About
© Zeke Kamm
Marc Baumann is a native of Zürich, Switzerland, and he has been passionate about writing and languages for his entire life. After his German language and literature studies at the University of Zürich he started his journalistic career 1998 as an writer for Tessiner Zeitung, the only German newspaper in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland.
In the following 10 years, Marc worked for various Swiss-German publications such as Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Weltwoche, SonntagsZeitung, Facts and Cash, covering Current Affairs, Print & New Media, Information Technology and Arts & Leisure.
In his positions as journalist, editor and news coordinator, he not only researched, wrote and edited news stories, but also allocated work to freelance writers, edited and proofread their articles. Very often he translated features and reports, which were purchased for reprint, from English into German.
As the Managing Editor of Bilanz.ch, he coordinated the daily news content and marketing of the website of Switzerland's largest business magazine and was also able to expand his knowledge in online journalism.
In order to be closer to the place where all the trends are born he moved to California in 1999. (He already fell in love with the U.S. west coast during guest studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara in the late eighties...)
As the Los Angeles based correspondent for a variety of European newspapers (Financial Times Germany, among others) he wrote investigative stories, reports and columns about old & new media, great business ideas, fascinating personalities, innovations from and life at the West Coast. Marc covered media mergers, Silicon Valley dramas, Hollywood hypes and was able to interview numerous celebrities, such as Roy Disney (nephew of infamous Walt Disney), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com), Francis Ford Coppola (legendary film director and winemaker) and Henry Nicholas III (billionaire and founder of broadband communications company Broadcom).
Always fascinated by languages, Marc earned the certification as Language Instructor at the Berlitz International Language School in 2004 and tought German on all levels at various Berlitz branches in the Los Angels area, using the infamous "Berlitz method". Additionally, he started to conduct private tutoring sessions in German for students and business professionals (including in-depth introductions to customs, culture and business practices in the German-speaking countries of Europe) and translate texts and web content from English into German.
While he has continued the tutoring sessions and translation work in his spare time until today, he accepted a new position as the German Web Editor and Translator for the Viacom-owned website Neopets in August 2005, one of the world's largest youth entertainment internet destinations. He was not only responsible for the German translation / localization of web content, but also helped the company to deploy new web based products and services in the German market.
In 2006, he worked as a SEO Operations Specialist at Scripps-owned shopping search engine Shopzilla, where he analyzed and optimized the company's web properties Shopzilla and Bizrate in the U.S. and Germany for better user experience and search engine performance, wrote and translated new web content into German and contributed to a substantional increase in site’s overall performance and revenues in the highly competitive comparison shopping market.
Since 2007, he has been working as a SEO & Blog Consultant, Freelance Writer and Website Coordinator, assisting numerous corporations and small businesses in Europe and the U.S in the creation and optimization of websites and blogs. Among others, he was able to help baby and maternity retailer Babystyle to identify major deficiencies of its web presence and improve the site’s overall usability, content quality and SEO performance.
He is also collaborating with Word & Vision, one of Switzerland's leading boutique agencies for corporate communications and interactive media strategies, on various projects.
Check out Marc's portfolio for work samples.
Marc is providing the following services to individuals and businesses:
- Blog Consulting
- Search Engine Optimization
- English-German / German-English Translation
- German Tutoring
If you have any questions or would like to hire him, please get in touch with him via the contact form. Thanks!