Twitter in Belgium surpassed 1 Million users. That’s what news media reported earlier this month. Numbers show how twitter use doubled compared to last year, from 520 thousand to 1,1 million users. That makes Belgium the 35th country worldwide.

With so many new arrivals on Twitter, it’s probably a good idea to learn some of the basic rules of Twitter. What should you do? Or better yet: what are some things you definitely should not do on Twitter?

1. Make sure your Twitter name is “unique”, meaning: long, complicated and hard to remember. Add as much keywords as possible. For example @cleverwoodnewwaysoftweeting
2. Eggs are cool. You don’t need to set a custom avatar.
3. There is no need to fill out your bio either. Who needs to know who you are anyway? It’s not like people are going to visit your profile.
4. Use a #hashtag in #everything you #write on #Twitter. All the #hipsters are doing it!
5. Use Twitter only to push links to your website. Repeat the same tweet every day until people start replying.
6. Whatever you do, don’t interact! Never answer any questions from your followers. You’re not that social.
7. Never retweet. Just copy that interesting message you saw and remove the name of whoever mentioned it earlier.
8. When you do a #ff, be sure to include @yourself in that list. Instant karma!
9. Do you are operate a corporate account? Then be sure to only follow other accounts of your company!
10. Display links to all your social media accounts from the company website. A widget is even better. It doesn’t matter if your last update was 6 months ago.

Feel free to pat yourself on the back if you don’t recognise any of the above. If however you do see yourself making some of these mistakes, perhaps it’s good to go through the tweetiquette again.

Image: LEGO Twitter Fail Whale by Bjarne Panduro Tveskov (Flickr)

Mijn Club. - Slecht begonnen - Onze Club. Club Brugge. Ken je ze? Blauw-zwart, opgericht in 1891 onder de naam Brugsche Football Club en Club van harde werkers en noeste arbeid. Op de grasmat en in de tribune, allemaal volksmensen. Gewonnen prijzen doorheen de jaren? Who cares. Ik niet. Al had mijn Club – sorry onze Club – het palmares van een gemiddelde 3de klasse club, dan nog was ik supporter geweest. Maar waarom ben ik dan supporter? Omwille van de cultuur en identiteit.

Cultuur en identiteit bepaalt veel, zo niet alles, in wat ik onderneem. Ik werk voor Cleverwood. Bij Cleverwood kiezen ze voor de Dynamic Insourcing aanpak. Kort en simpel gezegd, samen de juiste balans vinden tussen je privé / werksituatie. Deze aanpak, samen met de visie dat een bedrijf beter wordt van het doorgeven en delen van kennis maakt dat ik hier mijn plaats heb gevonden. Nooit zou ik kunnen werken voor een bedrijf waar individualistisch en asociaal gedrag bij de bedrijfscultuur hoort. Maar voor Cleverwood geef ik me 100%. Ik zal ook zonder nadenken reageren wanneer ik iemand negatief hoor praten over Cleverwood (on- en offline).

En ga ik reageren omdat ik toevallig een Twitter account heb? Hell no! Of ga ik kennis met mijn collega’s delen omdat wij over een intern knowledge sharing platform beschikken? Hell no!

Het gaat niet over de technologie of over sociale media. Nee, ik doe dit omdat ik mij identificeer met de cultuur en identiteit van Cleverwood. Met plezier kom ik op voor mijn werkgever en deel ik kennis met mijn collega’s. Mijn gedrag wordt bepaald door de cultuur en ik maak dankbaar gebruik van technologie en sociale media om mij te uiten. Maar het zijn zeker niet deze technologische mogelijkheden of sociale media kanalen die mij aanzetten tot mijn gedrag.

Maar genoeg over mij. Wat heeft dit te maken met Club? Wel Club heeft als eerste club in België een Conversation Manager aangeworven. Wat goed nieuws is uiteraard.

