Rolling Talks

Whats up? Summer news

While some clients are enjoying a well-deserved summer break, others are more than happy to benefit from more attentio(n). Summer time will definitely be a good mix of work and 'me time', and the opportunity to finally get ready for more personal professional projects I've had in mind for a couple of months.

One of them is the launch of a brand new Social Media Task Group within the IAB Belgium. The first meeting has just been planned to September 25th in Roularta offices. Sara Rachdi and I will introduce the goal of the Task Group and share ideas and plan on what is to/could be achieved in the first year of practice.

I'm really looking forward to discussing my favorite topic with great brains from the industry and to see it evolving from overhyped, undervalued (love this - stolen to Microsoft Advertising;) 'just tools' to a more legitimate strategically structured discipline. The group is open to anyone (meaning advertisers, agencies, freelancers, media groups ) willing to contribute actively to educate the market, share best practices, you know what I mean :) If you're interested, join us at 2pm at the usual Zellik meeting point. I have a few names in my wish list, lets see if I'll be heard :).

A second project is to go ahead with the initial interviews I planned when I started Rolling Talks. Now that I'm equipped with more professional tools I'm really excited to eventually be able to let the Belgian actors in the market share thoughts on what they're up to in Social Media. Get ready for video updates. (Along with a new blog for end of September).

A third one will be to disconnect. Completely. For 4 weeks (I know jealous people, and they know my answer: You can do it too). To start "school" with pure, fresh energy. I'm planning a trek to Ladakh, little Tibet in north of India. Any experience to share, any books recommendations? let me know. Any legal stuff to bring back? I'll be traveling light.

Thats it for now folks ;)

Listening - Attentio Case

For the IAB Net Café on Social Media I asked Attentio to present their case on the Mobile industry to illustrate the very first step to make while developing a Social Media strategy: listening. I find this case very powerful in demonstrating not only who is speaking about the brands and how brands are being discussed but especially in showing the correlation between buzz and volume of conversations. For an audience of marketers, slide 15 only is worth..well listening. Now I realise that the case needs to be demonstrate for full understanding. Any question, or need for in-house presentation, let them/me know.
Ignite  Social Media is currently started a series of posts on Social Media Mistakes. Guess what's mistake #1? "Not listening. Not responding. Not good". Be it with free or pro tools, start listening today!

| View | Upload your own

IAB Social Media Net café- Notes

Last Thursday I introduced the first Social Media Net Café for IAB Belgium. 112 attendees- average presence for a hot topic and for me definitely my biggest audience ever (Im not precisely a showwoman :). I wanted to do it a bit differently: after pointing out my key messages I introduced the 4 other speakers as an illustration of the flow marketers could keep in mind to remember the 'big picture of Social Media (more in following post). Here's how my intro sounded like:

• I started by pointing out my own mistake i.e. entering SM by the little door of blogging, focusing on one tool only makes me miss the big picture for a couple of months. I notice the same mistake in the majority of my clients' approach today. Picking up one or two tools, they completely miss the big picture of SM and lose time - money and trust too- in developing a successful approach to SM.
• Then I showed this slide, mentioning that 90% of the presentations I attended on SM start with this picture. I admitted mine too till I realised showing this slide would be answering my clients' first question: "which ones shall I be using?". And this is not the good question to start with. First question should not be focused on tools.
• I then switched to this picture Laura Fitton showed us at Going Solo. I guess I use it with a similar meaning as the one she meant as I remember precisely when I took a note while listening to her to use this to make the strategic framework crystal clear:  don't focus on the tools/the ingredients. Focus on the benefit you're going to deliver to your audience (which might just be as for this cookie brand, never an ordinary day again). The first good question is focused on people and objectives. Thats when I mentioned briefly the POST framework.
• But before starting with the POST framework, I urged them to check one more thing. If they plan to join the party out there with this mindset - here comes slide 3, also stole from Laura's presa- they're not going to have fun, and neither will the other participants. " Make sure you 're ready to see what is out there to be seen, hear what is out there to be heard, talk with who is out there willing to talk with you" . Which made it a perfect transition to Attentio monitoring business case.

