“…but the bank can change the interest rate and commissions at any time…”
“…the bank can change the list of commissions…”

Unfortunately the Romanian population had a zero degree of banking education. During the communist regime there were few banks in this country and money lending was a strictly regulated activity. When a worker wanted to borrow money, he was going to CAR or CEC and the rates were automatically taken from his monthly wage. Everything was “mechanized” because all the economy was centralized, so even if somebody was moving with the job in another town, the CEC bank knew that and automatically asked his new employer to pay the debt. There was no competition on the credit market, and if someone knew that he must pay 3% interest rate, this 3% was really equal with 3%.

Then, during the ’90s, Romania experienced a very high inflation and even if some private banks started to appear, nobody was taken money (except the State) because the interest rates were huge (40-50%). Thus, the credit market started to develop only after 2003, when the inflation was under control, the economy started to experience some very nice growth rates (6-7% y-o-y) and, due to the international context (country’s access to NATO and EU), foreign banks began to flourish.

So, many people started to borrow money from the foreign banks that opened branches all over Romania. These banks are, in vast majority, Greek, Austrian and French banks, but there are also banks from Holland, UK and Hungary. The demand for credits was so huge that the banks were lending money without even show to the clients a money lending agreement. The clients could access the agreement only after they signed the papers – and, of course, nobody really bothered to read the agreements! The credit frenzy was so huge that today Romania has only 4,3 millions employees and more than 5 millions credit agreements!

But little by little, step by step, the world financial crisis started to spread in Romania and more and more families had difficulties in paying back the rates. And people started to ask why, if EURIBOR is so low (under 1%), the banks doesn’t cut the variable interest rates?! And they discovered the small prints from above. Yes, your interest rate is variable, but me, THE BANK, decide … how much … Yes, we reduced the “risk commission” with 0.15%, but from the next month you will pay a “blue sky color commission worth of 0.25%” … and so on!

So, people started to loss the cars and the houses (by the way, if you are in Europe and want to buy a cheap car, come to Romania!). And everything was 100% legal. People have signed the agreements, nobody pushed them to do so. But those who didn’t want to accept such a humiliating situation, began to organise themselves into anti-banks groups. On the other hand the Goverment (who is dependent from IMF and banks’ money) was forced by the foreign banks to delay the enforcement of the Personal Bankruptcy Act because the bankers were, and still are, afraid that, with such a law, a lot of Romanians would say: “F… you!” and abandon the house, the car, whatever they bought. But, between Scyla and Charibda, the Government was forced however to implement recently an European act that calls for more transparent banking services. This act gives more rights to the clients. This was enough for a lot of clients to organise themselves in huge, really huge groups, and to attack in justice the agreements signed with the banks. For example, the anti-Volksbank online group already has 1700 members and they have hired together a lawyer (a very good one) that will take the case to the justice. The anti-BCR-Erste group has 700 members. The anti-ING group has 250 members. And so on. Other groups are still small, but people are beginning to gather and to react because they heard from the newspapers that the anti-Volksbanks have managed to hire a lawyer. In total, thousands of angry Romanians have adhered to a group or another, but their number is growing day after day at a fast pace.

Anyway, this is very interesting because I think that this is the first time in recent history when a large mass of consumers is fighting so organised against the banking system. We have seen here and there throughout Europe some anti-banks movements in late years, especially in Greece, but they were rather random and anarchic. Will Romanians start a Revolution against … the banks?

Some Romanian journalists and bloggers discovered last year (in 2009) that in 2008 one of the biggest “contributors” to the Romanian economy was a company from Brasov county that reported zero employees, zero spendings, zero investments and almost… $700.000.000 revenues! All generating a net profit worth of … $700.000.000!

The journalists tried to investigate this marvellous company and they discovered that the company’s “official” address is somewhere in a marginal village from Brasov county, in the house of some poor family that never heard about this company. In a word, in Romanian law this is called “illegal headquarter” and it was a sufficient reason for the authorities to investigate and eventualy close this company. But the authorities decided to take no action.

Recently, the Romanian Ministry of Treasury published all the financial data for 2009. In 2009 Romania had a deep economic fall, with (officialy) -7,2% economic growth y-to-y. This was a little surprise because everyone expected the fall to be somewhere between -9%-10%. So, the official data contradicted somehow the popular feelings.

