Beyond PR

'Tell the truth, tell it all, tell it early and do it yourself'

2010-01-11T21:46:00.004+01:00

Crisis comms advice by Lanny Davis, advisor of former US President Bill Clinton at the time of Lewinsky Gate.

A creative way to get rid of your frustration (or: how to give your former supplier a stroke)

2010-01-11T20:49:00.000+01:00

Recently a colleague of mine drew my attention to a fake E&Y site. It is concipiated as some kind of parody of a corporate blog/website. The site clearly indicated that "this website has no affiliation to Ernst & Young LLP, whose website can be found at www.ey.com". It all looks quite professional, which makes the parody even more powerful. Every tab has been complete carefully, even a module which enables E&Y-employees to benchmark their salary on a worldwide level (see section 'Fair Pay').

The initiative was taken by Michael Price, who denominates himself as a “past client and shareholder of an E&Y-audited company”. Note that he doesn't operate on his own though: he says that (400?) other (ex-)E&Y employees conributed to the content (see WHY?).

Michael Price feels it is his mission "to warn other executives worldwide" and to "increase awarness of bad practices among the E&Y Global Executive". His hopes are that things will improve. He urges for fair pay, more diversity at the top & better working conditions, which I think quite noble. The fact that he spices up his website with an itch of humour gets my approval very much (note the peeing squirl :-). In case you ever feel like criticizing you (ex-)employer/ex-(business) partner or whatever, beside staying polite and factual always, you don't want to come accross as the bitter complaining party. Most of all he wants to instigate E&Y to more ethical ways of doing business, because he experienced this is not alway the case (as he says).

Mister Price seems well aware of the legal risks this website could bring along: he only provides information which isn't strictly confidential, and he sticks to the Court Confidentiality he has to comply with. He coureageouslyadds a P.S. to the Global Executive, stating: "If there are any parts of this page E&Y wishes to hide for valid reasons, you feel particular details should be hidden due to the court confidentiality order, or if you think anything stated above is factually incorrect in any way, let me know and I will immediately consider the matter." He clearly aligned his communication with the right of response.

I don't want to go into a lengthy discussion on the contents of the website. It just seems to me Ernst & Young has quite some work to do regarding employer branding for example. Maybe they can take a useful benchmark with Deloitte. I don't this company from personal experience, but I very much enjoyed the way they engaged their employees through the Deloitte film festival. Enjoy! You can find the finalist of the Deloitte Film Festival here.

Crisis response through social media

2009-12-08T20:15:00.004+01:00

I just came across a nice slide show presentation on 'how to manage a crisis via social media' by Ogilvy.

They state 5 things are key in crisis management via social media:
1. Speed
2. Transparency: expect what you say to be blogged (this is so true!)
3. Dialogue
4. Search
5. Detractors (what we call 'stakeholder mapping')

I totally agree with this! I especially like the Ford example they give to show how companies should continually be involved with online stakeholders, how they should monitor everything which is said about their brand, and rectify incorrect information online.

No matter what is your social media strategy, the backbone should be relationship building with your company's stakeholders online. And this relationship ideally takes on a direct, human and personal form.

And how about you? Have you got some good advice to give me on the subject of crisis comms through social media?

Facebook can seriously harm your health (and those of others)

2009-12-03T21:40:00.002+01:00

The on- and offline are getting ever more intertwined. People increasingly use social media platforms to report on their lives as it happens. This is e.g. what happened when the US Airways crashed in the Hudson river: people started putting online what they saw on the spot. Similar things happened during the Kalitta crash (July 2008) or the protests in Iran (June 2009). The pace of reporting speeded up a lot too. Both Twitter and Facebook have a main stake in this trend of live bystander reporting.

Face it: Facebook and Twitter can pose serious risks for your overall health, the health of those who are close to you, or your company's health.

Social networking

...can get you fired!

A British woman complained about her job on Facebook and called her boss a wanker. She simply forgot that she had accepted him as a friend. Only a couple of hours later he left a message on her profile, telling her that she had been fired. Now who's the wanker in the story?

Some time ago, Belgian lawyers were warned not to 'friend' with clients, judges or politicians on Facebook, to avoid embarrassing situations, or worse.

...can kill you!

Two British women changed their Facebook status, from 'in a relationship' to 'single'. The increadibly jealous husband simply killed his wife for doing this.

...can put you behind bars!

The police from New-Zealand could trace a couple of fugitives who fled after the bank had paid them 2 billion EUR by accident. When the sister of the female part of the couple wrote on her Facebook profile that she enjoyed nice fresh pint of beer after her arrival at the couple's hiding place, the police came to get them all. Interpol had been tracking the Facebook accounts of the suspects.

...can diffuse your most intimate information in no time!

Quite recently quite some celebrities have been bitten by the Twitter virus. Lance Armstrong, Kim Clijsters, Lily Allen,...they all tweet about their personal life. Ashton Kutcher was so kind to share a picture of his wife's butt (that butt belonging to Demi Moore) with the entire world. Keep up the good work Mr. Kutcher!

Copyright Ashton Kutcher

...can put you in contractual trouble!

Several Hollywood film studios are afraid actors will give away scoops on new movies via their social networking accounts. Some even consider adding a Twitter clausule to contracts with celebs...

...can make your party explode!

A Scottish girl from Aberdeen called Victoria ended up partying with more than 150 uninvited Facebookers while her grannies went to a wedding. The house was completely destroyed. Victoria had sent out her invitations via Facebook...

Morale of the story: you better think twice before sharing personal or confidential information via you social network accounts. It's much easier to harm one's reputation than to restore it.

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Best practices (Fortune 1000 companies)

2009-10-25T15:00:00.001+01:00

I'm always looking out for 'best practices' from companies who successfully integrated the new media into their PR practices.