I guess it was kind of surprising as a lot of people would have expected numbers, tools' description, impact, reach and so on. I felt I really have to stress this key messages though. While it minds sound obvious when you read it, believe me, the gap is huge between theoritical know-how/ evidence and practical approach. Thanks to @pistachio for visual inspiration ;)

Girls, you're beautiful

Before dashing to Paris for the Marketing 2.0 Conference, I wanted to quickly wrap up the Forum Jump I attended last Friday and Saturday. Quite a different experience for me this year as I was 'back stage',  running from one speaker to an other to record videos interviews along with Sabine. One experience kept the same perfume: I met and discussed with very inspiring women from Adrienne Axler-  Sodexho so human CEO, confirmed by one of my male friend working over there- to writer Lulu Wang and Marie Bejot founder of Oenobiol (Martinette before you asked: no, no samples :-), and thats just to name a few of the guest speakers. Adrienne would be a great mentor and definitely an example to follow. Her passionate behavior echoes mine, jumping from one moment to the other lead by her heart, no business plan nor objective whatsoever. And yes! it seems to be working just fine :-) As for the key points, I loved the 100% american energy radiating from Lois Frankel. The wonderful 'you'll tell them to go to hell and they'll look forward to the trip" alone made it worth it :-) Nothing feminist here (like nowhere in this event, but thats my own perception), it can be apply to you guys too :-) After dedicating her new book 'Nice girls don't get rich' she waved you goodbye with a very assertive 'Get rich' order-like advice. I've always wanted to have first fun in my job. But for once I'm willing to try and consider the order. Will make it 'have fun & get rich' :-) Good timing to practice: this week conference in Paris is subtitled: 'how to make money from web 2.0 :-) BTW, probably going to twitter it rather than blog it; I become lazy carrying my Mac over in such places. Last words will go to Clo who fortunately catches the magic of the event like I did last year. Who you are and what you want to be when you attend Forum Jump can make it a complete different event. Worth a 3rd edition for me, thats for sure. Thanks Isa.

Clo Willaerts @ Forum Jump from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.

Forum Jump THE networking event for active women

Seems quite an other life since last year and my first post on this event. A loooot has happened - for the best- but there's one thing that has not changed and that's my enthousiasm for these 2 networking days, coming at the end of this week. Should I add as a disclaimer than since I met Isabella a year ago she has become one of the person sI have privilege contacts with?  (I hate the word 'client' and 'business partner' is sometimes seen as "non appropriate" to others so lets try this one). Well believe me or not that has nothing to do with my excitation! But true these privilege contacts will lead me to spend two perfectly energizing days among famous -and less famous- women as I'll be interviewing some of the speakers along with the amazing Sabine Clappaert from Muse Communication (videos will be posted on Jump's blog). Avivah Wittenberg, Béa Ercolini, Corinne Hubinon, Maryse Wolinsky, Paule Salomon and Harriet Rubin are definitely on my list. Have a look at the program here,
register there and lets meet on Friday and Saturday! (Pss: special discounts here if you're a Geek Girl ;) Plus que 5 fois dormir ;)

Yulbiz Brussels- Radionomy interview

Been to Yulbiz last Saturday on beautiful Halles St Gery. Met a couple of nice and young bloggers. Wanted to test new Flip camera so I took the notes from the Radionomy guys and their bloggers interview (still waiting for the link to point to mine) and with Alain's help we played their game. Had trouble then with the sound file while downloading from Flip to my Mac which seems after a quick forum search quite usual... and explain why it took me so long. Now too tired to link but will do tomorrow.

Had trouble then with YouTube :Just realised today while updating the links YouTube upload cut my 5min video (not supposed to happen since I've been using their heavy video feature..). Tried again, seemed ok but once upload done, the video is mentioned not to be available right away...On Luc's advice I bought  QuickTime pro, compressed and changed format file, uploaded it to Vimeo: 500mb free par week. Nice. Nice interface, nice features (like just the basic fact that while uploading the file it gives you % of the work done, easy but so important. YouTube, you can do better!).

