I am very happy this Christmas, as with the help of a variety of “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No. 1″ Facebook groups, the old rockers did in fact stick it to the X-Factor this year.

I detest all these talent shows, such as American Idol, X-Factor and X-Idol and was right behind the pre-emptive strike to not allow the X-Factor single to make it the Christmas No. 1 in 2009.

In an hour’s time at 15.00 GMT the event the Nationwide XmasDay Blast of Killing in the Name Of is going to happen. Let’s all join in all over the world for it and be satisfied about the fact that there are still enough people who really don’t want to support brainless talentshows but will happily support real talent any time.

Merry Christmas, folks!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

Erik Vold from VKI Studios also commented and has pointed out another handy Google Analytics Firefox Extension he’s written, which also includes the Greasemonkey Social Media Metrics features. The main features are as follows:

• Auto access your Google Analytics account
• Cleaner Profile Switching
• Export to Google Docs from Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Absolute Conversion
• Google Analytics Advanced Date Selection
• Google Analytics Table Sorting
• Social Media Metrics

Find more information on the Better Google Analytics Firefox extension on the VKI Studio’s site, where you can also download it.

Exciting stuff for all Google Analytics fans out there and again a shoutout and a big “Thank you” to Erik Vold, Michael Freeman, Arty V, Tyson Kirksey and André Scholten.

I came across this really interesting post on the VKI Studios blog, where Erik Vold makes a social media metric script available to the public, which is very generous of him. So what are the features of it?

Once correctly installed (I’ll go into this bit in a minute), you will be able to view social media metrics within your Google Analytics account. These metrics can be viewed within Content > Top Content > Content Detail and appear just below your usual information for a particular page. Once the script is enabled, the following metrics are added:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• Mixx
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Del.icio.us
• Yahoo! Inlinks

It is possible to directly go to the various social media websites by clicking on the blue hyperlink and submit your website/post if it appears as 0 or to view the information directly on the social media sites. Amazing!

So, how do you install this feature for your Google Analytics account?

1) Install Greasemonkey for Firefox and ensure that it is enabled

2) Install the VKI Studios Greasemonkey Google Analtyics script

3) Just log into your Google Analytics account and go to Content > Top Content > Content Detail

Easy!

Enjoy and thank you very much VKI Studios!