Breakthrough of location based networking

This week Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Places, their take on location based networking. From this week on available in the USA, other countries to follow soon.

I was probably one of the first people in Belgium who really believed in location based networking while many others laughed and said it was "just a game".
Today I see more and more businesspeople check-in to their workplaces, their favorite restaurants and bars and even promoting those by giving tips to other users. Today I also see more and more business owners announcing 'specials' or promo's for customers who check-in on Foursquare or Gowalla. Yes, also in Belgium and also in my neighborhood !

It's good news that Facebook Places is not going to play solo in a move to conquer the market. I was happy to read that they open up the application to pioneers like Foursquare and Gowalla who can forward their check-ins to Facebook Places too.

It seems more than one good idea is born while drinking a beer in your local pub, and that's more or less what location based networking is all about. Getting together with your friends and promoting the places you visit. Location based networking is probably the strongest sample of peer promotion we have ever seen.

Business owners or large companies (e.g. Starbucks) are jumping on the wagon and see their revenue climbing because more and more people are battling to become the mayor of the location and receive something extra with their coffee.

Not all business ideas have to be rocket science ... just a plain and simple checkin tool can be genius too !

KMO Marketingcongres 2010

(dutch posting)

Peter Desmyttere onder meer bekend van de Intac Internet Academy, organiseert op vrijdag 8 oktober 2010 in Edegem (Antwerpen) voor de derde keer het marketingcongres dat zich specifiek richt tot de Belgische kmo’s. De bedoeling is op één dag de marketing- en communicatiekennis van zelfstandigen en kmo’s een flinke stimulans te geven door praktische informatie te verschaffen die deze doelgroep aanspreekt.
De KMO-markt kent een eigen specificiteit en is zeer praktisch en no-nonsens georiënteerd. De meeste congressen, workshops en seminaries zijn voor deze doelgroep minder interessant omdat de presentaties niet aansluiten bij de leefwereld van de KMO's. Het KMO marketingcongres wil hieraan tegemoet komen met een programma dat onmiddellijk bruikbare kennis aanbiedt.
Het thema dit jaar is: Dichter bij de klant. Een actueel en nuttig onderwerp, want het is juist in deze concurrentiële tijden dat een goed contact met klanten een belangrijk onderscheidend voordeel kan geven.

Het programma is ook dit jaar zo opgesteld dat deelnemers buitengaan met concrete tips die ze meteen en zonder investeringen kunnen toepassen.

Het programma voor dit jaar:

08u30 - Onthaal met koffie
09u00 - Openingswoord
09u15 - 10 tips om een nieuw product in de markt te zetten - Tom De Ruyck
10u05 - Zo wordt winkelen kopen - Wim Stuyck
10u45 - Koffiepauze
11u20 - Herontdek de kracht van een persoonlijke brief - Geert Dehouck
12u10 - Hou bezoekers gevangen op uw website en maak ze klant - Marnik D’Hoore
12u50 - Lunch
14u00 - Start van het namiddaggedeelte
14u15 - Bespaar op marketingkosten: maak van uw werknemers uw ambassadeurs - Sandra Peeters
15u05 - Beter zakendoen met buitenlandse klanten - Luc De Haes
15u45 - Koffiepauze
16u20 - Ontevreden klanten op het internet: hoe ga je er mee om? - Sofie Verhalle
17u00 - Einde van het congres en networkreceptie

Meer info en inschrijven via http://www.kmomarketingcongres.be/

The News is happening right now !

I have to admit I'm an information-junkie.
I watch the news on TV, read newspapers and scan the Internet for all possible info which might be interesting for me to digest.

How relevant and up-to-date are these information sources ? In general the answer wouldn't be too positive.

Watching the news on TV gives you an overview of what happened during the day, supplemented with highlights and reruns of what happened the day before.

The morning newspaper will bring you an overview of what was on the news the evening before, supplemented with smaller regional newsfacts. It's only in large cities like London and New York that you also find Evening newspapers, summerizing the regional news of the day.

Of course during the day I'm also browsing the websites of several newspapers to catch the breaking news and have a taster of what will be in tomorrows newspaper. That's how fast traditional media can go.

Status updates on Social Networks and microblogging tools like Twitter are bringing the news to me "when it's taking place". Twitter absolutely changed the speed in which news come to our ears.

The best part of Twitter are the tools that were invented by the users, like the hashtags.

Adding a hashtag at the end of your Tweet (=message) adds a searchtag.

