On March 26th, I'll be speaking on the Linkbaiting, Social Search Marketing & Blogging panel in Munich, Germany. My intention is to bring examples of the ideas and strategies that have been so effective in the English-language market to German SEOs & website marketers. However, I could use a bit of help - my German is rusty and my familiarity with German social media sites, popular blogs and UGC-portals is second-rate. If you're familiar with these sites in the German market, I'd greatly appreciate any information you can provide, particularly links, so I can bone up on as much of the local market as possible.
My trip to Munich isn't all business, though. Mystery Guest, my new fiancée, will be joining me on the trip, as her father lives south of Munich, in the small town of Iffeldorf. We'll be celebrating our engagement with him and partying it up a bit before the conference with my excellent friend (and the person responsible for my trip to SES Munich), Thomas Bindl. I might even ask him to do a bit of English-to-German translation for me as my abilities limit me to asking for potato salad (kartoffelsalat), inquiring about the loo (Wo ist das WC?) and determining if there's an English-speaker around (Sprechen Sie Englisch?).
I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces (Bill Hunt, Sara Andersson and Mike Grehan) and meeting lots of new people, too. If you're interested in registering for SES Munich, the cost is €995 until March 9 (€695 for one day).
Many thanks to Thomas, who's translated this post to German:
Rand fliegt nach München um das Wort zum Thema Linkbait zu verbreiten
Am 26. März werde ich in der "Linkbaiting, Social Search Marketing & Blogging" Session auf der SES München sprechen. Mein Plan ist es ein paar der Ideen und Strategien, die im Englischen Markt erfolgreich waren, Deutschen SEOs und Seitenbetreibern nahe zu bringen. Nichtsdestotrotz könnte ich ein bisschen Hilfe gebrauchen - Mein deutsch ist angestaubt und meine Vertrautheit mit Deutschen Social Media Seiten, populären Blogs und UGC-Portalen ist eher zweitklassig. Falls du mit diesen Seiten im Deutschen Markt vertraut sein solltest, würde ich jegliche Information zu schätzen wissen. Besonders Links zu diesem Thema wären gut, damit ich den lokalen Markt möglichst gut verstehen kann.
Mein Ausflug nach München ist nicht nur geschäftlich. Mystery Guest, meine neue Verlobte, wird mich dabei begleiten, da ihr Vater in Iffeldorf, einem kleinen Ort südlich von München wohnt. Wir werden unsere Verlobung mit ihm feiern. Ausserdem werden wir ein bisschen mit meinem guten Freund (und der Person, die für meinen Trip zur SES München verantwortlich ist), Thomas Bindl feiern. Ich werde ihn vielleicht sogar darum beten ein bisschen Englisch-Deutsch für mich zu übersetzen, da meine Fähigkeiten sehr begrenzt sind. Sie schränken mich darauf ein nach Kartoffelsalat zu fragen (potatoe salad), den Standort der Toiletten zu erfahren (Where is the loo?) oder ob jemand, der Englisch spricht (Do you speak English?) in der Nähe ist.
Ich freue mich darauf ein paar bekannte Gesichter (Bill Hunt, Sara Andersson und Mike Grehan) zu sehen, sowie viele neue Leute zu treffen. Wenn du daran Interesse haben solltest dich anzumelden, es kostet bis zum 9. März €995 (€695 für einen Tag) .
The german blogosphere is compared to other countries relative small. The Top100 german blogs are here. (ordered by their Technorati ranking.)
Digg-like sites are small in Germany. The biggest are Yigg and Webnews. A frontpage-Yigg is only for 200-300 visitors good.
The biggest YouTube-like site is MyVideo, but as far as i know YouTube has more german users than MyVideo.
Mister Wong is the german clone of del.icio.us and if you belief Alexa they have now more german visitors than del.icio.us. But they don´t have a frontpage like del.icio.us and you don´t get much visitors from them.
Btw: Here (page 18) you can find a 20 % discount "priority code" for the SES Munich.
Another youtube-like site is https://www.clipfish.de/
more social bookmarking services :
https://www.klickts.de/
https://www.alltagz.de
https://www.beemylink.de
https://www.ersatzreifen.de
https://www.folkd.com
https://www.icio.de
https://www.linkarena.de
https://www.netselektor.de
https://www.weblinkr.de
Vell if you kaant shpeak doitch just use fonetics. Or vot about zat AltaVista sing vich you can locate rchit hir. Und enshjoy yourself ya! Vundanba
I went to Germany in '96 for my high school German class trip. I barely spoke any German while I was there.