Must change one of my answers to Radionomy interview: no more Youtube - only. As to launch the next  shootings, I'll go for "Rolling!" ;-) And now off to bed with hands-on guide to video blogging & podcasting . Call it pa/ssion- /thetic :-)

Yulbiz 3 Brussels - Radionomy interview from Rolling Talks on Vimeo.

Club Med & Social Media

Working for Club Med is probably the best way I could find to get the feeling breaks are just a call away. That is at least true for happy bloggers like Ine who's enjoying a short trip at Chamonix to share one of the great Club Med villages 'haut de gamme' experience - with a special focus on gastronomy, wellness and design- not speaking about skiing... This is the first step the brand is taking to seriously engage with Belgian bloggers- and surely not the last one, stay tuned.
A special thanks to Adhese for developing an other première on the Enchanté network this time: a banner giving life Twitter and FlickR updates posted by Ine (like the one you can see on my blog as of today) will be displayed on a dozen of influencial Belgian blogs till April 9, day Ine will be returning from the trip. This action would not have been possible without Interel, Club Med PR agency, which strongly understands and proactively integrates Social Media in their daily clients' strategies. My pleasure to work with you all guys.

Talking too much

here, there (actually there I could not make it anymore but maybe in May, we'll see..) and not enough time to write on the blog. I know... Frustrating :-)
Btw, working on a Social Media Net Café for the IAB on May, 22nd so if you have suggestions, feel like participating,etc. let me know. Agenda is almost closed but lets be flexible.

While Im on the subject, Attentio is co-hosting an Academy with Emakina on my favorite topic. Half-day event followed by lunch will be held in Place Flagey on the 21st (March yes - second round in April 17th in Gent). Practical presentations on SM, focus on business cases , impact on strategy and of course monitoring&measurement. If you want to attend, drop me an e-mail.

Marketing to women

 

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Now I have to admit I'd be the kind of girl who would buy it because of the Cello :-) It doesn't speak for me, I know. Sabine would you say they make a good job out of connecting with their female audience? (oups, I almost said reaching to them ;-) At least the ones who play - or slaughter - cello? Here's the male version for those interested to find out if they fell for a swimming pool :-) (Hat tip to Adrants).

BTW, girls, Sabine is the founder of Muse Communication, THE agency for smart marketing to women and she's actively - looking for an account executive (see below) to help her manage her great clients' list ( see below too.). So if you're brave, real and show value, you're her girl.

Social Media is a mainstream media. Still, you'd be surprised.

This morning my ears caught up familiar favorite words coming from the bathroom radio: 'horizontal influence', 'UGC' ("nothing to do with movies, ahaha"), agoravox and CNN' s ireport were part of them. Later today I went to La première website to listen to the entire program. No definitely nothing to do with 'Violence in young lovers' relationships nor  'St Augustin confessions' . Unfortunately I did not find it and can not point to it but I still wanted to mention it.

Update: Damien Van Achter sent me an e-mail with the link to the podcast and the name of its author, Alain Gerlache. More similar content to come with his new weekly 90 mn program Intermedias. 1st show on March 10th. A vos RSS ;-)

  La première is doing a great job educating its audience on a variety of topics, and the web is taking a growing part of it, with a lot of accuracy. Probably thanks to people like Damien. I hope many marketers were having a late shower this morning. So that mainstream could be applied to the topic for this particular audience too (not so long ago I heard a ' 'and so what, marketing existed well before blogs, hein !). Indeed.

I don't know about you, but I do feel I'm not part of the happy few anymore (Jeroen, dont misread me here). And I like it, being surrounding by people talking about their own experience with Social Media tools. Just for one exemple: girls' dinner (and i'm not talking about girls geek dinner here, nor should you read girls as nothing but a polite way to refer to my 35/40 something friends :), so girls dinners usually opens with the latest Facebook killer ap (and true enough, often makes me feel like shouting 'Stop it, I'm off duty)' and ends up with promises to develop a MySpace profile to show paintings ('you were off duty tonight, but we can meet tomorrow right?'). Mainstream, that is.