Here are some nice examples I came across lately:

* Magnum "Oh my blog"
A blog fed by a line-up of celebrity bloggers, giving style advice to its readers. I call this a guerrilla blog, in analogy with a guerrilla store. Both phenomena arise quite suddenly, their goal is to give a brand a boost, and they disappear as sudden as they popped up. The blog was online as the from 1st of May 2008, and as far as I know it is no longer visible to the public. Reference to Oh my blog by Elle)

* The Red Cross' Social media program
The Red Cross succeeded in creating a fully interactive online community, which is not only devoted to communication, but which is also very much into LISTENING. The community connects donors, volunteers and other followers with every other member of the organisation. What I like most about this organisation's social media approach, is that they make use of the enormous opportunities social media give you to detect 'issues' in a very early stage.
Claire Sale, Social Media Specialist of the Red Cross, puts it this way: "Social media is a great early warning system - this is how we hear about changes to our reputation first."
I also like her way of participating in the online debate very much: "We only insert ourselves into conversations if we honestly feel we have something positive to contribute. We respond to online conversations with real action. We know that people are saying things out there [about Red Cross], and if the information is incorrect, then we use it as an opportunity to share the truth. People don't just want an answer, they want change."

One of their latest initiatives was to get feedback from followers to see how often they want to get new information from the Red Cross by means of a Twitter poll.

Coca-Cola already was and still is an interesting company to get social media best practices from too.

Some tips for a smooth online presence (with thanks to dna 13):
1) Monitor social media. Just like e.g. CropLife International and the Red Cross, use social media as a barometer for the public opinion about your brand.
2) Respond quickly, especially in case of a crisis. Make sure you have the right messages and communication channels in place, and try to quickly get your message out there, before the media start asking you "what you are going to do about it".
3) Respond at the flashpoint. Get your message out there, especially to restore confidence in your brand where it was lost. Reach out to those communities who play a fundamental role in the current issue/crisis.
4) Educate workers. Make sure they are familiar with social media and know the company's stance on the subject (see corporate social media guidelines).
5) Foster a positive culture. Happy employees and clients are not very likely to tear down a company.
6) Set clear guidelines. Have a policy about what online interaction/online presence is allowed during working hours. You have to know the rules first in order to be able to break them.

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Blog/social media guidelines for companies

2009-10-12T22:19:00.002+02:00

For those looking for inspiration on blogging/social media guidelines for their company:
SHIFT communications has fabricated a very user friendly basic template which everyone can adapt to the wishes of the company. It's a good basic document to start working with.

Apart from the IBM and Intel guidelines to which I already devoted a post, who where basically pioneers in the matter, Yahoo also did quite a nice job when they wrote down their online participation directives.

Nice to know: for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the IOC also drew up a set of blogging guidelines.

And to end with: some advice to make CEO blogging a success (thanks to chiefingredient.com).

How about PR 3.0?

2009-10-07T16:56:00.000+02:00

I think every PR professional observe the same trends these days:

* personnel turnover rates are high everywhere, and especially in the media
* the press increaslingly relies on messages sent out by associated press bodies such as Belga
* the number of news outlets is shrinking
* the amount of content created per item is declining as well
* the content which is created is often aimed at selling itself, rather than informing the public

Some PR pros claim that PR 3.0 is the solution.

But what exactly do they mean by that?

After embracing social media such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, PR is now ready to lift itself to the third dimension, i.e.:

* real-time updates to media contact information, via social media (and you're done with endless journalists calling)
* online newsrooms: media pros update platforms in real time with the latest news. These platforms can at the same time fonction as archives.
* an integrated approach, benefiting from joined forces from all the goods things of online communication: search engine optimization, site tagging, interactive videos and photo-sharing
* real-time tracking of communications, allowing you to keep control over the message.

Especially on the first point, I'm not sure yet how such a thing could be realized. As for the rest of the PR 3.0 concept, I completely agree with the fact that it is much more efficient and adapted to the changing reality communication pros find themselves in every day. So why don't you give it a try?

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PRM - Personal Reputation Management

2009-10-06T20:24:00.005+02:00

People are more and more into reputation management these days, whether it is for themselves, for their company, the products they sell, their brand(s), the reputation of the CEO...
And they are right: everything which has a reputation, should manage it carefully...

For yourself, you can easily do it for your own, no need of an expensive consultancy firm:
1) "search engine yourself" (or else: google yourself)
This sounds pretty obvious, but it really is the first step to get a correct image over how you are being represented on the web.

2) Online ad hoc-databases. On pipl.com you can find all kinds of references to your person online too. It exists also in Dutch, at wieowie.nl

3) Get an alert whenever you're mentioned! Why don't you install a google alerts about the item who's reputation you want to manage? It may sound freaky, but might come in handy one day. Especially if you're well-known. You don't want be the last one to know that paparazzi took pictures while you were doing laundry...

4) Since 'classical search engines' do not always include blogs, you might want to ad specific blog search engines like Google Blogsearch, Technorati, IceRocket and Blogpulse to your resources list. Some of these also have an alert service available.

The nicest part, and nobody can refrain you from doing that, is of course checking on colleagues, friends etc. :-) Enjoy!

Francophone blogs in Belgium

2009-10-06T20:16:00.002+02:00

Recently I read an interesting article in Le VifL'Express by Thierry Denoël on blogs in Belgium, entitled 'La folie des blogs' (published 25/09/2009). What made it so interesting for me, is that he viewed the blogosphere from the Belgian francophone angle.
He cites e.g. Paul Jorion, an independent blogger and writer who now lives in Los Angeles. He's one of the happy few who can live out of his blog. This is largely due to the fact that his blog doesn't only exist in English, but also in French. Nevertheless, he says that the francophone blog receives more visitors a day.
Some figures:

> End of 2008, Technorati estimated some 133 million blogs existed
> Julie Opstaele (SkynetBlogs) says that every day, ca. 2000 à 3000 new blogs are created. Most of them are shortly lived though: the average lifespan of a blog is about 6 months.
> Recently a Belgian francophone blogger published his blog revenues online: he earns about € 5000 a year via his blog. Badouin Van Humbeeck, one of the first Belgian bloggers, says this is an absolute maximum in Belgium.

Denoël rightly observes that blogs a nowadays seen like some kind of business model, a way to diffuse information in quite a time- and/or money-saving way.

For people who look for interesting examples of French-speaking Belgian bloggers (including politicians), I can definitely recommend this article.

Pimp your labels!

2009-06-12T17:33:00.004+02:00

I just added a flash animated label cloud. It's called Blogumus. I like it, it's a flash way to pimp your labels :-)

Don't forget to claim your blog!