A keyword which people can use to find your Tweet. This tags your Tweet and adds it to a specific group of messages (e.g. #golf, #marketing), to an event (e.g. #smc09), to whatever label you want to give it.

Sometimes you would really like to attend an event, but work decides otherwise. During the event in most cases nothing can be found on the official website of the event. Photo's and video's will be added much later ... if you're lucky.

Tuning in on the Twitter hashtag of the event gives you a good taster of what's going on.

You can read the live conversations sent from the event and even have a look at the occasional Twitpics. (Photo's added to Twitter messages)

In the past year I have tuned into several events this way which brought a large chunk of the information to my desktop.

The world has changed a lot since our grandparents were in their early twenties. But in my opinion it's the speed in which everything is happening what really changed. We need these new and fast tools to keep up with the speed of our world ... that is of course, if you're an infojunkie like me !

Global Networking for World Leaders

Back in 2005, while I was researching for my first book ‘A Girlfriend in Every City’, I also read a Belgian reference book called “De Elite van België” written by Jan Puype, a journalist I recently met face to face in Antwerp.

This book was a summary of all clubs and networking organizations in Belgium at the time of writing. What fascinated me was the fact that it wasn’t limited to the typical Chamber of Commerce and Rotary kind of organizations, but Puype also disclosed a lot about more upscale organizations (e.g. De Warande, Cercle de Lorraine, … ) and even the more secret organizations like Masonic Lodges.

A few weeks ago I posted this movieclip about the Bilderberg group on my Facebook profile.



The Bilderberg group is probably the most top level networking group you can imagine, bringing together world leaders, statesmen, industry leaders and important international stakeholders.
The Bilderberg group was founded by the Dutch Prince Bernard in 1954, at Hotel Bilderberg in Oosterbeek (NL). This year the group gathered in a totally shielded and highly secured Hotel resort in Sitges (Spain). I’m not 100% sure if it’s true, but it’s said that Belgian Minister of State Etienne Davignon is now chairman of this group.

Each time this elite networking group gathers, there is a storm of protest from people who think this group is trying to create a new World Order, pulling the strings to every single government worldwide.

Another group which is accused of the same activities is Skull and Bones, founded at Yale University (Connecticut USA) in 1832. Only 15 new members are carefully selected each year during what they call ‘Tap Day’.
Although this group is covered in even more secrecy than the Bilderberg group, it’s well known that lots of Presidents and statesmen are members (e.g. George Bush, John Kerry, …)

For those people who think networking is not important or just a total waste of time, it might be stimulating to think about how our world is being managed through top level networks such as the two which are mentioned in this blog … probably there are many more !

The Facebook 5000 friends limit

This weekend I ran into the Facebook 5000 Friends limit. In the last couple of weeks I had been receiving warnings because my friends-count together with the Pages I liked was already over 5000 and Facebook wants you to keep below that number.

The reason for this limitation according to Facebook is that nobody has 5000 real friends in life. If you have more connections you must be a celebrity and in that case you need a fanpage where your network can just click on a Like button to enter your network.

Nowadays newbies can opt to not have a personal profile and immediately choose for a Facebook Page (Some Belgian politicians did this recently). When I became a member of Facebook a normal user-profile was the only option available.

So the best option for me today was to start a Facebook Page, next to my profile ... and open the door for the next part of my large network.

Of course I can't do this without making a few humble suggestions to Facebook

- Get rid of this 5000 friends limit. Almost all online networks allow you to have as many connections as you want, they make sure that no tools are available that would allow to spam the whole list. I have over 20000 connections in my network, gathered over multiple online and offline networking groups. I'm only allowed to to let 25% of them connect to my Facebook profile which is weird !

- Why not offer an easy and userfriendly tool to transform your Facebook Profile into a Facebook Page ? Now I have to maintain and update two different pages on Facebook which doubles my time efforts

Anyway... as from now it's no longer possible to connect to my Facebook Profile, but feel free to Like my Facebook Page :-)

Social Media Day 2010 - Mashable

The Nr.1 Blog on Social Media, Mashable, is organising Social Media Day 2010

Wednesday 30 June over 500 Social Media Meetups will take place all over the world.

I will be attending the meeting in Antwerp, which seems to be the second most popular after New York !!!

This is probably one of the most interesting networking events this year !

Are your children safe on Social Media ?

Last week, after a workshop in Brussels, someone from the organisation of the event approached me with the question "Are my children safe on Social Media ?"