And sometimes with the most surprising of discoveries, like the one I made talking with my music lessons fellows. One is a 16 year old max, the other in his mid-thirties like me. The one sitting right is passionate about piano and always showed me music stuff and mentioned softs he found on the web, showing up late because he was listening to 'how to play like Chopin in 3 podcasts' . The one sitting left is passionate about electronic guitar, showing me videos he records in his bedroom with his camera. He has never heard of Facebook before I mention the network to him a couple of months ago (looked at me like I was the craziest of girls)- and still have not registered yet. You'd be surprised to know which one is 16..

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.

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)

Reading blogs is among top 10 Belgian online population activities

Source:Insites escape reports

Brand new e-mag from ELLE

At the beginning of the week I took time for 2 pampering actions!! Because I'm also a woman! No I did not add 'et que je le vaux bien'  but ok I can relate to that one as well :) First, well second actually but who cares?, I discovered the 1st version of ELLE e-mag. I honestly cant remember where I read about it (forwarded mail? reading it on the blog, FB?..but what I'm sure is that I did forward the info to a lot of my friends -even male ones) but I was quick to send an sms (3699 for French version, 3688 voor NL versie) to register to get access to it. Why? Because ELLE Belgium is one of my favorite feminine magazines and of course because I was curious to see how it looks like. One world: fabulous! Really nice job. It's a perfect integration of online content and videos. Great potential for advertisers (special kudoos to my friend Veronique Vergeynst who managed to include her Nespresso client in this edition- bien vu). I even participated to the contest game p 26 . Pour vous dire! (obviously at that point I got upset as I am every time I see this stupid illegal subsidiary question, but that's not today's point)

What I'd suggest as a marketer woman ;-) (besides the obvious one to add more content :)

Foops, first social Belgian network for newborns

"Belgian Foops!, the first social networking site for GENERATION Z, has already signed up more than 12,000 members (both born and unborn), even though it’s still in private beta mode. On Foops! parents can place pictures or sonograms on behalf of their offspring, and assist tiny members in filling out their profiles (including favored brands for diapers, toys and apparel), after which they gain access to virtual playpens where members communicate, poke and twitter via visuals and symbols. Each playpen is extensively sponsored by multinationals, some of which have plunked down more than EUR 1 million (approximately USD 1.45 million) for the privilege to interact with infants 24/7.

A new health forum in Brussels

Tonight I attended an event to the Brussels Parliament. Nothing to do with the actual political situation in Belgium- though the Health minister for Brussels Capital - one of them- did mention it - but maybe he was just planning to have an early exit ;) I was invited by Jean-Luc Raymond to discover a great project for parents and professionals who have to assist kids affected with diseases requiring a stay in hospital.
Hospichild is an initiative from the CDSC asbl. The initiative is quite unique - Jean-Luc made some research and could not find any equivalent worldwide. Tonight the team were officially launching their forums - one for the parents, the other for the professionals. It's their first - and surely not their last-attempt to use social media tools and they're very enthusiastic about it. This is a beautiful project. I wish them the best. And for Belgium too.

A few Belgian numbers on social media

Une fois n'est pas coutume, back to my focus :-) Thanks to Insites and its great e-scape reports online free access (register here), I'm able to share a few numbers on our Belgian habits concerning my favorite subject. Hope you'll appreciate the sharing (and do get register, this is a nice tool).
% of the Online Belgian Population (based on a representative survey of 1,300 persons):

• downloading RSS feeds daily: 3%,  weekly: 9% , monthly: 8% (never: 68- gloups)
• dowloading podcasts: 1%, 6%, 5% (gloups: 77%) - thought would be bigger than feeds download..
• watching videos images, 5%, 22%, 22% (36%)- thought would be bigger tout court
• make weblogs: 1%, 4%, 4% (83%)  - 17% of the OBP creating more than 1,000,000 blogs?? I'd really like to have more numbers on this one
• read weblogs: 3%, 16%, 17% (gloups: 45%)

Now if you wonder the kind of content you should develop today this gives you a pretty good idea, uh? ...

Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

Came in late so I missed Veerle's news but thanks to a few curious and motivated boys or as Clo put it "decorative and "-  sorry, I only remember the most important characteristic they must have to be able to show up :-), you can see her here and see more of the GG here.

I had a great time meeting Diana, Liz, Barbara, Talia, Tanguy and seeing again with always the same pleasure Julie, Baudouin, Kris, Robin, etc. Too little time for so many new heads but next diner is November 14th so catch up is pretty soon.

The diner was a big success! Apart from the enthousiastic girls feedback, the event had a lot of press coverage: regional TV channels and radios seemed pretty curious to see how Girl Geeks look like.  I AM curious to see the outcomes. If anyone can link me to it, please do. It was time for me to get my second "interview" on Pure FM. No comment. I'm very impressed by how Clo and Kris are naturally good at this kind of exercice. Nothing to do with practice. Alex, we should definitely schedule time for a 'speaking in public' session though ;)

Rolling Talks Social Media Workshop

That's it: what kept me real busy these last 2 weeks is over. I've been lucky enough to organize my first Social Media Workshop for the consultants of The House of Marketing, the Belgian highly reputed marketing expert consultants' company. Many thanks to Véronique Vergeynst who made this possible and who helped a lot with the organisation phase. During the 3 hour workshop, I presented two parts: one over Social Media landscape from a user point of view, the other was about the impacts for marketers. I also invited 6 great professionals to share their experience with social media.
Thank you again to all my passionate speakers, Julie from Skynet, Diane from Dell, Nathalie from Electrabel, Pierre from Virtual Words Translations, Simon from Attentio, and Jacques, stuck in Milan, but will be for next time ;) ( Have a look at the agenda here ).

If you're interested to have this workshop - or a similar one- home let me know.

Want to know how you can monitor the blogosphere, measure the buzz?

Attentio, the European market intelligence company, will be doing a presentation on why and how the buzz can&should be monitored within Social Media. If you're working in a advertising/interactive or PR agency, this is an 1hour event you'll be happy to join. Leave me a comment or drop me a mail, I'll send you the invitation for October,10th. See you there ;)

I spend a day in Paradise

thanks to Ogilvy. Lovely bunch in a lovely place. Great approach, awesome presentation. Have been lucky enough to meet Benoit Octave (interview will follow in a couple of days).
Below my French feedback for Digimedia.

"Au propre, dans une charmante propriété privée de la campagne flamande, comme au figuré, le Paradis était le thème principal de la mise en scène réalisée par Ogilvy pour sa désormais traditionnelle journée d'information réservée à la presse*, joyeusement animée par Jan Van Aken, CEO Ogilvy Belgique et Mie Demin, Strategic Creativity Advocate.

Le Paradis, ou en tout cas un morceau, promesse quotidienne de l'annonceur à son consommateur. La beauté parfaite, la jeunesse éternelle, la pureté en flacon et/ou en bouteille... Paradis illusoire, partiel, temporaire pour un consommateur blasé, septique, méfiant.

Le Paradise shift expliqué par Ogilvy.

Brussels Girl Geek dinner

Two years after the original London event, Brussels has now joined the network of Girl Geek Dinner, thanks to Clo's initiative. Who talked about summer break? Hmmmmmmm let's have dinner!

Girl Geek Dinners are events for females who class themselves as girly and geeky. The events have a technical focus and are light hearted and fun.

Seeding in Belgium

On July 24th, I received a mail whose subject was 'Test a Senseo mug?'.

That's obviously one of the nice things about blogging, receiving stuff to try. Or make your loved ones happy. My Passoa bottle and its glasses enjoyed a trip to Grenoble (bro you have to send me feedback on this!). This time my Senseo mug was adopted by my husband the minute he saw it. 