2009-05-11T19:54:00.004+02:00

A colleague of mine pointed out that I mustn't forget to claim my blog if I want it to appear in rankings. He's right.

As I got interested in the matter, and since I can imagine not everyone knows what "claiming your blog" is and how to do it, I posted an (not exhaustive but hopefully useful) outline here.

Why would you want to claim your blog?

To increase your visibility in rankings. Also to include more personal data to your search results when people look for your blog. This adds to your credibility. In Technorati e.g. you can include your name, photo and description next to your blog in search results after claiming it.
You can list your blog in up to 20 categories for Technorati's Blog Finder, increasing your visibility. You have a chance at being a featured blog appearing on Technorati's home page.
You can get "cool tools."
If you want to find out about the authority of your blog, you should claim it first. The Technorati Authority of a blog is based on the number of sites linking to that blog. The Technorati Rank is the place the blog occupies in the global ranking drawn up by means of the Technorati. I like the fact that this ranking is dynamic. Both the Technorati Authority and the Technorati Rank change on a daily basis according to the number of links.

Apart from the 'ownership' part of the story, registering of claiming your blog can be useful if you want your blog to appear in statistics. Multiple tools are available to gather statistics about your blog.

MetaTale

MetaTale ranks your blog according to its influence in the Flemish blogosphere. It's a pity that MetaTale doesn't really explain how they put their statistics together. Curious about the MetaTale-ranking of your blog? Insert your URL here and find out how influence your blog is in Flanders. Don't worry if the machine doesn't find your blog straight away. To make sure your blog is represented in the MetaTale-rankings, you can register here. It can take up to 4 weeks before your blog is ranked for the first time in MetaTale.

Alexa

Alexa defines the "Alexa Traffic Rank" of a site of blog according to the number of visitors which are detected by people who installed the Alexa toolbar. Did I see you frown? Yes, it's a bit silly indeed, since I don't think the use of this gadget is very common. You don't have to register or claim your blog in this case.

Marcom Top 100

The Marcom Top 100 is the ranking of Dutch speaking blogs which have to do with marketing or communication. So if your blog is writting in Dutch, you can give it a go. The position a sites holds is determined by Google PageRank, the Technorati Authority, the appreciation of the initiators of the list and the numer of votes given by the members of Marketingfacts. This mixture of less or more objective and more subjective criteria makes it an interesting ranking. The ranking is revised on a monthly basis. You have to register your blog for it to appear in the ranking.

Blog50

The Blog50 provides you with an overview of the most popular blogs in The Netherlands and Belgium. The popularity of a blog is determined by the Google Pagerank, theTechnorati ranking,the number of Bloglines subscriptions, the Alexa traffic rank, the number of Yahoo inlinks and - last but not least - the number of Del.icio.us bookmarks. This ranking is also (re)calculated every month, but you have to register to be part of it.

With thanks to Flyteblog and BVLG.

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Promoting your blog is only one click away

2009-04-23T19:39:00.001+02:00

Did you ever wonder how to add the famous "Add This" one-click sharing button to your blog//website//...? Simply go to the Add This website, and follow the steps. It's easy!

Time management

2009-04-22T19:48:00.000+02:00

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Right of reply on the internet?

2009-04-10T23:05:00.002+02:00

MR Senator Christine Defraigne is drafting a law to ensure right of reply on the internet. Soon she will hand over her proposal to the senate committee of Foreign Affairs, which should further elaborate the issue.

The correctional court from Brussels judged in November 2007 that a demand for right of reply on the internet was not viable, since the legislator didn’t include hi-tech media such as the internet when the bill was designed in 1961.

Defraigne wants to integrate both blogs and fora in her proposal. She based her proposal on a regulation which exists in France, which was on her turn based on a European directive. So far, the right of reply has only been applied to the written and audiovisual press in Belgium. Defraigne wants to protect the Belgium citizens and institutions from erroneous or even malignant information on the internet. For the moment no one can force a fellow internet user to add or rectify information to an online post.

Senator Defraigne stipulates in the bill that a person wanting to exercise his right of reply should contact the author or the person who manages the online platform on which the message was posted within a delay of 3 months. If the author or any equivalent person does not appeal the demand, the answer should be available on the internet within 3 days. In case of libel or clear accusations, the reply should be drawn up in the same font and lay-out as the original article.

So far it all looks pretty interesting. But there’s one problem for which Senator Defraigne didn’t find a solution so far: what do we do with authors who remain completely anonymous?

What I like about her proposal is the fact that (in the Web 2.0 spirit of two-way communication) Defraigne wants to make this law negotiatory: if an author is willing to adapt or erase the piece of information concerned, the other party can envisage to make a deal and drop the charges.

Professional journalists have to comply with all kinds of deontological rules en specifications, they e.g. have to guarantee the correct application of the right of reply. According to the Belgian law journalists are personally responsible for their publications, as opposed to other kinds of employees (read more).

Bloggers do not have to subject their texts to the right of reply. I think legislation really is behind on this issue since the internet, blogs and other social media have no less impact these days than the traditional media.
Microsoft even reports that they expect the internet to be bigger than television next year.

To be continued.

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Creative writing

2009-04-02T21:42:00.001+02:00

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Blog humor

2009-03-30T21:36:00.006+02:00

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How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow their Businesses

2009-03-30T21:34:00.000+02:00

A brand new report on social media marketing by Michael A. Stelzner just came out.
I like the fact that they not only try to provide answers and insights, but that they go into the subjects that really interested the marketeers which took part in the survey. It turns out that most marketers wonder how they should get started, which are the best social media tactics to use, and how they can measure the effectiveness of social media.

Business owners were more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a business (81%). 6 out of 10 marketers are using social media 5 hours a week, and 39% use it for 10 or more hours weekly. The amount of time a marketer spends on social media is correlated with the period of time a marketer has been active using social media tools.

The survey points out that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook are (in that order) the top social media tools.
81% of all respondents say through social media they succeeded in generating exposure for their business. It also helped them increasing traffic and building new business relationships.

Marketers mostly want to learn more about social bookmarking sites, followed by Twitter. It are mostly the newbees who are looking for information on Twitter, and the more early adopters who would like to learn more about social bookmarking sites.

