which allows anyone to create their own shop within the site and sell their handmade goods, like handbags, jewlery etc. It pretty much works like Ebay, where it’s possible to create a shop and Etsy will take a cut of any sold item, with two significant differences:

1) Etsy takes a smaller percentage of the sold goods

2) There is no auction-style selling.

My friend has not the option of having her own website at the moment, now, how could she still utilise the web to promote her Etsy shop with other means?

The site offers the option to sign up for an RSS feed, so it’s possible to keep up to date with any new products a certain seller puts up, but Mairead at this point wants to spread the word.

Mairead shared the link to her Etsy shop on Facebook. Another option to show this link at all times is to add it to the information, which appears on the right-hand side on below the profile picture.

These are all valid ways of reaching a very small group, only direct friends. If looking at the Facebook Advertiser tool, the following statistics are pretty interesting. In the UK alone, there are 6,860 females interested in handbags, in the US 5,720 and these are just two examples, as Etsy is used world-wide.

Further options are:

• Creating a shop page on Facebook, this can reach more people who are interested in handbags
• Stumble the Etsy shop page (which I have already done)
• Create a Twitter account and keep it public, updating people on new products posted. I’ve undertaken a handbag search and already quite a few other people utilise Twitter for this purpose
• Become a member of various handbag fan pages and leave comments, directing people to your shop

During my brief research for this, I’ve also seen that there are many shop and fan pages on Facebook for people who are interested in handbags. Mairead could also be cheeky and invite these people with her Facebook shop page, however, this could be seen as “unethical”, as it could be perceived as spam or unwanted contact by Facebook users. I’d be intersted to hear your comments on this.

Anyhow, I hope that Mairead’s business succeeds and as I can see she’s already been making a few sales, which is great! Good luck, Mairead!

There is now a second part to this “How to promote an Etsy shop online” series called How to promote an Etsy shop online – Part 2.

written by Feli \\ tags: E-commerce, facebook, SEO, Social Media, twitter

You are probably thinking “why would you use Twitter as reputation management tool?”. Most people use Twitter to keep their friends and workmates informed on personal updates and to share funny videos or even a good website etc. Also it becomes now a lot easier to update and follow your Twitter-friends with Twitterfox, a firefox extension, which I talked about in my previous post on socialnetworking toolbars and Firefox extensions. It allows you to access Twitter from your status bar and other peoples’ tweets appear as a pop up too, so you always are in the loop of what your friends are up to.

Now to the reputation management properties of Twitter.

A few days ago, I came across a case study on SEOmoz, where one of the contributing writers tells a very fascinating story about how ComScore used Twitter as a reputation management tool. It starts with a very frustrating story of the lady being unable to reach ComScore by phone to cancel a NBA basketball membership, which was automatically renewed. When she finally gets through to the company, the customer service agent declares that she is unable to refund the money for the membership as she called 4 days into the membership renewal. The frustrated lady tweets “I hate ComScore”. A minute later a representative from ComScore replies “What’s the issue?”.

Within only a few tweets the problem is resolved and the SEOmoz writer receives a refund, without any problem. I personally think that ComScore really embraced the opportunity Twitter offers with the Twitter search function, which enables you to search within all tweets mentions of a company name or product or whatever you are interested in. This will enable a lot of companies to proactively interact with their customers and resolve issues quickly.

written by Feli \\ tags: reputation management, Social Media, twitter

To be honest I was never really that much into social networking sites. I’ve boycotted them for years, when there was the big MySpace hype and only started a Bebo account, because my friend opened one for me.

Now that I have moved to Barcelona and live away from most of my friends I see the real value in Facebook and Twitter. It’s an easy way of telling your friends what you are up to and be able to take part in your life from the distance. Now when I start up my PC, I generally check my email, then open Google Reader and check my feeds. After that I normally check Facebook and Twitter. But it becomes quite tedious and time consuming opening all these applications in different tabs. I came across this really interesting post on the Softonic blog Top 5 Firefox add-ons for social networks and found Twitter, Facebook and YouTube add-ons, which are a real time saver.

The Facebook toolbar is really handy, as it enables you to sign into your account straight from there, update your status and customise the toolbar to your specific needs. Also any new updates from your friends appear automatically, just the way you see who signs in when you are signed into MSN messenger or Skype, which enables you to react quickly to your friends status updates, if you like.

Twitterfox is really neat as well, as once you download it, you can sign in straight from your status bar. By clicking on the Twitter “t”, a little window opens and shows you the lastest updates since the last time you logged in. Additionally there is a small window, which allows you to type in your updates easily.

The YouTube “YouPlayer” is also really handy. It is basically a video player where you can enable playlists, very similar to Winamp. It allows you to drag a video link into a playlist and then either just play it or watch it or even download it. Very nice!

Here are a few more, which I didn’t talk about in detail:

1) Flickrfox

2) MySpace Toolbar

3) Bookmarker – opens a sidebar, where you can easily access sites, such as del.icio.us, digg.com, diigo.com, ma.gnolia.com, google.com, mister-wong.de, netvouz.com, linkarena.com, alltagz.de, bobrdobr.ru

Happy networking!

Related posts: Social media posts

written by Feli \\ tags: del.ici.ous, digg, facebook, firefox add-ons, firefox extensions, myspace, Social Media, social networking, toolbars, tools, twitter, youtube

I watched The Gadget Show, the other week and they had a contest between Jason and Suzie to see who would manage the quicker and better online exposure of their videos.
Suzie got a Viral Marketing campaign for which she probably paid an arm and a leg, whereas Jason went down the cheaper route utilising social media channels. The aim was to find out who would get essentially the bigger amount of hits.
I thought this was a great case study for a social media campaign, which is now more and more used by SEOs as part of their link building and/or brand exposure strategies.
Suzie used the a big viral advertising company to create a short viral game “Suzie says” and a short movie to help build the brand “Suzie Perry”. They embrased the not so new “sex sells” approach, were Suzie is seen in the background getting changed, however nothing is ever revealed, as a mobile phone covers the important bits. Watch the Suzie Perry video.
Jason took the low budget approach utilising the Web 2.0 social media options, which are available to everyone at no cost.
He filmed the “Extreme Caterpillar Breakdance” and placed it on various social networking sites, social bookmarking sites and of course on You Tube and other video domains, such as Break.com and Spike.
Social bookmarking sites included Facebook. The social bookmarking sites were Stumble Upon and Digg.
The results were quite different.
Suzie’s campaign only achieved 127,716 views on YouTube, contrary to Jason’s “Extreme Caterpillar” movie, which received 2,876,874 views.
This shows the power of social media and ought to be part of any good SEO campaign. Of course it’s important to identify which social media strategy is most relevant to a client and a page on Facebook and a YouTube movie may just not always be the most effective.

written by Feli \\ tags: digg, Social Media, stumble upon