Maar wat maakt een club echt sociaal en conversational? Wat creëert een community waar ambassadors zullen opstaan wanneer je ze nodig hebt? Simpel. Je vasthouden aan je cultuur en identiteit. Net omdat dat de reden is waarom je supporters voor jou gekozen hebben en waarom ze je nooit meer de rug zullen keren. Want eenmaal supporter, altijd supporter. En slaag je erin om je cultuur en identiteit in stand te houden en af te stemmen met de waarde van je supporters, dan zal je succes boeken. Aan wat er zich afspeelt op het veld kan je niets veranderen maar commercieel maakt dit je sterker. Diegene die zich kunnen identificeren met je club zullen vrienden, broers en zonen overtuigen om mee te komen. Ze zullen trainingen, shirts, tassen en deurmatten kopen om een uiting te geven aan hun gevoel. En bovenal zullen ze over je praten, on- en offline. Positief en negatief. En het is leuk om je supporters 4 kanalen te bieden waar ze hun mening kunnen uiten en waar je als Club aanwezig bent. Maar de echt waarde en de echte taak van de Conversation Manager is om constant af te toetsen of de beslissingen van het management stroken met de waarden van de supporters. In dialoog gaan met ons, de supporters. Vragen wat we van een beslissing denken en toelichting geven bij deze beslissing. Daarom ben ik ook blij dat in een tijd van verandering en – daarvan ben ik zeker – vooruitgang, die onze Club momenteel doormaakt onze Conversation Manager van start is gegaan.

Ik ga 11 jaar kijken naar Club en heb 7 trainers en 3 voorzitters overleefd. Er zijn rondom mij mensen in het stadion die al 45 jaar elke 2 weken fier hun plaats in de tribune innemen. Ze hebben 25 trainers zien komen en gaan en hebben 5 voorzitters gekend. Laat staan de spelers die ze hebben zie rondlopen op het Heilige gras. Mijn punt? Blijf praten met ons want morgen ben je misschien weg. Maar overmorgen zullen wij er wel nog staan.

Time for confessions, I love Iron Maiden! Not only for their great output of timeless heavy metal classics, but surely for their unique brand management over time as well. Like many major bands, it might not surprise you Iron Maiden is more than just the artists. It is a serious business with well thought out marketing budgets.

However, while many major bands still use traditional promotion pushed through various new media channels, Iron Maiden seems to understand the power of conversations. Next to their advanced experience marketing programs (join singer Bruce Dickinson on board of his Boeing 747), presences on Google+, Facebook and Twitter, they dare to reach out to the fans in a unique way. Let’s explore what happened earlier this week.

Building Momentum

Building momentum is a proven marketing technique and easy to execute on a maintained Twitter and/or Facebook account. With little effort, static announcements can be turned into vivid conversations. A technique that is clearly well understood by Iron Maiden’s marketing machine.

The story started with the following official tweet on New Year’s Day.

Few minutes later, a small banner on the official Iron Maiden website appeared :

Simultaneously, another teaser was spread through the official Iron Maiden Twitter account:

Real Conversations

These official messages increased the attention of the Iron Maiden fans and various rumors rapidly started spreading around the internet. Many other bands would then continue either teasing (classic promotion) or do nothing (lack of a plan). Not so with Iron Maiden.

The official @IronMaiden Twitter account — with nearly 125.000 followers — was used to counter most false rumors, to keep the conversations positive and to reassure their fans it would be ‘good’ news. Iron Maiden had a voice and talked to the fans. Real conversations started and made the community buzzing. The teasing was now done by the fans, not by the brand; the art of great momentum building.

Don’t Disappoint

Although the outcome may not have pleased all Iron Maiden fans (an announcement about a small studio sideproject started up by Iron Maiden guitar player Adrian Smith), it certainly increased conversations about the band, kept the brand alive and helped promoting the sideproject at little cost.

But beware: bad momentum building can result in negative conversations. If your community or brand positioning is weak, avoid the mountain to give birth to a mouse. Make sure you have something to announce of great importance to your fans before you start developing such promotional tactics. Avoid teasing non-events or non-news.

5 Points to Keep In Mind

Building momentum through conversations is great to trigger your community and engage your fans. Five points we can learn from the Iron Maiden case:

1. Building momentum works only as an integrated part of a long term strategic marketing plan. (Iron Maiden started Twittering officially early 2009 and maintains regular contact with their online fans.)
2. Don’t tease your fans with non-news. Avoid the mountain to give birth to a mouse.
3. Have a communication/promotion plan ready. Which channels to use? When to announce? Teasing period?
4. Have a content plan ready. What to tease? What kind of tips to give away?
5. Be present and talk with your fans. Expect your community to ask questions, answer them. Don’t sit and wait.