How to handle social media on a corporate level

2009-03-10T22:00:00.004+01:00

Corporate social media guidelines

Every day, more & more people are taking part in the Grand Conversation called Web 2.0. Employees represent the company they work for, online and offline, whether these companies realize it or not.
The corporate response to this issue can be schedualized by means of the following continuum:

Source

As far as I can see, most companies are in one of the following positions:

"Only approved employees engage" is actually a company warming up to social media. It wants employees to participate.

"Everyone does their own thing": no having any type of policy is the policy. This is the default position. And companies still benefit tremendously here. They just may have some employee behaviors they wouldn’t want to see.

"All employees are deputized": this is the most proactive stance. Smart companies are treating every employee as an individual brand manager out on the Web. They are deputizing them by giving them guidelines, setting expectations, and then letting them act on their own. It’s a wonderful way to let employees both (1) engage the market about their company and their work; and (2) learn from others as to the state of their fields.

Some Web 2.0 disasters in-the-making can be avoided by being proactive. One possibility to avoid reputational damage for your corporation is to draw up your own set of "social media guidelines". The US Air Force Blog Assessment Chart is a nice example, but IBM did an ever nicer job. They were one of the first companies to really ponder over the implications of citizen journalism by company insiders.

Below you find an executive summary of their Social Computing Guidelines.

IBM Social Computing Guidelines
Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
IBMers are personally responsible for the content they publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time—protect your privacy.
Identify yourself — name and, when relevant, role at IBM—when you discuss IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
If you publish content to any website outside of IBM and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions."
Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
Don't provide IBM's or another's confidential or other proprietary information. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to IBM.
Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.
Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM's workplace. You should also show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion.
Find out who else is blogging or publishing on the topic, and cite them.
Be aware of your association with IBM in online social networks. If you identify yourself as an IBMer, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and clients.
Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective. IBM's brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on IBM's brand.

Companies writing social media guidelines of their own should definetely take a look at the set of guidelines by Intel too.

Thanks to Hutch Carpenter, I can even provide you with a table pointing out the differences between the IBM and the Intel approach:

These two tech behemoths do a great job in mixing corporate interests with a hands-off approach that defines authentic social media engagement. The documents are pretty good reads, and surprisingly similar.
Respect to IBM and Intel for their guidelines. These early adopters are trendsetters, and I look forward to other companies joining the fray.

French blog search engines

2009-03-10T21:27:00.001+01:00

Here they are, the blog search engines I identified for searching French blogs.

www.seek-blogs.com
www.blogsearch.google.fr
www.twingly.com (new kid on the block, for what it's worth)
www.bloglines.com
www.bloogz.com (under construction for the moment...)
www.gigablast.com (says to have an option to do language specific search, I didn't find it during my first quick scanning)

This is only a first impression. More thorough research and distinguishing on the basis of the characteristics of these blog search engines is an absolute must. In order to obtain search results which are as complete as possible, one should of course combine several searches on search engines using different kinds of search technology.

Can anybody share his/her best practices about blog monitoring / french blog search engines?

Company reputation index

2009-03-05T20:10:00.003+01:00

Reputation is a fascinating thing. I got interested in this online company reputation index by Vanno.

Several factors play a role when it come to managing one's reputation. Vanno includes community involvement, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, environment, patriotism, and social responsibility.

For community involvement, parameters such as art, charitable giving, education and volunteering are taken into account. Did I see you frown? Yes, these are indeed very diverse criteria...

Customer satisfaction is measured through customer service (which I think is oh so important!), product safety (it's always better to avoid the next product recall), quality, and value and price (value for money that is, I guess).

Compensation, coworkers, diversity, job satisfaction and management are included in the part 'employee satisfaction'.

The category 'environment' consists of anti-pollution and recycling efforts, clean and renewable energy, conservation and preservation (of what, of nature?) and sustainability (a very broad and fashionable but often empty vehicle).

You can tell this whole index was set up by an American company, given the next criterion: 'patriotism'. This takes into account parameters such as country of origin, union made, and veterans and armed forces.

Last but not least they give the companies a note for the degree to which they take their corporate 'social responsibility': in terms of animal rights, of avoiding controversial business, fair trade, good corporate governance and human rights.

Knowing all this, I was still a bit surprised when I saw the ranking. I see some companies quite high up the ranking which I expected to see a bit lower down. But then again, it's a 'reputation index', it all comes down to how you're seen, it's not about what you do as such... Or how keeping up appearances became a popular kind of corporate sports.

Use Facebook to promote your brand

2009-03-03T18:39:00.000+01:00

Read original post

Some tips & tricks to boost your brand through Facebook.

1. Start a Community

As Facebook is all about networking, it is only right to start a community related to your brand. Keep the community generic in nature with the objective of adding value to people by providing them content - text or visual. Community allows people to join in and share their views. It becomes a good platform to interact and dialogue. Since all like minded people will join in, you know that all members would be your potential consumers. A word of caution here: Do not bombard them with only brand messages but try to be informative too. Community allows you to upload picturs, videos, write on walls, start discussions; basically enough opportunities to interact with people.

2. Profile Page

Sections on profile page:

The profile page is the most critical and you must use it optimally. There are sections on the profile page that can carry your brand information which is easy for your friends to find. Given below are the pictures which highlight the places that can be used to guide your friends and fans to your brand website or blog.

Status Updates:

This is Facebook way of micro blogging. And they have got it right. It is one of the most used feature already. Its fun reading status updates of friends and then commenting on them. This feature should be used creatively to talk about your brand. Make it interesting, unique, creative, first ever whatever that captures eyes balls.

Using Tabs:

You can add tabs next to the Wall and the Info area as is shown in the picture below. Add other tabs like Photos, Videos, Blog Cast which will further help your friends find out more about your brand. Update them by adding relevant pictures, videos (ads in some cases) and blog posts. Make it easy for friends to know about your brand.

3. Incorporating Applications

Several applications cann add value to your FB profile. These should be added to your profile as well as your brand’s.

One is Simplaris blogcast. This application automatically updates your blog feeds and publishes it in your FB account. So whenever you have added a new blog post, this app will get that feed and publish it in your profile thereby generating visibility. So all your friends would know that you have uploaded a new post without you having to tell them.

