IBC 2011 logo

This Friday and Saturday I’ve been invited to be part of the Design Award Jury for the Hall 1 exhibits for the 2011 annual International Broadcasting Convention at the RAI Amsterdam. Together, we will be looking for the exhibits with a strong, stylish and confident visual presence that makes for an accomplished and differentiated brand.

The IBC expects around 48,000 attendees from more than 140 countries and includes major industry speakers such as filmmaker James Cameron, Virgin Media COO Andrew Barron, Christian Hernandez, head of international business development EMEA Facebook through to pretty much everyone who is anyone in the global media and broadcast industry.

To get in the mood, I decided to check out more than 100 websites of the Hall 1 exhibitors. As marketing director of our strategy and communications 2.0 company I couldn’t resist doing a quick analysis of how these companies represent themselves online. Here’s what I found:

[Read more…]

Inbound marketing reasonsOne of the most important changes in the world of marketing over the past years, is the shift from outbound to inbound marketing.

Traditional outbound marketing strategies focus on finding customers. Examples of outbound marketing are TV advertising, print- and banner advertising, billboard campaigns, e-mail marketing, cold calling, etc.

Web 2.0 marketing strategies focus on customers finding you. Inbound marketing makes use of search engine optimisation (SEO), social media, and content marketing.

In 2011, you simply cannot afford to not have an inbound marketing strategy. Here’s why:

[Read more…]

Since about two years already, YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world – straight after big daddy Google. In addition YouTube videos are also found directly in Google search result pages.

In order to get your videos found, make sure you optimise them to your keyword strategy!!

[Read more…]

Someone recently asked the question “What do I need to optimise? My whole blog, the pages of my blog, or my blog posts?”

Ever at your service, I will explain what the difference is between these three, from a Search Engine Optimisation perspective. First, an important note!

[Read more…]

The one SEO meta tag you can't ignoreA while ago I wrote a post about the 10 most important On Page SEO Factors. On Page SEO is the stuff you can do to optimise any web page for search engines. That not only means a website page, but also a blog post!

[Read more…]

In some cases hosting your blog under your main website can be a good option. You would then need to make a choice between hosting the blog as a subdirectory (yourwebsite.com/blog) or as a subdomain (blog.yourwebsite.com).

Next week I will publish a post that explains the pros and cons of hosting your blog under the domain of your main –  corporate, primairy or root – website as oppose to hosting it completely separate under a separate domain (URL).

But in this post, I will first discuss the difference between hosting your blog under subdirectory or subdomain.

[Read more…]

Reasons to blog

As you know, our mission in life is to turn organisations and people into publishers of valuable, optimised, content to help them reach their marketing, pr and communications goals on the social web.

[Read more…]

Difference between blog and websiteI’m often asked what the difference is between a blog and a website. For many people active in online marketing, the difference between a website and a blog might seem obvious.

But nowadays, everyone – from PRs and communicators to business leaders and customer service managers – should have a clear understanding of the difference.

[Read more…]

Optimising SlideshareMost clients I speak with have heard of Slideshare – the ‘YouTube’ for powerpoints – and some are even using it. But I haven’t met too many who optimise their Slideshare profiles to their keyword strategy.

Optimising means that people can then find your profile and presentations better in Google, or when they search from within Slideshare.

[Read more…]

Today, it is a simple marketing truth that if you want to get found by potential customers and clients on the social web, you need to know the basics of SEO (search engine optimisation). You need to develop and implement a keyword strategy. You need to apply that keyword strategy in your social channels – and your content!

This will help help potential customers find you rather than spending unnecessary marketing euros on advertising to find them.

[Read more…]