Cleverwood white paper by Pieter Maenhout.

As announced in my previous blogpost, I’ve worked for several months on an overview on how Football clubs in Belgium use social media. Today it seems like most companies and brands are conquering their fear of social media, one step at a time. They realize that online presence and reputation matters. A multi-million business like the professional football world can not leave behind.

The main goal of this whitepaper is to understand how professional football clubs in Belgium use social media. Not by looking at numbers of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, but by exploring the field, by visiting clubs and interviewing communication and marketing managers. 13 out of 16 first division clubs agreed to talk to me. The data you find in this white paper is varied and covers different aspects of social media.

On the 5th of December, during a Cleverwood Trends Session to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Cleverwood, I’ve presented some of my findings. My main objective of the day was to make people aware of what real fan engagement and passion is all about. The presentation create context, the white paper delivers the data.

Download the whitepaper

There are 3 ways for you to receive a PDF copy of this whitepaper.

Tell your Twitter friends about whitepaper and receive a DM with the free download link.

1. Pay with a tweet

Tell your Twitter friends about whitepaper and receive a DM with the free download link.

2. Like us on Facebook

The Facebook fans of Cleverwood can gain exclusive access to the whitepaper.

3. Sign up for our mailing

If you don’t use Twitter of Facebook and still want to receive a copy of our whitepaper, please enter your details and e-mail address here and you will automatically receive a download link per e-mail.

Enjoy reading, we’ll hope it inspires you and let’s keep the conversation ongoing on Twitter via #SocialFoot. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any request.

With Saint Nicolas behind us, the final stretch to Christmas and the New Year is in sight. It’s the time of year where we review all that’s happened in the past year. For this reason, Twitter is publishing an overview of their most populair stories, topics and hashtags.

Tweets per second

So what were the top tweets of 2011, expressed in tweets per second.

1. 8.868: MTV Video Music Awards (Aug 28)
2. 7.671: Troy Davis executed (Sep 20)
3. 7.196: End of FIFA Women’s World Cup (Jul 17)
4. 7.166: Brazil eliminated from the Copa America (Jul 17)
5. 7.064: Steve Jobs resigns (Aug 25)
6. 6.939: New  Years (Jan 1)
7. 6.436: BET Awards (Jun 27)
8. 6.303: UEFA Champions League (May 28)
9. 6.049: Steve Jobs passes away (Oct 6)
10. 5.531: NBA Finals (Jun 13)
11. 5.530: Japanese earthquake and tsunami (Mar 11)
12. 5.449: East Coast earthquake (Aug 23)
13. 5.106: Raid on Osama bin Laden (May 2)
14. 4.995: Home Run Derby (Jul 11)
15. 4.064: Superbowl (Feb 6)
16. 3.966: UK Royal Wedding (Apr 29)

Predictable vs Surprise

A closer look at these topics shows us which event receive the most attention.

• Sports is definitely number 1 with footbal, basketball, baseball and American football as most commented topics.
• Planned social events such as the royal wedding in the UK, and award shows by MTV and BET receive a lot of attention.
• Global disasters like earthquakes and the tsunami in Japan generated a lot of instant chatter.
• Political events such as the executions of Osama bin Laden (global) and Troy Davis (local).
• Steve Jobs, first his resignation and then later his passing.

Some of these high-volume topics are relatively predictible (sports finals, social events) while a lot of others come out of nowhere. For 2012 it’s a pretty safe bet the US elections will receive a fair share of predictable attention. When it comes to the unpredictable events, let’s just hope there won’t be too much disasters in 2012.

Brand pages for Google+ have finally arrived. In this article we will show you how to create a page for your brand, and share our first impressions after a week of use. Keep in mind that the platform is still young and under development.

When Google launched their social network in June 2011, an immediate battle for precious invites ensued. Companies and brands were left a bit out in the cold. Brand pages was a much-requested feature and Google commented that their were working on it.