Update your friends about your new blog post thru FB feeds.

Second app is Web Presence. This app helps you in giving out all the places in the Internet where you have a presence. So this app consolidates all the presence in one box. So add on your blog address, your twitter account, Photo account on Flickr or Picasa, your videos on You Tube, your bookmarks on Delicious or Magnolia. Put it all in as this will help your fans connect with your brand on several other platforms too.

The third and last app is Twitter update. You can send out tweets from this app that is installed in your FB profile. This saves the trouble of login to Twitter separately. You can use twitter app and FB status updates as announcement platforms.

4. Creating Brand Page

Facebook allows you to create a brand page where all the details about the brand can be added. This is more direct approach of brands connecting with people. Users can become fans of your brands thereby becoming loal ambassadors. The wonderful aspect is that fans can comment on the brand, its features and its advertisements. There are other features like Wall and Discussion Board where the conversations and discussions between the brand and users and even among users can be carried out. The fan page can be used by the brand to announce its on-ground events, invite users to participate in contests or update on new variant launches.

The golden rule that applies to all the above points is that the brand must be alive on FB. It must be updated regularly. There must be one person to accept and listen to user’s feedback on fan pages and communities. The action of each user should be acknowledged which makes the community active and ensure participation at all times.

How to Attract People on Twitter

2009-03-03T18:34:00.000+01:00

Interesting article with lots of tips & tricks.

Fail fast, fix fast, learn fast.

2009-03-02T19:29:00.001+01:00

I can find myself in Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts' maxim. And his candour. Therefore I publish some of his insights here.
Source.

Most of what you know about management is wrong. Says Kevin Roberts, chief executive of New York ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi. Roberts believes that passion is what matters most in business. "Don't hide your emotions," he said during a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture. "Emotions lead to action. Emotion is how you win."

In turn, if Roberts thinks you're an idiot, he will tell you. He prizes candor, not political correctness. "I don't compromise," he says. "It's cost me lots of money and lots of stuff, but in the end I've come out stronger." Under him, Saatchi & Saatchi is a "benevolent dictatorship: We ask and consult and then I decide, and we all go on together."

Roberts has had the sort of a career that breeds heterodox views. Born in Lancaster, England, he got kicked out of school at age 17 and never went back. He married his pregnant girlfriend, ending up with "no money and a baby," he recalls. He talked his way into a job at the fashion house of London designer Mary Quant, one of the pioneers of the miniskirt. "That's where I learned about empathy, creativity and emotion," he says. "I helped to create 'makeup to make love in' -- the first run-proof mascara."

His time with Quant -- who famously said that she had designed the miniskirt so women could run for the bus -- set his path as a marketer. From there, he jumped to ever-larger jobs at Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Pepsico. In 1989, he became chief operating officer of Lion Nathan, a brewer that operates in Australia and New Zealand. Moving to New Zealand was a spiritual homecoming: Roberts had been a rugby star in school, and New Zealanders play rugby better than anyone else. His family lives in New Zealand, he served on the board of New Zealand Rugby Football Union and today, he chairs the USA Rugby board.

Saatchi & Saatchi, a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, a French multinational communications company with 40,000 employees and 2006 revenues of $5.8 billion, came calling in 1997. The firm was in trouble, deep in debt and losing its creative cachet. Arriving during a time of crisis "gave me permission to misbehave," Roberts says. In at least a few people's minds, that's exactly what he has done. Roberts' tenure has returned the firm to business success but also brought controversy. A clash with one of his former top lieutenants landed the company in court and on the pages of New York magazine and The New York Times.

But chances are, Roberts doesn't care about the bad publicity. Where many business people shun controversy, he courts it. Consider the conventional wisdom that numbers rule in today's business world and that the company with the best ability to crunch them will prevail. In consumer marketing, Roberts believes that this is bunk. "You never get insight from formal research," he says. "For most consumer companies, consumer insight is just an agglomeration of facts. Every company has tons and tons of data, but they are all asking the same questions. Information and knowledge are table stakes. Insight and foresight win." In other words, don't ignore the spreadsheets and marketing studies but figure out ways to go beyond them. "We're all swamped in information. What we're looking for is ideas. We're trying to get to the future first."

'Fail Fast, Learn Fast, Fix Fast'

Roberts draws an analogy with the music industry. Sony and EMI Group knew more about the compact disc market than just about anyone, he points out. What's more, Sony, with its Walkman, had invented the market for portable music players. But neither company could see that consumers were finished with discs and wanted online file sharing and MP3 players. It took a computer company, Apple, to give them what they desired. Indeed, many observers say that the genius of Steve Jobs, Apple's founder and CEO, isn't in creating powerful, cutting-edge machines but in figuring out, before everyone else does, what retail consumers really want in technologies and delivering it in the most aesthetically appealing package. Thus Roberts calls Apple a company that has transcended being a brand, becoming what he calls a "lovemark" -- a product or service that consumers revere. "People who have an iPod want to kiss it," he quips.

Jobs also personifies another Roberts' maxim: "Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast." Though Jobs has lately had a string of successes, he has experienced plenty of flops in his career. For every iPod and iPhone, he has also offered up a Next Computer or an Apple Newton. He was fired by Apple's board at one point. But confronted with failure, Jobs just plows ahead to his next new idea. "You've got to fail," Roberts says. "Nothing breeds good judgment like bad judgment, so pursue failure. Like Oscar Wilde said, 'Nothing succeeds like excess.'"

'Fail Fast, Learn Fast, Fix Fast'

Numerous businesspeople pay lip service to tolerance for failure and the importance of trying new things. But too few of them really live out those beliefs, and that's because too many people do and say what they think they're supposed to, not what they believe. "You have to ask yourself, 'Where am I at my best?'" Roberts says. Be brutally honest with yourself and structure your career around your strengths, he says. Then you and your company will succeed.

"Ninety-nine percent of executives don't know [where they are at their best] or they screw it up," he notes. "Men say, 'I'm the man in a crisis.' That's total nonsense. I've never met anyone who's at their best in a crisis." If anything, women beat men in crises because they are not so driven by their egos, he notes. "Me, I'm at my best when I'm the captain. I'm also at my best in the mornings. And I'm at my best with a coach or mentor, not a boss. It's important for me to recognize that stuff. You should only play in places where you're at your best."