What I like about the action (followed by what he likes about the mug)

Microsoft 's Circle Of Media

Last Tuesday, I was invited to attend Microsoft's Circle Of Media. I'm probably not the best person to give relevant detailed feedback on the products they presented us  (Silverlight for pro developers and Popfly for non-pro)- except that I find it great that they're both working for Mac :-) Without this presentation I'd probably have skipped them both. Surface was also part of the show and each time I saw it it really makes me feel like being a 10 years-old in 2050. BTW, we should have one in the Living Tomorrow house!

What I'm trying not to skip though is the opportunity to meet Microsoft people. I guess if Microsoft has been voted ' Best Belgium employer 2007'  it surely has to do with hiring best employees. I was really impressed by Philippe's presentation 'the permanent revolution'. Make sure to read it but better next time make sure to come and hear him. It is so rich and mingles so meaningfully and yet totally unexpectedly insightful references I was glad I had the opportunity to hear him before on some of those.

Microsoft has decided to play the 'engaging' game and here in Belgium they apply very nice rules. They have this friendly, accessible, humble style of theirs be it with the 17 year old student ( Hi Michael) or with the web agency CEO (Mr Van Wassenhove ;). 

Alex do you think people can be coached that way ? :-) Seriously I don't doubt a minute - but yes I know some will find me naive again- that is genuine interest and willingness for interaction. I add Microsoft to my list of 'make it a better place' companies :-)

In London, darling!

That's where I am for a couple of days, meeting some business partners and enjoying some time off with my friend Jo. We'll be posting our new nice discoveries on Eurostar recent blog - Belgian initiative- Placetobiz. Jo is a frequent Eurostar traveller and she already contributed to the platform when she discovered the Oyster card. She likes the idea of sharing tips with the fellow travelling business community. My 1st tip will be about shoe repair and where to find them- my Tunisian shoes did not survive their day-long walking in East London yesterday... Im now in the business lounge of our hotel- only one free connected computer in this high standing hotel! What a shame! But since Im a guest here I wont complain nor mention it publicly ;-0... As Im typing this, Im eavesdroping a conversation with ' forum, discussions, negative comments in...positive comments since..competition...' I love this city ;-0

Want to know how brands should NOT engage with bloggers?

Have a look at the Passoa Tent-xperience blog.
A very good example of 'NOT TO DO '

• no human voice (who post? no identity)
• zero authenticity but advertorial content
• no frequency (4 posts since the lunch in May and 3 of them on the same 14th of June)
• no interaction (3 comments),
• no commitment ( no concept, no introduction)

No nothing...I'm disappointed and really surprised. Yesterday I registered to the BuzzParadise program (shortly put: bloggers register to spread the world about brands' campaigns). BuzzParadise is one of the leading buzz, blog & viral marketing in France, part of the Vanksen group. They have a nice blog, Culture Buzz and I guess I expected them to be amongst the 'best practices' as far as implementation is concerned.

I was quite excited to see this morning my first invitation by mail (I hardly noticed the fact they don't check on Mac mail software before sending their mail - speaking about targeting influentials, that would be a point to consider. My subject line looked like this: Passoã: Êtes-Vous prêt a passer un=?UTF-8?Q?=20Et=C3=A9=20frais, =20fruit=C3=A9=20et=20exotique=3F?= ). Anyway, I felt ready.. and I still am as I want to understand how they can screw this up... I know sometimes clients want it their way but there's no chance this client will ever want to go further or do it again after this flop... and jammer genoeg, the blog targets the Belgian market :-(

Are social networks a sales tool? You bet!

I had a very interesting discussion this morning with a Belgian CEO over social networks. I met Pierre Leonard from Virtual Words - a translation company- last May during a 'viral marketing' breakfast and I noticed him because he asked a question even marketeers are too few to think about: 'How can a blog be a marketing tool?'
So when we decided to meet to discuss it further, I thought I'd would be the one to answer questions. Expectations...Wrong, we were told before :-) Pierre is a convinced user of social networks and what he had to say prompted dozens of questions on my side.