So now the moment has finally arrived where we can all setup a page for our own brand.

Beware: shared account?

A quick word of advice before you begin. Keep in mind that it is not yet possible to have multiple people administrate a single brand page. If it is just you managing the brand, you’ll be fine if you use your personal account for the setup. However, if you plan to have multiple people manage your account, you will have to agree on a single account and login — for now.

Setup procedure

1. First things first: click the big, blue Create button on to Google.com/+/business.

2. You will be presented with a category selection screen where you can indicate the type of brand or business you are running. At the moment you can choose from either: Local business or place; Product or brand; Company, institution or organization; Arts, entertainment or sports; and “Other”.

Creating a Google+ brand page starts with picking a category.

3. After selecting your category, you can add your info. Within this selected category, you can further specify a sub-category. Lastly, if you are running a business aimed at adults, you can indicate the type of content you will be sharing on your page.

Add your brand info: name, website, content, etc.

4. The next step lets you add even more information: you can add a logo and tagline describing your missions statement. Adding a good logo and tagline is crucial, as they will be displayed in search results for your brand name.

Add a logo and tagline for your page.

5. Be sure to proofread your tagline one more time. Once you’re done, you can finish the setup and after a brief wait your page will be created. Here is the Cleverwood page we setup for ourselves. Be sure to post a first message, so the fans you invite will have something to read, share and talk about.

The final result: our Cleverwood page on Google+.

Our first impressions

For now the abilities seems to be pretty basic still. Google seems to be treading very carefully in these (for them) uncharted territories. It would have been easy to just copy everything Facebook does, but Larry Page & Co seem to be following a different course.

The search giant is said to be working on additional features such as deeper analytics, integration with AdWords and other Google products. The +1 button on ads has already appeared. We’ll have to wait and see what else they come up with.

Meanwhile, a lot of Belgian companies are already taking their first steps in Google+ with the creating of their company page. For those who would like to follow the example of early adopters, be sure to check this list of Belgian companies with a Google+ page.

That was the theme being discussed by the seventy participants of Rencontres de la communication publique on Friday the 28th October 2011.

Amongst the participants was Cleverwood’s Olivier Beaujean, who talked about e-reputation maturity. You can review his presentation embedded here or on our Cleverwood SlideShare account.

Other speakers included: Emmanuel Briard, Johann Bollinger and Luc Malcorps. This video of the event gives you a good idea of what the day was about.

Last week the following tweet appeared in my feed: “Club Brugge is looking for a conversation manager.” All kinds of emotions struck me.

• As a long time fan: joy and pride.
• As a new media consultant: excitement.
• As a combination of both: even more excitement.

Could this be the first step that makes the rather conservative football world realize what great things they can achieve by using new media? Could this be the right moment?

Football fever

Soon reality pulled me back. It was the moment I realized the enormous challenge a future conversation manager of Club Brugge would be facing.

On one hand it’s the greatest job on earth. On the other hand it’s the most difficult one…

Now I hear you all thinking: “Why? There are already some great conversation managers. And there are already examples of conversation managers who succeed in their objectives. Can’t be too difficult, can it?!”

Well, you’re wrong. A very wise man told me once: “For those involved, no explanation is necessary. For those who aren’t involved, no explanation is possible.”

The ones who are involved with conversation management on a professional basis and got infected by the football fever, will understand what I’m saying. The rest, hmmmm, probably not…

Nevertheless I will try to explain why!

Five factors to consider

1. Football is not just a game

It’s a cliché but it is what it is. It’s more than 22 players who run after a ball. To fans, it often is a way of life. It’s a generational and cultural thing. Fans travel thousands of kilometres for a game that ends on 0-0. And they often give their skin to the club, by getting a tattoo. Talking about engagement…

A conversation manager needs to take this into consideration when communicating with fans. Reactions will be more direct and can be very emotional, with the heart on the tongue. It’s the task of the conversation manager to find a right tone of voice, in the way he communicates, that fits all parties.

2. There are 30.000 trainers in the stands

And 100.000 on the web. Every fan has his opinion and they will all vent their frustrations. Not only on team performance but also on everything that seems like a detail to you. For example: the new club shirts, the song you play when the home team scored, the colour of the football shoes of one of the players, etc.