Even Roberts' friends recognize his need to be in charge. He is close to A.G. Lafley, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, arguably America's most successful consumer brand company. "Alan Lafley is one of the best CEOs in America, but when we're in a group, he lets me be the captain." Of course, Lafley also happens to be known as a CEO who is a keen listener and a perceptive questioner.

Once a manager figures out where she is at her best, she shouldn't compromise. "I never do anything that I don't want to do," Roberts says. "I don't talk to bankers or accountants or investors." Instead of doing what they think they're supposed to do, managers should focus their energies where they derive the most satisfaction -- "sheer, naked joy" -- and let others handle the rest. You won't excel at what you don't love doing, Roberts notes.

'We Have a Dream'

The sort of corporate mentality that makes work dutiful drudgery, instead of passionate play, turns staffers into drones and kills creativity and individual initiative. That's why, for example, Saatchi & Saatchi, which has 7,000 employees worldwide and, according to BusinessWeek, revenues of $780 million last year, doesn't have a mission statement. "What we have is a dream," Roberts says. "It all starts with a dream. Martin Luther King didn't say, 'I have a mission statement.' He said, 'I have a dream.'"

Saatchi & Saatchi likewise doesn't have a personnel manual. Roberts ditched the prior one when he arrived. Instead, he tells staffers that, when given a command, they should just take charge and do what's right. "Most great businesses are belief-led and principle-led," not governed by elaborate rulebooks. "I spend my time on beliefs, values and frameworks." One of his favorite frameworks is what he calls FREDA -- Focus, Reinvention, Execution, Distribution and Accountability. Nearly any business can be boiled down to those five principles, and an effective plan includes all of them.

Maxims like that are not just endearing; they are critical in a fast-paced age. Today's workers, especially younger ones, expect to be inspired, not instructed. "My generation was stoic. We weren't supposed to care about praise or dreams. That's nonsense. People work better when they are inspired." They also need to celebrate, and Saatchi & Saatchi does so, whether it wins an account or loses one. "Advertising is a young person's business, and 25-year-olds want to party. They love it, and it costs us nothing."

Roberts likewise believes that today's workers have largely ditched the idea of work-life balance in favor of work-life integration. Technologies like cell phones and Blackberries mean that people are, in effect, on call all the time. But they also create freedom to work and play simultaneously: E-mailing on vacation seems like a bummer until you realize that it can free you to travel more.

People today, especially the "creative-class workers" whom an ad firm employs, want harmony in their lives, not compartmentalization, he says. They want their jobs to advance their values. "Everybody at Saatchi & Saatchi gets 10% of their time for pro bono work," Roberts adds. "And I want to make the whole of our company sustainable. We're trying to go beyond green -- green is about limits, about Al Gore telling you that everything's bad -- to blue. Blue skies, blue seas and no limits."

New social media search engine

2009-03-02T19:16:00.000+01:00

The new social search engine Qitera, a European start-up, is now free to use for everyone. This engine allows you to search, save and share images and content from web pages.

You don't have to add tags to your searches. Qitera is equiped with semantic analysis, which makes a selection on the basis of your personal interests and preferences. The more you use Qitera, the better your search experience gets.

I am definitely gonna try it out one of these.

Ryanair: Reckless PR

2009-03-02T19:09:00.000+01:00

Ryanair calls bloggers idiotic and lunatic

Michael O’Leary has already been named among the worst corporate leaders of 2006 and if you want learn a quick lesson on ‘what not to do as a company head and how not to deal with PR issues’, then the latest controversy coming from Ryanair Airlines is a fine example to look at.

It all started when Jason Roe of Dublin, Ireland wrote a blog post saying that while trying to change the timings of his flight, a bug on Ryanair’s website seemed to allow him to book airline tickets for £0.00. What would a “sane” company do? Attend the issue and either thank the guy for bringing that up or ignore it completely. Yet, the company staff went on with a tirade of angry, violent comments on his blog calling the guy an idiot for pointing out the glitch.They even “laughed” at him for using Wordpress …

“We very well know about these anomalies (sic) and unless it is not critical we are not going to sacrifice time to this. If you would be a serious programmer you would know these things and would not post any of this on the web.”
And the saga goes on.

Instead of apologizing for their rude and uncivilized behavior, the company’s top heads decided to issue a statement that really pissed a few of us … “Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

If this was Ryanair trying to show up online blogging and hoping for mainstream media support, then the strategy backfired big time. Seems like the utterly poor handling of PR has hurt Ryanair dearly for now.

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter

2009-02-28T19:47:00.003+01:00

Link to an article which I found really compelling about Twitter, inside and outside.

How to Tweet

2009-02-28T18:24:00.002+01:00

How to make use of Twitter in a business environment:

1. Interact with customers (ask questions, opinions)
2. Do a Twitter search and see whether you are being talked about
3. Make announcements of new product releases (with links to full announcements)
4. Do polls, simple opinion surveys
5. Look for competition (by using Twitter Search)
6. Set up an informal help desk for your product (short simple questions)
7. Create a Twitter application to analyze trends in your industry
8. Track publications in your industry segment and what makes the news
9. Track buzz - what is trending and why
10. Share knowledge about your industry
11. Create champions for your products/services (who retweet your posts)

For businesses I think it a brand building tool, an informal way to reach out to customers and potential customers and gather market intelligence.

For those wanting to give it a try, take a look at this useful ppt on how to get started on Twitter.

How Twitter Changed My Life

View more presentations from Minxuan Lee. (tags: micro twitter)

Top Trends and Apps: How Do People Use Twitter?

2009-02-28T18:20:00.002+01:00

Top Trends and Apps: How Do People Use Twitter?

Posted using ShareThis

Social media trends for 2009

2009-02-27T09:49:00.009+01:00

B.V.L.G. (the blog by Bruno Peeters) reveals the trends for 2009 when it comes to the use of social media within large companies.

I picked up a part of his blog post here, since I think his insights worth while considerating. I took the liberty of adding my own insights and comments to it.

According to B.V.L.G. the future isn't all that shiny, since cost cutting will be high on the agenda in the first half of 2009, which allows for little innovation.
Creative new projects are more likely to evolve in the second part of the year.

