Rolling Talks

All she needed, all she wanted..

..was genuine affection, say a bit of inspired love. Who would blame her? Lets pray she eventually gets what she wants. She sure deserves it. Hat tip to Kris ;)

Forrester Consumer Marketing forum

On Thursday, I'll be attending one of the most exciting events of the year with one of my business partners, Simon Mc Dermott from Attentio. Thursday's night is blogger dinner time with - among others- Jeremiah Owyang , Peter Kim and others Spanish celebrities ;). Unfortunately our favorite one won't join. Amaia, we'll miss you! Can't wait to be there. Plus qu'une fois dormir :-)

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.

Pitching la suite

Talking about Pitching, I just stumbled upon these mirrored blogs, the Bad Pitch and the Good Pitch. Makes me think of theses kids' jokes: "Bad Pitch and Good Pitch are in a boat...".  I'll be doing an article over pitching and buzz seeding for the next Inside, so if you feel like sharing experiences on the subject, drop me a mail. Lurkers, I'm talking to you :-)

ROI on SM is IR4MI

Driving back from France yesterday night I was listening to one of the biggest Belgium life music festival 'Francofolies de Spa'. Lot of interviews from artists I never heard of before- but for a few years now each time I'm driving long distance I have to listen to and sing the animals' songs- mummy-pleeeeeeeease!! cd...So maybe you'll have heard about Uman? If not, as suggested by the artist himself you go to MySpace and search for them (Uman). Nothing extraordinary here (logic basic approach for artists, and as far as the music is concerned probably not as entertaining as the kids' hits). What gave me food for thoughts was how the guy described his experience and interaction with people/fans on the social platforms. At one point, he talked about 'immediate return'.

It's so fucking obvious - like brilliant quotes. I'm adding it to my list on ROI quotes: 'ROI on social media is IR'. Could add 'for modest investment'. In other words "ROI on SM is IR4MI". Source Uman RollingTalks

Talking about sources, during his last seminar, Jean-Luc mentionned 2 interesting sources for 'music & social media':

1. MySpace Music Marketing: How to Promote & Sell Your Music on the World's Biggest Networking Web Site
2. Borey Sok

Both on my pile of booksandblogs to read...

"I'm not just a kid- I'm a producer, publisher and promoter'

Interesting reading on the impact of SN in kids life and the influence on marketers. Chosen bits:

• "Kids want more freebies, more connection and more production utilities, and brands have the opportunity to jump in and facilitate." 
• "the majority of teens are spending more time with new media than traditional media."
• "Nearly half (47%) of 9-17 year olds, including more than half (55%) of teens, report participation in one or more advertiser branded activity types in the last month."
• "Overall, 20% of teens report adding branded content to their own websites in the last month"

On what they want:

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 :-(

Want to know how brands should engage with bloggers?

Take a look at 'Vous et nous' - vous being the brands, and nous being the bloggers- reminds me faintly of something here :-) French initiative whose objective is to explain brands how they should engage with bloggers- i love the  'La France parle aux Français' sounds of their motto. Buzz seedings or other concepts described and listed by agency. Great insights for marketers. Go and learn .
Would be great to have the same kind of listing for Belgium. To be discussed with blogging experts fellows :-)

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 :-)

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:

Mom's guide to social marketing

"Your mother, if she did her job right, taught you everything you need to know about how to get along in the world and how to get ahead in it. (...)"Mom's Top 10 steps to a good online reputation:

1. Put your best foot forward
2. Make eye contact
3. You are a reflection of your mother (company)
4. Keep an open mind
5. Become necessary
6. Like the people that like you (even if you think they're annoying)
7. Watch your mouth
8. Don't be a fake
9. Mind your manners
10. Stay hip"

source: WebProNews

Well topical and easy to remember. But i can't remember my mom telling me about half these points and i personnally hates point 3 :-)

Here will be my advices to my kids and i guess they apply pretty well to social marketing as well:

1. Be open
2. Be curious
3. Be passionate
4. Be adventurous
5. Be true

What is social computing and why you don't know where to begin ...

Social computing is defined by Forrester as "a social structure in which technology puts power in communities not institutions". I guess social media, user generated content, consumer generated media all apply to it.