Hey, Rand, if you want to find the snow and fancy a ski while you are here, give us a shout. (I know that Thomas is one of those wimpy boarder people!)
Hey, we boarders aren't wimpy! In fact, I have a lovely bruise below my arse from a super-sweet (meaning lame) wipeout from Saturday!
Now that was just distracting......
Hi Rand!
A sample of German UGC sites are:
https://www.yigg.de/ which is the German version of digg.com; a German social bookmarking service would be https://www.mister-wong.de/; https://www.wikio.de/ is a service to publish articles and uses can comment.
S.
Hey Rand, great to see you in Germany! and I 'm here https://www.fotoparked.com
Hey Rand, great to see you in Germany!
You may not need a ton of help, Rand. I'm pretty sure German schools are required to teach the English language. I have about a half-dozen friends scattered around Germany and they all speak near-perfect English.
In any case, safe travels!
Oh, nevermind - I'll be seeing you this week. Rebecca, too. Cool.
I've been lurking on the site to try and understand things before commenting but since you'll be in my backyard (I live in Augsburg and work near Munich) I thought I'd chime in.
In general I'd put Germany about 1-2 years behind the newest internet trends in the US. This was also the case during the .com boom. One exception might be in the mobile area.
Mostly what you'll find are wannabe ("Möchtegern") sites that are copies of popular ideas from the US. The list of sites mentioned above is a pretty good start. It's not really what you're looking for but one of the few sites with traction outside of Germany is www.xing.com. It used to be called the Open Business Club and is a sort of Facebook with a business contact focus. You might be able to find some contacts there.
The only other tip I can think of at the momment is a site for German keyword research https://account.de.miva.com/advertiser/Account/Popups/KeywordGenBox.asp. They sometimes have good suggestions beyond what you find at Google & Co.
I for one will be looking forward to your insights after your trip.
Gute Reise!
buy one of those speaking translators... you type in a word or phrase and it says it in the language
wow... four years of studying German and I didn't understand a damn thing!... but that was 30 years ago.
Check out https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/
Sort of a German version of Newsweek. One mention on there sent me 4,000 uniques. And they link in the middle of their stories.
I can't even count to 10 in German.
Glad to see you're taking Mystery Guest on this trip and it won't be all business. Seems like you just got back to Seattle and you're off again.
Actually, tomorrow I'm leaving again for Portland for a conference there, but it's just one night, so it won't be too bad :)
And Portland's not too far away either. A few summers ago I took a couple weeks off from work and drove from Boulder to Seatlle. I got to watch the fireworks from the Aquarium and the next day I was driving down near Portland to visit a with a friend. One of the nicest drives I've taken across the country.
I'm just amazed at all the travelling you've done over the last month and what you still have ahead of you. Are you planning on being in New York in April too?
Tomorrow - Portland
2 weeks - Munich
April - New York
April - San Francisco
May - China
June - Toronto
July - Nowhere!
August - San Jose...
I feel so ashamed having not left town in so long. Perhaps I'll see you in New York, though. It's my home town and the family is always wanting me to come back. The conference starts the day after my birthday so it might be a good time to visit.
So cool. Great that you are able to combine some very special personal with the business for a change.
Have a lot of German in me, but it stopped at the genes, so no help.
Looking forward to what you bring back though regarding different perspectives, thoughts, and practices. Never know where you mind find an interesting new approach.
I only took a semester and a half, but I still remember a very useful dialogue regarding bad weather and a broken umbrella, so give me a call if you get caught in the rain there.
Wow, my French skills just got pwnd.
Hey, you could run off to Berlin or Rome or somewhere, take pictures of yourself looking sorry and send them to us!
I'd also recommend lots of "I'm sorry" shrugs and making a "ssssssssssss" look with your mouth in order to maximize sheepishness. Hands in pockets with shoulders hunched also works well.
It's pretty impressive how far SES is spreading into International markets. First London and Paris, now Germany, Italy, Canada, and even China. I think that says a lot about the caliber of speakers they get, and not just the people running it.
"Mein deutsch ist angestaubt und meine Vertrautheit mit Deutschen Social Media Seiten, populären Blogs und UGC-Portalen ist eher zweitklassig"
...und mein ist nicht so gut... Sorry bud. You're on your own here...