Externe social networking sites
Companies have to choose whether they want to engage in extisting social networking sites like Linkedin of Facebook. Communication and advertising agencies are early adopters. Other companies still have to become aware of the numerous advantages that the maintainance of their social profiles can generate, e.g. a stronger company image, attracting new employees and forging a stronger band between the company and its employees.

Enterprise social networking
Current intranet systems in larger companies offer the possibility to look up data about the company and the persons employed. But the scope of this kind of internal networking tool can be so much larger. The tools to start up an internal social networking site exist, especially for big companies. Microsoft Sharepoint, NewsGator Social Sites, IBM Lotus Connections, Telligent Community Server and Bluekiwi are possible networking tools.

Wiki's
Wiki's are already being used in some companies, but their usage will expand. The most important impediment to start using wiki's isn't technical; it is a cultural matter: is your company ready, are your collaborators allowed to share information via a wiki, will your colleagues accept it if they are being corrected, will a wiki be accepted as a communication tool tout court? These questions apply actually for all social media applications in the business world: very often whether a company will apply a certain social media technology or not depends on the readiness and openness of the company culture towards this technology.

External blogging
Corporate blogs have been hyped, but it seems that they do not take off properly in Belgium. I believe that a company can still make the difference with a good blog, but the problem is that there's so much crap out there. Some companies only dump press releases on their blog, or their blog is a temporary effort, in the context of some campaign.

Internal blogging
The corporate intranet anno 2009 will evolve in a more blogging-style direction. But the same question remains: will employees feel the urge, and have the time and be motivated enough to post on blogs and whether companies will stimulate and tolerate this practice. To be continued...

Social media monitoring
Companies will become more and more aware of the fact that they're part of the social media buzz, not only on blogs but also on social media apps like Facebook, Linkedin, Netlog, Twitter, ... Some will follow up on this (either in-house or by specialized companies; others will be left behind.

Privacy issues
Bloggers have been at the heart of some issues last year. New conflicts will arise. Smart companies will be proactive and set up social media guidelines, including directives on the use of internet during working hours.

Eigen social networking sites
Some companies have already launched their own social networking sites, aimed at their clients. ABConcerts is a nice example. This example will be followed by others, especially in a B to C context. Having an own social network fuels better ties with your clients and gives your image a boost. This practice will probably remain an early adopters thing, this trend probably won't go mainstream.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader. Activate your Bits and Pieces subscription.

How to make your blog go viral

2009-02-26T18:41:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I first heard about Twitter. I've been following recent evolutions, without really participating actively. For those who would like to 'make their blog go viral' on Twitter, read Matthew Watson's post on how to integrate the Twitter tool into your blog.
I added a little virus which is eager to help you

Copyright Madartists (Dreamstime.com)

Corporate blogging among Nordic listed corporations

2009-02-25T20:43:00.001+01:00

Recently I found this overview by Burson-Marsteller on blogging corporations in Scandinavia. I thought it interesting so therefore I share it here with you. It struck me that the Swedish are more into blogging than the other Scandinavians. B-M most interestingly adds job titles of bloggers in their overview. This tackles the myth that only geeks and IT'ers blog. Most companies use RSS technology on their blogs and they enable comments, which I think is positive since it allows for an open debate. However, most of them do no allow trackbacks.

Corporate blogging among Nordic listed corporations

View more presentations from Hans Kullin. (tags: web2.0 denmark)

The blogosphere - a state of the art

2009-02-24T21:30:00.001+01:00

Technorati has released its annual 'State of the Blogosphere' report, which allows us to peek into how the blogosphere is evolving.

I listed some main facts here, with thanks to Matthew Watson.
133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
76,000 blogs have a Technorati rating of 50 or higher
41 per cent of bloggers use Twitter (which I think is a lot!)
Technology is the 2nd most popular topic for bloggers
Corporate blogs make up 12 per cent of all blogs
Professional blogs make up 46 per cent of all blogs
50 per cent of bloggers are aged between 18 and 34
44 per cent of bloggers are parents
42 per cent of bloggers spend 3-10 hours blogging per week
Only 15 per cent of bloggers spend less than an hour blogging per week
'Blog' is the 5th most popular tag
'Technology' is the 11th most popular tag
83 per cent of blogs are listed on Technorati (which makes it a fairly reliable source)
Just 4 per cent of bloggers pay to advertise their blog
46 per cent of blogs don't feature any advertising
Bloggers spend twice as much time online as U.S. adults 18-49,
82 per cent of bloggers post brand and product reviews (a fact which smart marketers can put to great use)
89 per cent of bloggers post about brands that they love or hate
37% of bloggers have been quoted in traditional media based on a blog post, which proves that companies wanting to interact in a proactive way with the media cannot exclude blogs in their corporate communication strategy!
Half of bloggers believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years (and I'm one of them ;-)
1 in 5 five bloggers don't think that newspapers will survive the next ten years

How long is the ideal blog post?

2009-02-23T20:09:00.001+01:00

Reading and writing for the internet isn't the same as writing offline. A crucial question in this context is 'how long should a blog post be?' We are no longer limited by a number of pages fill or margins to steer clear of. If you write too much, your readers will click away, but when you write to little, they don't stay long either.
Considering the fact that an adult's attention span is maximum 20 minutes, then how do we know what size is optimal for a blog post? Stuart Brown did some research on the subject. With the Technorati Top 100 as his sample, he counted the words in the 10 most recent blog posts.

As the table above shows, the average wordt count amounted from over 100 to under 500. His mini-research pointed out that half of all blogs have an average of 100-249 words per post. But as it usually goes with numbers and figures, they aren't the law. Do not impose yourself a strict word limit, but write in function of your subject and reader audience. If you have something compelling to say, please write on. But as Brown says, if you can express your point of view in fewer words, your readers migth as well be grateful for it.

Top 100 PR blogs

2009-02-22T15:57:00.000+01:00

For anyone interested: a Top 100 with the most interesting PR blogs.

Social media applications are efficient business tools

2009-02-18T22:09:00.000+01:00

Blackline (the social media version of the Leads United consultancy) published the results of an international survey in collaboration with BizInfo, which shows that 64% of professionals say that web 2.0 tools increase their productivity.