Yes I started reading Charlene's new report and there's already great stuff to share on pages 1&2 :-)

The question is not merely ' Shall I - the brand- use all these new technologies? ' but 'How can I can use them best according to my customers' behaviour? Her answer : know your target better, watch them use these new tools, and define 'what kind of relationship you want to build with them'. Then you decide what and how.

That's indeed a good starting point for you if you don't know where to start*. Rest reassured, you're a crowd out there. Why?

Charlene points out 3 major factors:

1- You don't understand why/what/how your customers are using these new technologies

2- You don't have enough experience on what/how you can use them and what can work for you

3- You can't keep up with the fast growing of new medias (once you've managed Youtube, Twitter is already the next thing )

hhhm,, love it, going on with my reading

* but as someone would say is not because the technologies are changing that the marketing approach has to. Or has it??

7 ways to pitch a blogger

I just read the '7 ways to pitch a blogger' written by Ogilvy. Since this paper dates back from March 2006 i must have read something about it somewhere the last days but i can't remember where.. Anyway, here's a sump-up (could be part of the answer to the question asked by a Belgian PR):

1- Before you pitch, read their blog

2- Help them get more trackbacks and comments

3- Bloggers are experts. Treat them like experts (note: i like that one :)

4- It's not always about their readers (note: AHHHH, this one i completely relate to , so here the full idea):

Many bloggers are writing for themselves, and their blogs serve as an online manifest of their personality and thoughts. While many blogs have huge readerships, ultimately most bloggers are wrting because they have a genuine passion for the subjects they write about. Therefore, bloggers won't write about something 'newsworthy" if it doesn't personnally interest them. And unlike journalists, they don't have to.  (Note: i would add i have no problem posting about some 'old 'document as long as it learns me something and i want to track the data - like this document ;-)

5- Giving them free stuff is ok - (note: Sure :-)

6- Know who else is talking about you so you'll have an idea of how they feel about you before you approach them

7- Don't throw away your traditional media relations playbook or in other words apply the best PR best practices

By the way Ogilvy offers more than a dozen feeds on blogs subjects mainly -looks like a cool ressource. I just added them to the great RSS reader Kris showed me. I started 2 weeks ago and i have now 80 feeds on my favorite subjects around social media.. I just thought it would be cool to share them with 'my community', to have some automatic check for the feeds we have in common and those we can share,  and to add those automatically. Great stuff for Great News ??

French election buzz

100% out of professional monitoring interest!! Could not resist...

Buzz seeding: 7 factors to keep in mind

Attentio' s 7 factors to consider when planning a buzz seeding campaign (i sum it up in French for Digimedia - Flemish version to be coming soon):

1- Authority
2- Prolificness
3- Blogger's community
4- Localisation
5- Spread across interests
6- Demographics
7- Well targeted

Full post here

Social networks: far more good than damage

This is probably what has been most repeated during the Blogging for Business event yesterday in London, or at least the one I heard the most and it can answer the opening question of the conference 'how social media is changing your business?'.

Probably because attendees seemed to be more agencies and brands than experienced bloggers or social networkers- if we except the speakers themselves- and that they came to be informed and reassured about the social tools they should be using already or asap.

This is one of the reasons why this event was completely different from my experience at Le Web 3 in Paris last December. The fact that women were almost 50% of the audience (pity they use toilets only to make up though :-), that they were almost zero PC on tables and thus zero complaints about slow connection but some about too few desserts still :-), no presence of any politics except for the virtual presence of Hillary Clinton whose blog was mentionned, real interesting panels with mostly passionate speakers, all these and more made it a far more valuable experience to me too:

Le "pay per post", technique de buzz seeding controversée

C'est un article du LA Times  (free registration) qui relance la polémique sur le 'pay per post', concept publicitaire qui permet aux bloggeurs -relativement- influents d'être rémunérés de 5$ à 1,000$ pour poster des commentaires sur leur blog.

Ce concept a évidemment de nombreux détracteurs qui qualifient le bloggeur de dealer d'opinion - en opposition à son role reconnu de leader d'opinion.