With the crisis so deep, the Governement decided in February 2009 to take $20.000.000.000  (twenty billions) in loan from IMF (International Monetary Fund). But, of course, the IMF asked for some reforms and some economic parameters (such as budgetary deficit) to be reached. Very difficult task for a Government whose main task was to ensure the (fraudulent) re-election of Traian Basescu as President!

So, speaking again about that company, the journalists discovered that in 2009 the Ministry of Treasury considered the Brasov company as a … “big budget contributor” and that this ghost company reported now … $4.000.000.000 (four billions) as revenue, equal to profit! This equals 2,5% from Romanian GDP and it is bigger that the combined profit of Orange, Vodafone, Carrefour, Cora Hypermarche, Petrom OMV (the oil company), Erste-BCR Bank (biggest bank), Coca-Cola Romania and many other big Romanian businesses.

However, one mystery remained. Was it, or not, taken into account this “company” when calculating the GDP? Because, if this company’s turnover was taken into account for the GDP’s calculation, the implications were huge:

• In 2009, Romanian GDP fell not with -7,2%, but with almost 10% !
• The Romanian authorities have lied the IMF regarding the budgetary deficits that were well over the agreed limit !
• The state of Romanian economy is worst than reported!

This is why some journalists have immediately phone to the head of statistics and asked whether the officials took into account this company when they calculated the GDP for 2009.

And shock: initially, the answer was YES !

Then, only few hours later, when the answer was already published in several newspapers, a lot of State representatives (from Treasury, Statistics etc.) started to bombard the press with “explanatory” press-releases stating that this company was never included in GDP calculation. Even the head of statistics motivated that, when questioned about this problem, he was in… holiday and he answered yes, but in fact it was no!

Now the authorities have promise that they will conduct a very thorough investigation and, if needed, they will close this company. But this is crazy. It’s almost sure that the authorities used this ghost corporation to “improve” the statistics and to trick the IMF. And the Romanians. And themselves!

Conclusion: You should never underestimate the resources of Romanian bureacracy to produce lies. Since the inception of the national state, in the XIXth century, Romania was one of the most bureacratic countries in the world. In the XIXth century Romania had more state employees in office jobs (public clerks) than Germany or France. This situation continued during the XXth century. In Romania the sanitary or educational systems are lacking personnel, but town halls in villages with 2.500 of inhabitants have frequently 15-20 employees (and they are often relatives).

• The first one was initially setup by somebody who is a “pro”. In short time, using automated technics (but not bot posting), the pro gathered over 5.000 unresponsive accounts. The accounts are real, no doubt about this. But most of them are junk. They are not in our target, they are not really interested to follow us but to get one more follower, and so on. I browsed through their profiles and I was shocked: all of them are followed by thousands and following thousands. If we apply my twitter follower value algorithm, these are useless followers. You can have 1 million such followers with no results for your brand, business or marketing goals. They are useless, GOD DAMNIT!
• On the other hand, the little account is used to promote a free classifieds website from New Zealand. I choose to gather only kiwi followers and to interact only with kiwi followers and position this account as a kiwi account – which in fact, it really is. In one month, traffic went up and so the interest towards this website, which is now ranked as 3rd kiwi free classifieds website (my team’s goal is to make it 2nd). Although we used automated technics, we didn’t over do it. And our goal wasn’t to gather thousand of followers, but to get responsive and attentive followers.

Based on my experience, and not only, here are the 5 myths that anyone should know about Twitter:

1. “Twitter can make you famous.” Wrong. You are famous on Twitter if you are already famous on real life. Build your personality or your brand on real life, than jump with it into Twitter. Browse this list of the most followed accounts and observe that they are, in fact, real life celebrities.
2. “Every Twitter follower is a potential customer.” Wrong. Be assured that somebody who follows more than 5-600 Twitter accounts (with you between those 5-600) has no interest in any account. “Potential” customers are only those who spare their attention carefully and don’t just follow to be followed.
3. “Your customers are on Twitter.” Wrong. Your customers are right where they were before Twitter was invented. And in order to reach them, you should use classic advertising techniques: coupons, flyers, tv ads and so on. For internet audiences, use what works better: pay per click advertising. Google Adwords is the king of online advertising and will stay so many years to come, but you can also use Yahoo! Advertising, Microsoft Adcenter, Chitika Ads and many more.
4. “The most precious Twitter accounts are those that have many followers”. Wrong. The most precious Twitter accounts are those that have the most targeted, attentive and responsive followers. For a brand like Dell (that sells millions of computers each year, worldwide) it’s normal to have several successful accounts on Twitter, each one with millions of followers (check this one, taken randomly). For a small software house like CoffeeCup, is normal to have a Twitter account with only 2100+ followers. For a startup web service, is normal to have an account with only 50 followers. There is no “success recipe” for managing a Twitter account, just develop naturally your brand and followers will come in.
5. “Twitter is an online conversation tool”. Maybe for perverts. A conversation is an intimate, private communication act betweeen two or more persons. When in public, this communication act becomes a debate or a public answer, but not a personal conversation. Many people think that twittering something @userA will engage a personal conversation with userA. No, it will trigger at most a public answer.