557 "Web 2.0-wise" business professionals collaborated on this. Their average profile is male (67,1%), between 24 and 46 years old (87,6%) and holding a masters degree (62,3%). 80,6% of the respondents are located in Europe and hold a management function (42,4%) in Human Resources (27,6%) or Marketing (15,3%). 65,3% business.

Social Networking appears to be the most used Web2.0 service (95.3%)(mostly LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo), followed by Blogs (51.2%), RSS (49.9%) and Wikis (47.2%)

"Most of the respondents agree that Web 2.0 tools help them to achieve professional objectives (65.3%), can increase workforce productivity (64.7%) and collaboration (78.1%).
They also consider that these tools can help to increase the return to investment of professional development/training (66.2%), capture and transfer knowledge (81.1%).
53,7% of the respondents to the survey disagree with the idea that Web2.0 tools distract professionals from their jobs and lower productivity, and 71% don't consider "Web2.0" to be a hype."

What interests me most, is HOW, but they don't go into detail.

De laatste klauw van de tijger

2009-02-12T22:52:00.003+01:00

Het Laatste Concert van El Tattoo Del Tigre. Ik was er niet bij, maar 't is wel 'n hele troost om dit via het net te bekijken. Dankje AB.

If adverts were this truthful...

2009-02-10T23:45:00.000+01:00

If advertizers would tell the truth about their products, this is what the world would look like...

A funny blogpost by Talya Goldberg.

U.S. Air Force Blog Assessment Chart

2009-01-28T21:12:00.007+01:00

Blogging is a buzz word. But there are still some doubts whether it is a good tool in a business environment and therefore few companies dare to take the step. I'm always looking for companies who want to share their blog experiences. During one of these searches, I bumped into the U.S. Air Force blogging guidelines. They drew up a nice en clear blog assessment chart: it's straightforward en complete. What I like most about it, is that - throughout the flowchart - they stimulate every tech savvy employee to participate in online conversations as an U.S. Air Force ambassador. Keep up the good work guys!

With thanks to Maarten Schenk.

"We live in a world today in which everyone is a spokesperson."

2009-01-18T11:54:00.004+01:00

This is Peter Hirsberg's way to resume the 2.0 world in which we now live. The consumer is king, and companies better get used to this. People are talking about your products and services, whether you like it or not. On this blog I would like to focus on PR 2.0, and especially how blogging can make up an important part of a company's communication strategy. Feel free to join in and add your thoughts to the discussion.

All that jazz

2008-10-24T20:55:00.001+02:00

Jazz is. Jazz leeft. Gebeurt. Beweegt. Jazz neemt. Jazz geeft. Jazz weet. Jazz spreekt. Jazz doet. Jazz laat. Jazz komt. Jazz gaat. Uniek. Muziek. Van vlees en bloed. Jazz waagt. Jazz wint. Breekt baan. Verlicht. Vernieuwd. Verjongt. Jazz vlamt. Jazz vonkt. Jazz brandt. Jazz bonkt. Jazz staat. Jazz valt. Is overal. Ontroert. Verwarmt. Grijpt bij de keel. Jazz knettert. Knalt. Ontketent. Heerst. Jazz heelt. Jazz zuivert. Lichaam. Geest. Jazz swingt. Jazz vecht. Is waar. Is echt. Geen loze kreet. Geen leeg gebaar. Jazz werkt. Versterkt. Ontwapent. Toont. Jazz laaft. Jazz loont. Is water. Brood. Jazz lacht. Jazz huilt. Jazz in. Jazz uit. Legt bloot. Daagt uit. Jazz kookt. Jazz bruist. Jazz troost. Jazz bijt. Jazz bloedt. Geeft schijt. Is zwart. Is wit. Is rood. Niet grijs. Jazz vloekt. Jazz moet. Verbroedert. Zoekt. Jazz vindt. Jazz wijst. Jazz schokt. Jazz eist. Jazz hoog. Jazz laag. Jazz voor. Jazz na. Jazz rookt. Jazz jaagt. Is eigen baas. Vereent. Verzoent. Begeestert. Woedt. Bevrijdt. Bewijst. Begrijpt. Vervoert. Jazz spreidt. Jazz sluit. Bezielt. Verrijkt. Geeft hoop. Verblijdt. Jazz schittert. Glanst. Jazz flitst. Jazz danst. Verhit. Zweept op. Bemint. Verleidt. Jazz roept. Jazz voelt. Jazz groeit. Jazz bloeit. Jazz blaakt. Jazz blijkt. Betovert. Geilt. Jazz ademt. Zweet. Jazz fluistert. Schreeuwt. Ontmaskert. Snijdt. Jazz glijdt. Jazz sluipt. Jazz slijpt. Jazz spuit. Jazz klinkt. Jazz dwingt. Jazz lonkt. Jazz blinkt. Jazz vraagt. Jazz raakt. Verlost. Verbaast. Viert feest. Verklaart. Is bitter. Zoet. Is hot. Is cool. Jazz ijlt. Vooruit. Voorbij. Ver weg. Dichtbij.
Paraat. Bereidt. Op weg. Altijd. Jazz was. Jazz is. Jazz blijft.

J.A. Deelder (uit: 'Jazz', De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1992)

Illumination

2008-10-01T21:17:00.002+02:00

If you won't run, you can't fall, but you may get bored... Of this I am convinced.

April at IBM

2008-10-01T20:58:00.004+02:00

Music contains everything. Envelops life, enrobes it as it were. And Jazz is Life. It touches its very core. I’ve always said so. Once again I proved my point: today I bumped into an article by Rebekah Tsadik about jazz as an instrument for creative teambuilding at executive level. Michael Gold, jazz bass player and owner of Jazz Impact (www.jazz-impact.com) spends part of his time helping people with ties “learning from the management and teamwork structures of jazz ensembles”. His workshops are based on APRIL, the paramount elements of interaction in a jazz combo: Autonomy, Passion, Risk, Innovation and Listening. As a tribute to the great Charly Parke a.k.a. de vogelaar and composer from 'April in Paris', this can count.

(Source: B to B, 2/11/2008, Vol. 93, Issue 2, p. 41)