Shortly stated, here's a Belgian CEO's learnings on social networks:

Honoured member of 1st Belgian blogging experts

I was invited by Jean-Paul De Clerck, founder of i-scoop and owner of interactive marketing portal Digimedia, to join the first Belgian network of blogging experts. I'm delighted to join them and can't wait to share our experiences - particularly with JP, Robin and Philippe - don't know yet the others members Tom Cuylaerts and Michel Dirckx. And to embody a Voltaire's daughter ;-)

More info on our services on Business Blogging :-)

Julie Opstaele, Skynet blogs' product manager

Julie Opstaele is a social woman and it shines: we spent two hours yesterday afternoon chatting over one of our favorite common subjects: how blogs are being integrated -or not - within the companies' strategies.

Julie is Skynet blogs' product manager, meaning she's the one in charge of the bloggers' community. I would have thought it a full time job -even more with all the 'extra' you'll read about further down- but Julie is also responsible for a whole range of products within the portal. I suspect though blogs are her favorite and she's putting a lot of herself and extra time to make sure Skynet bloggers are listened to and feel satisfied with her product.

A few numbers first

Yesterday was an anniversary day for the Skynet blogs: they quietly celebrated their 4th year. The platform counts 150,000 blogs with almost 24% of active blogs- that is blogs that have been updated with at least one post within a 3-month period. According to Julie this is far more above the average for free blogging platforms (+/- 5%).

IAB European Congress starts this Monday

I'm very happy to join the event as a 'reporter' for Digimedia. When i was 14 i wanted to be a reporter but my mum told me it was no job for a girl and certainly no job for a girl wishing to make money - financial autonomy was indeed part of the girls upbringing :-) I changed my mind for cosmonaut...

Lovely Heidy - from Heidi Lambert Communications - reached me to see if i wanted to meet some of the speakers and patiently explained to me that jumping on them in between interviews could still be an option if i rather have it my way but that she'd be happy to help.

There's someone i'd be particularly delighted to meet and lovely patient Heidy is trying to set it up : the man is Jaap Favier, Forrester VP and Research Director, who's going to speak about 'social computing'. If there's any question you'd like me to ask him, or if you feel like joining, drop me an e-mail or post here.

thoughts...

I know i haven't been very much into prodution for a couple of days, but i've been meeting a lot of people from agencies, portals (still using this world??), marketing managers at different professional or private events these last days and i was completely flabbergasted by their vivid interest in me! Well rather in my blog. Hmm in fact in social media :-) and this is GREAT !!

A few recurrent questions and quotes ( no names :-) to share with you:

• What is social media and why is it important today?

How do you bring the love back ?

No personal questioning but the new Microsoft Digital Advertising Services' campaign, a video ad, whose objective is to position MDAS as the reconnector between the advertiser and the customer.

I do love the video and the positoning, the will to be part of the answer on 'how  a brand can effectively and qualitatively communicate online with its consumers? '- and this is way beyond advertising on Messenger or in-game advertising.

If you want to convince people to invest online today, you have to give them reasons why they should. Telling them how many of their consumers are online is no more an option, you have to show them what they are doing online, how they are doing it and what they are saying. Show them that, be it their initiative or not, they already have their online identity. A reputation to manage. 

So as i suggested to Geert, this could be some idea for the next video:

Barcamp Brussels #3

Was in the dark ages for #1 & #2, won't be able to make it tomorrow, i guess i'll be ready for my first Barcamp in 2008 :-(

Meanwhile, they'll all have great fun in the lovely Halles des Tanneurs tomorrow. Enjoy guys!