What do you do with such conversations? How do you comment on transfer rumours? Clear conversation guidelines need to be developed.

3. The right content

In most communities it’s mostly accepted that content flows in through the week. Football fans however are eager for content throughout the whole week and weekend. You have to animate those football club fans 7/7. And to do this you need to be organised: decide which content is relevant, and which is not.

4. The online platform

Football has existed for ages and has been food for discussion since the beginning:

• Yesterday: on match days in the stands and during the week in the pub.
• Today: on match days in the stands, on Twitter, on Facebook, and during the week in the pub, on Twitter on Facebook, etc.

It will be difficult to decide where you want to be present. In most cases an official Facebook page of a brand is very welcome for fans to get the right information and discuss the products. For football fans it’s totally different. They can get their news almost everywhere and participate in discussions on hundreds of interesting web and/or fan pages. If they don’t like the platform you provide, the discussion will take place somewhere else and you will lose your audience.

5. Players are stars

Regular companies involved in online conversations often do their best to make their employees shine. They want them to be heroes. Football players are already heroes to certain fans. Every Tweet, every Facebook post will be picked up by their fans and will represent in a certain way the club. As all players have their own little ego it will be hard to control the messages they’re sending out.

Conclusion

Of course those 5 factors aren’t the only ones to take into consideration. There are many other difficulties that a conversation manager from a professional club will face. But I hope this is the start of an interesting discussion. So please do not hesitate to give me your cpinion.

Please note: After months of interviewing both players and communication managers from 13 professional football clubs I already have a clear view on the way professional football clubs are using, and will use, social media. On the 5th of December I will present the results of my survey in a trend session organized by Cleverwood.

You can follow Pieter’s tweets at @PieterM23

People Are Talking About This

Arrivera cette semaine pour tous les Admin des Pages, cette nouvelle métrique mesure les “stories” ou le contenu que l’utilisateur partage sur Facebook qui peut être mis en vedette dans le News Feed des utilisateurs.
Pour faire plus clair, cela compte le nombre de personnes qui:

1. like votre page (qui en sont devenues fan);
2. postent un message sur votre wall;
3. like, commentent ou partage du contenu (posts, videos, photos, albums,etc.) sur votre mur/page;
4. répondent à une question que vous avez posée,
5. répondent à une event créee;
6. like ou partagent un “check-in deal”; ou qui se checkent à votre lieu via Places.

De plus, cette nouvelle mesure d’engagement de vos fans avec votre page sera disponible via Facebook Insights ET visible par tous. Elle sera située en dessous du nombre de fans de la page.

Number of Friends of Fans

Cette métrique donne aux Admins des Pages une overview du nombre total d’amis que tous les fans ont collectivement. Permet donc de pouvoir voir le “reach” potentiel de la Page.

Weekly Total Reach

Facebook Insights permettra également d’avoir un rapport sur le reach total par semaine ce qui correspond au nombre total de personnes ayant posté sur votre page, le nombre de nouvelles organisations (Page) ayant référencé la vôtre ainsi que la viralité générée par vos posts.

Voila donc 3 nouvelles métriques qui donnent une overview sur les nouvelles possibilités de mesurer l’importance de la marque sur Facebook.

Qu’en pensez-vous? Est-ce déjà apparu chez vous? Quelle importance allez-vous leur donner dans votre stratégie sur Facebook?

Today’s lunch time was dedicated to one of our favorite activity : sharing our latest experience on Mobile and Tablets. As we didn’t find there was so many new and interesting applications to share, nothing really making the difference, we decided to compare our top mobile apps and rank them.

Here is our top 10 essential applications for iPhone and Android

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Foursquare
4. Satchel, the Backpack Client
5. Instagram
6. Evernote
7. Navfree GPS
8. IMDB
9. Buienradar.nl
10. Itypetogo

If you did discover some really interesting and ground breaking application lately, let us know so that we can test them during the next session :-)

Happy weekend!

PS : Many thanks to @momobxl for the suggestion on Victoria’s Secret ipad application!