1. Establish your objectives. What do you want to obtain with this campaign? More sells? Awarness? Newsletter subscribers? Any of the above? All?

2. Break your objective (or objectives) into themes. What are you trying to do with your Adwords campaign? Do you want to sell one or more products? Do you want to sell one ore more services? Do you want to gain users? Do you want to get subscribers? Etc. Try to understand what do you want to get from your campaign. If you want to sell several products, each one is a “theme”. If you want to sell several services, each one is a “theme”. If you want to get users, some ads and incentives should be used with users A, and other with users B. And so on. Try to understand as deep as possible the niches of your market. Each niche should be the basis for a single “theme”.

3. Define different keywords for each theme. Don’t mess the keywords. Use “plumbers” for ads related to plumbing and “cars” for ads related to cars. Add variations related to your offer: “plumbers in calgary“, “cheap cars” etc.

4. Create ad groups for every theme and create at least 3 ads for every ad group. Google Adwords system uses a very nice feature called “optimized ad rotation”: the ads are rotated until the system determines which one is the best performing. Then it will display only this ad. You can delete the other ads and write another ads,  and the system will start assessing again. Never ever write a single ad and keep that ad running without revisions!

5. Pay attention to the landing page. As a rule of thumb, try to include keywords in ad title, ad text and on landing page. For example, if you have an e-commerce website, send “blue widgets” users to the page where they can buy “blue widgets”, and “red widgets” users to the page where they can buy “red widgets”. More the landing page is related to your ads, more your ads’ Quality Score will increase. If you don’t have a page suitable to act as a  landing page, just create one from scratch.

6. Measure your results. The great tip about online advertising, compared to TV ads or print leaflets, is that results can be measured very easy. Setup tracking codes on your website and establish clear objectives: do you want to sell a product? Then you probably have an e-commerce website, so you can measure how many times the “thank you!” page have been accessed through Adwords. Do you want to sell services? Then you can measure how many times your visitors accessed the contact form coming from Google Adwords. And so on. People contact you always by phone? No problem: open an online profile with Google Local (and in order to strenghten your Google Local position, you can open one with PinBud.com, too – and many other local search engines), fill in a dedicated phone number and link this account to your Google Adwords campaign.

7. Always improve. Don’t set up the campaign and then wait for the results to come in. Improve, innovate and try! Make changes at least once every 4-5 months (I would recommend once every 3 months). Keep an eye on competition and see if one’s ads are constantly better positioned then your ads. Either the competitor pays a much bigger amount of money for each click, or his ads are simply better and you could learn from them.

Have a profitable campaign!

Squidoo pages are called “lens”, but in fact Squidoo is nothing more than a wikipedia. Anyone can write anything. But unlike Wikipedia, the posting process is very easy and the content can be corrected or changed only by the original poster, the “lensmaster”.  This is why we can find on Squidoo several pages covering the same topic:

• Iron Maiden
• UFOs
• Barack Obama

Squidoo also lets you insert videos, RSS feeds and many more, so the final product will truly be very informative, nice to read, easy to understand. Then you can promote the page either on Squidoo itself or through external links and websites.

For example, this is the page that I’ve write for PinBud: http://www.squidoo.com/pinbud . As anyone can see I was able to insert a lot of content and the page looks so well now, that we’ll use it as an online flyer.

Squidoo links are do-follow, so they are adding some link juice to your website. Other free webpage builders are Hubpages and Wetpaint. However, avoid to duplicate your content over and over.

It reminds me from Dreamshares.com, but Dreamshares was (“was”, because now is dead) about sports, while Empire Avenue it’s about social networking. You must buy and sell stocks in persons and become an influential person.

EAVB_HAJLUXHDCE

Website A: highly targeted one. All the pages have one single theme. People come to this website because they want to find information related to the theme. They are coming from search engines only through a very limited set of targeted keywords.

Website B: a website with no clear theme. Basically, each page has its own theme. People come mostly from search engines, through specific searches.

