Rolling Talks

User Generated Content - Cherry&Cake production

Last October, Alain Caviggia asked me to challenge his view on UGC. He was creating a presentation for the Customer First Belgian event where he planned to present a less known activity of Cherry&Cake (guess what :-), the creative agency he founded with my ex-DAD-now-LBI-colleague and friend Sven Nijs. He wanted to discuss the content with me: we spent hours kindly arguing about the best practices and benefits of UGC and how brands should take advantage of it.

Talking with this funny living advertising encyclopedia learned me a lot and I guess at the end I was the one who was being challenged. It took him a couple of weeks to post his presentation and a couple more for me to mention it. But now that their brand new webiste is ready, the time's right. Enjoy.

Social Media Starfish

In last October, Scoble introduced his Social Media Starfish concept, stressing something in his introduction I experienced when I first came into Social Media back in August 2006, entering by the little 'blogs door': It took me a couple of months to realize blogs were part of what I then called "a bigger niche" -thats when I changed my first tagline from 'how brands should use blogs' to my actual one, but still want to change all my categories..- and a couple more to realize the niche was indeed a complete different mindset of communicating, radically changing how marketers should and eventually will target their message and approach their audience (this marketing focus being just a small part of what Social Media is all about, but the one I'm dedicated to).

Funnily enough I'm stumbling on it while reading a ClickZ article stressing the birth of a new army of Free Agents, leaving traditional firm employment in favor of independent employment with a clear mission to educate companies and share knowledge about SM. The emblematic story of RT summed up in 2 posts :-)

Belgian people are heavily connected

Belgian is doing good. That is far above European average level: more people spending more time than the European average. So much for reach concerns.
More than 66% of the Belgian population goes online every week (almost 6million people). 88% could not live without at least one online activity. 34% would probably die without e-mail access. The 16-24 generation made it their number 1 media beyond TV (91% are online 5 to 7 days a week). Pourcentage of 55+ being online every week has grown by 31% in the last year. Every day, 40% of the female population surfs, emails, buys, has fun, ..

I'd say directly linked to the explosion of social media*- am I biased on that one? But wait:

• Just look at FB: in last August the Belgian network counted 15,000 members. You can add an other digit to the number.
• Social networks are indeed exploding: now the top 4 activity behind search, email and IM
• 31% create online reviews, forums are up to 29% more contributors
• only 17% don't know about the possibility to create their own content

Missed it in December, started it 10 days ago, but so rare to get Belgium data, precious to keep in mind. Thank you MDAS ;)

* and yes indeed, to the wide adoption of broadband: now 86% of Belgian people are surfing with broadband access enabling them to watch 120% more online videos (compared to monthly access a year ago)

January 16

Just a couple of new offers, a new client to welcome (should think about asking them when I can start mentioning what I produce for them), a favorite client to pamper (Simon I know you'll want to know who the hell is that :), an other one to grow, a Salesforce training, a first IAB event, a crying 2,5 big baby to escort daily to a strange new environment, a way too embarrassing activity to relate here, a 100 year old Granny anniversary, a couple of very energizing lunches with lovely ladies (more on this) and curious men (idem :)...How can we be January 16th?? Thanks God I was lucid enough not to make any stupid writing related good resolutions, except to say 'NO but thanks ' to more content contribution, which I already applied once. As I mentioned today, if you feel you miss my oh so valuable contributions to my loved blog (roadmap 2008 includes moving it to Wordpress, btw, and look for a ghostwriter- kidding), better to give me a call than to wait for my updates. My blog is dull!! Yet in life I'm so utterly revolutionary ;-)

New year, new soul

2007... what a year... I felt pregnant with a new world, à juste titre :-) 2008 will be some interesting year I can already tell.
I wish you all every possible mistake for 2008 -  Stay on the learning curve :-)