Debate over blogging with Belgian PR

Yesterday i went to the debate organised by the Belgian PR Center and moderated by Philippe Borremans. You can see the video on Maarteen's blog so I won't go too much into details -the fact that i was typing with Simon's QWERTY keyboard combined with my natural inclination to be dyslexic while taking notes doesn't make me feel like going through mines, but i'd like to make a few points:

- yes there were some Voltaire's daughters bloggers too at the event, at least me. And i don't think there's less women who are blogging contrary to what was said: all the data i heard during the last presentations i went to over blogging recently seems to prove the blogging population is fairly representative of the online population - being more or less 50/50 male and female

- yes 2 out of 3 participants were Dutch speaking if not more - and 4 out of the 5 speakers- which proves once again than the Dutch speaking community is not only more active but also more interested in social media - vind ik ..

- yet yes the questions coming from the public showed that fear and control are still the first reactions when we talked about social media and that the potential is huge for those feeling like being evangelists - be it on the PR sector or others...

- but yes if you don't participate in the online conversations you don't exist. Bruno Segers pointed it out several times as  the 'I blog so I am' phenomenon

- and yes, sunny days for monitoring these conversations are here to stay and blossom

One professional -admitting not to know a thing about blogging - wanted to know how he could influence what's being said online. It sounds like ' don't tell me what it is about - because i'm scared to know?-  but how i can turn it to my profit'. Wrong way to start if you ask me...

Pretty interesting so - and good for my Dutch oral practise :-) and the networking part was not the worst of it: I was delighted to meet Bart from Metatale who told me more about his new product - which will be useful for an article i'll be writing over monitoring in a couple of days, along with Attentio's data Simon McDermott kindly provided me before the debate- and to speak with Phillipe and to be introduced to Robin! Now that i have listened to them, talked with them, i'm not scared anymore ;-) and to finish this post i wish a very dirtysomething to one of the naaicest members of this nice NL community ;-)

Just the beginning

New study release for state of corporate blogging in Belgium. Main findings taken from Philippe Borremans' blog :

• 93% of PR/Communications managers surveyed knew about blogs...
• but only 6% of the PR/Communications managers surveyed implemented corporate blogs.
• only 4% of the organizations surveyed have blogging policies in place.
• 34% of the PR/Communications managers do see an opportunity for the use of corporate blogs.
• 37% read blogs but only 4% write a blog themselves.
• Only 2 of the 70 people surveyed monitor blogs on a regular basis for their company/organization.
• 87% of the respondents mainly see corporate blogging as a potential external communications tool.

Full article and more data over the EuroBlog 07 i missed :-( Hopefully will meet Philippe late afternoon at the debate over  'Blogging: challenge & consequences" organised by the Belgian PR Center.

Invloedrijke blogs in Vlaanderen

Metatale, a Ghent company, announces today the release of their monitoring tool enabling to know the biggest influential Flemishs bloggers. They also share their findings on how many posts -in average -they write (top influencers post minimum 10 posts per week) , how many comments they receive and the numbers of ingoing and outgoing links.

I asked Bart De Waele about their methodology, who they want to target and who are their competitors and when they'll be provinding such data for the French speaking part of the country. Here his answers:

The user is the content

Just registered for the April 26th conference on "the user is the content".

Program here, food for thoughts there

Note to the events' organiser, web publishers, smart maketers: add a blog optimised image format to all your logos& alike so we can easily add them to a post- thanks :-)

Clo aks, gets & sends one - thanks;-)

Bwards - ik zal er zijn, promised

catchingup, lookslike, alotsoffun, indeed, willcome, nextyear, with, mydear, NLsupporter, selfproclaimed, 'flamanddeservice', PauldeGroeve, ;-)

Ik zal er niet zijn

Seems there's a big event on the 'other side of the country' tomorrow. Understood it's all kind of blogs and i guesss not brands' ones in particular so here's my excuse not to go :-)

The real thing is I would need to go with someone like Mr Naais for exemple, so i could hopefully get  a word ...this is a very good idea actually: every dutch speaking blogger should sponsor a french speaking one so some guys could still enjoy the show :-) no i won't link :-) Come on! let's connect! Who's going to support a French girl?