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:

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After a speaking gig I am often asked for book tips. People are really eager to know more about ‘doing business on the social web’. They realise they need to change their headset from mass communications to targeted communications, from broadcasting to conversation, from interruption marketing to permission marketing, from keeping control to gaining influence, and so on.

Recently – during a visit to my local book store – I noticed that the ‘social media book section’ has exploded. So many books. So much choice. Where do you start?

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My business partner Steve Seager has just launched his new blog on www.steveseager.com.

On his blog Steve will be talking about strategy and communications on the social web.

When I met Steve more than 2 years ago I wasn’t too keen on the word ‘Strategy’. I always felt strategy was about long term. It would always prevent things from moving forward!

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Dear people, over the past 6 months I have been posting about the different aspects of SEO, conversation, tools, social media channels, tactics, and more. This presentation below puts all of these into a useful and practical framework for you to head towards a social media strategy. It is also the core of our own services as a company. Take a look at the presentation below and have a think! You can also download it and share it with colleagues. Links to downloads at the bottom of this blog post!

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Some time ago I wrote about 10 reasons why your company should blog.

In this research from emarketer.com, they asked Chief Marketing Officers of US Fortune 1000 companies why they thought they should blog.

These were their answers:

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Companies that have bad customer service will never make it on the social web. Ehhrr… well actually – as you can see down at the bottom of this post – they can make it in reverse 😉

Below you find a little clip of a great customer service prank in Belgium. The clip is in Dutch but has subtitles! (thanks for the tip Jeff)

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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.

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At we do communications we always tell our clients that Social Media and SEO are like yin and yang. They belong together. They don’t operate separately.

Social Media SEO Yin and Yang

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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.

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Last October 14, we gave a presentation to the HR Puzzle – a network of Dutch thought leaders in Ehrm. During the presentation we explained our approach to marketing and pr on the social web.

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