I think it's a sign of the times that we worry a bit too much. When I was a little boy, I was always out and about, playing with friends. Later, as a teenager, I only came home to eat and sleep.

A lot could have happened out there, but like most others I survived.

Yes, I'm pretty sure child abusers are using all possible tools to communicate with children.
In the old days they would sit on park benches and try to attract children with candy. Today they might start a conversation on one of the popular social networks among children and teenagers.

The good news is you have control. In the old days there was little or no control about who your children would meet on the streets. On a network like Facebook you have the ability to remove people from your network, block people and even report people which will bring them in trouble !

I would advice that until a certain age children would use the family computer which is placed in the living room where there is a lot of 'social control'.

Last but not least, you can also install Parental Control software which makes it easier to control the internet-usage of your children.

Conclusion : There will always be abuse because Internet is just a part of society. The good news is you have more means of control compared to the old days when children were out on the streets whole day long.

Introduce yourself to your grandmother

An essential part of networking is introducing yourself to others.
This is often described as the very first part of the networking process, "Know Me" (Read more about this in Penny Power's book "Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me")

Introducing yourself might sound simple and easy but often isn't that simple at all.
As professionals in our trade we are used to talk to peers, customers and suppliers in our own industry. Typical tech-talk or jargon for your industry automatically slips into most conversations.

It's very important that you train yourself to be able to introduce yourself without using tech-talk or jargon at all. To make this even more clear :

Try to imagine that you would introduce yourself to your grandmother and she really needs to understand every single word you say.

I have read some books stating you need to introduce yourself in under 30 seconds, but I think that's cutting it a bit short. A professional 2 minute introduction is still very polite and can contain all the necessary information. Two minutes is the maximum time it takes an elevator to travel from the ground floor up to the penthouse of the investor ... dixit the "Elevator Pitch".

These are the essential parts of your introduction :
- Who are you ?
- What's your professional activity ?
- What exactly is the problem that you can solve ?
- What is the value that you can bring to your clients ?

If you are introducing yourself at a networking event, you might want to add a few extras to include the 'now' :
- What are you working on right now ?
- What are you looking for right now ?
- How can people help you right now ?

Last but not least :
Always network as a person. If you network as a company you will loose your entire network whenever you leave that company !

Integrate and automate your status updates

Since Social Media is time consuming, we need to search for ways to integrate and automate most of the daily processes we use for communicating with our network.

Recently I was interviewed by a journalist for Bizz Magazine, the leading business magazine in Belgium for startups and small businesses. The result of this interview you can find in this article (in dutch) : http://www.friends-with-benefits.eu/images/press/BIZZ105.pdf

I want to share a few essentials in this blogpost :

For each connection you make between networks, try to use the most simple way to connect. For example, LinkedIn and Twitter have integrated direct routes to each other's networks.
In Twitter you can use the hashtag #in to include a status-update on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn you only have to cross the box next to the blue Twitter 'T' to include a status-update on Twitter.

The most popular broadcast tools for status updates are Ping.fm, TweetDeck and HelloTXT

As a 'heavy' user of Ping.fm I still think the best feature is the ability to update all my networks with a simple email message ... a lot cheaper than updating through a webinterface when I'm abroad !

All three mentioned applications offer more or less the same features, only Tweetdeck delivers an application that can be installed on your pc and also gives you a dashboard view on your most popular networks.

When constructing the routes for your status messages to be send from one network to the next, always watch out not to create loops or multiple posting errors !
Each message should only appear ONCE on each network or otherwise this will annoy your visiters and followers !

Integrating and automating your status messages is also a part of the workshop 'Social Media for Business'.

The mobile revolution

Some techies will claim the real mobile revolution already happened years ago, but I can't help noticing how new mobile applications are popping up every day now.
Since my primary interest is Social Media, I couldn't miss the Social Media applications recently launched by the most popular online social networks.

The latest Blackberries are sold with the Facebook application already installed. If you missed it, it can be found here.

LinkedIn recently launched a full set of applications for Blackberry, iPhone and Palm operated cellphones. Other phones can still use the mobile site http://m.linkedin.com

The real mobile networks like Foursquare of course run 100% on their applications. Foursquare has developed apps for Blackberry, iPhone and Android. (They also have a mobile website in case you don't have a smartphone)

Xing even recognizes mobile devices and sends you directly to the mobile portal.

Ecademy doesn't have a mobile application ready yet, but they are working on an iPhone app to be launched soon.

Feel free to add links to other Social Network applications in the comments below !