Here are my findings:

Click through rate (CTR):

• for website A: the click rate was 2,39% in the “contextual week” and 2,23% in the “interest based week”
• for website B: the click rate was 2,77% in the “contextual week” and 3,05% in the “interest based week”

Page eCPM:

• for website A: “Avalue” during the “contextual week”, -7% during the “interest based week”
• for website B:  ”Bvalue” during the “contextual week”, +2% during the “interest based week”

So, the conclusions are crystal clear. Use “interest based advertising” when your website doesn’t have a general theme (for example if you run a local search directory, a free classifieds website, a news website etc.) and use only  “contextual” advertising when you run a highly targeted website.

• This blog is dofollow and will remain dofollow because I think that the original spirit of the internet is expressed in dofollow links, not nofollow.
• However, I will not accept keywords in anchor links. Please post with a name (eg. “Tom”, “John”, “Jimmy” etc.) otherwise I will modify your nickname. If you don’t want to show your name, no problem: you can sign as “domain”.
• The above rule should be taken into consideration by all the people, including those who have explicit domain names, such as “free-marketing-advice.com”. Just sign with a human name and I will treat you humanly.

So, don’t try to fool me, I’m more vigilant than you think. But let’s see now why I’m not accepting your keywords in my comments?

As  you probably know, one of the most important factors that Google takes into consideration when assesing a page are the anchor texts of outgoing links. So please understand that I will not allow a page that I want to see on top after keyword: “twitter marketing sucks” polluted with links such as: “seattle movers”, “childhood obesity facts” etc. You are doing SEO, I’m doing SEO, so let’s build a win-win situation, right?

Ok, ok, the idea is that, unlike the SMS’s, tweets can be seen by anyone. I understand this. And having said this, I understand also that Twitter is a tool for voyeurs and exhibitionists, isn’t it?

I have 4 Twitter accounts, all business related. The best of them has ~300 followers. These 300 followers are useless, and let me tell you why. We can express the interest that a follower manifests in your tweets by a ratio between his/her accounts and the number of the accounts that he/she follows.

Let’s suppose that you have 2 followers, John and Jimmy. They both have only one twitter account. But John follows 30 accounts and Jimmy follows 5000 accounts.

We can express their interest towards your tweets as follows: John has an interest of 1/30=3.33%, while Jimmy has an interest of 1/5000=0.02%. Your tweets are basically non interesting for Jimmy. In fact, Jimmy is not interested in any of the accounts that he’s following. On the other hand, John has a little interest in your tweets.

Now, make an exercise: go to your Twitter account and browse your followers. See how many people your followers follow. A lot, isn’t it? Simply put, your pity tweets will be lost in an ocean of indiferrence. As you get more followers, your message will become more and more lost in this ocean.

The only legit use of such stupid tool it’s in publishing vouchers and coupons. Yeah, this works pretty well, but only with big brands that can have something massive to offer. Dell. Vodafone. Nike. Apple. Etc. Global brands. If you have a little translations company and you need clients, don’t waste your time with a Twitter account. It’s useless.

• the content
• the ratio between content and code (cleaner code is better code)

So, the validation doesn’t help with SEO, despite all the buzz that validation talibans are trying to create recently.

Don’t validate your pages, it’s useless. The HTML language it’s an alive language, yesterday we were using HTML 4.01, nowadays we are using more and more HTML 5 elements, including elements that aren’t yet in the official validation specifications. For example, a few years ago people used images for rounded codes. Now we can use the border-radius property, with browser specific extensions: -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius, that will never validate.

Instead of validation, focus on:

• Cross-browsing code: is your website readable with every big browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome/Safari, Opera)? No, do not believe what the validation talibans are saying: a valid code will not display always in the same way on every browser. Just check with the “margin” and “padding” properties and see how they are displayed on Opera and Firefox: it’s different, no matter the validation.
• Clean and semantically clear code. A good code will make the website usable both on computers and mobile devices. Search engines will understand better your content. Clearly define your content areas and don’t mess the <divs>.

In fact, all this validation buzz is a pathetic marketing strategy of a bunch of losers. They have nothing of real value to offer, so they must differentiate somehow from:

• the talented designers, who are offering to their clients good, functional and clean designs;
• the good SEOs, who are offering to their clients good backlinks and valuable advices;
• the functional coders, who are offering to their clients clean templates and a good code/content ratio.

Stop this “validation” buzz. Web languages aren’t the Holy Bible. Don’t be a taliban, it’s pathetic.