We all know the famous quote “Content is King”, and it is. But it was coined at a time before social media or mobile. The rise of each of these technologies brought their own King, being Context (in a mobile environment) and Community (on social media).

This sounded like a good starting point to ask ourselves the question: “who actually IS the King?”

For the next Trends Session on 13th of June we lined up 3 speakers with case studies on the topics Content, Community and Context. Evert-Jan De Kort will show the advantage of content for his brand Choqoa, Kurt Pappaert from KBC will share the details on their community efforts and Frederic Herzeele from Belgacom will talk about the importance of context.

Register and join us!

Recette 4saisons is a food application that provides a lot of information about the vegetable/fruit of the month. Based on this vegetable or fruit of the month, the applications presents you healthy recipes, lets you create shopping lists and encourages you to buy local and seasonal products.

It also has a built in calendar to browse seasonal products month by month and to add these directly to your shopping list. A fine beautiful designed and user friendly little app for healthy inspiration on your daily cooking.

BetterStreet is a citizen application that helps you report problems and suggestions to your town in less than 30 seconds via smartphone.

Take a picture, enter a category, add a comment (optional) and tap ‘Send’. The photo is automatically geo-localized via the GPS of your smartphone and your municipality is notified. Once submitted, the application notifies you of status changes of your request/remark. Nice and easy app to report things to your mayor (not the Foursquare one ).

Instaplace is a cool application that adds special skins and customized text on your smartphone pictures.

You can share on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, by mail or SMS with various desciptions from the place where your are – on top of your favourite photo that you have just snapped with your iPhone.

Within seconds, this app turns ordinary pictures into colorful postcards, instantly shareable with your network . The skins available on the free version are limited. To get the full version, you’ll have to buy it (it will also remove the ads displayed on top of the app).

Finally, the Mobile Monday Brussels Application promotes the Mobile Mondays organisation and their events. Everything you need to know about the next Mobile Events like Mobile Convention Amsterdam, The Next APIs and Mobile or the next Appsmarathon.eu is listed. You can also subscribe to the newsletter, check pictures or consult slideshare presentations.

What is really interesting is the live U-stream channel feature available during Mobile Mondays events. No worries anymore if you can’t make it to an event, you only have to check the live stream!

To follow them on Twitter: @momobxl & #momobxl

Next time we’ll discuss applications that help you live more healthy. Any suggestion of applications we should take a look at?

First of all, you have to follow some guidelines to properly optimize your overall social media strategy for search. But how and why does every social signal improve your ranking? And what’s the future for different social signals regarding to SEO?
Philippe guided us through the specific elements of information for certain networks you should supply to your profile in order to optimize them.
And, last but not least, he gave us the most useful tip: as social SEO is not an exact science, what really matters is who’s between the keyboard and the chair… that’s you!

Speaking of getting out of my comfort zone…

My time was short, the audience was mixed, so I thought they could use a practical presentation. OK, it’s inspiring to see how technology could change the retail but already today there are a lot of challenges.”So let’s focus on tomorrow’s opportunities”, was my advice. So I identified 10 practical and feasible tactics in my presentation.

During the rest of the day it became clear that retail is struggling with digital. And I can surely understand why: compared with the daily footprint of their stores the traffic on the online channels is limited. “But the engagement is high”, was my reply.

And those who are brave and bold and launch a new soft drink (Mountain Dew) which you can purchase exclusively online still are tied to the ‘classical’ order fullfillment (but that’s no excuse to not make your site mobile friendly ).

In any case I’m happy to see new initiatives like Promolife, a 1-stop-shop your e-coupons, with mobile apps on their way.

And in the end it is coming down to the customer: focus on the benefits, give value not technology. Spot the opportunities, not the obstacles.

But, dear retail sector, if the study you conducted for the Shoppersday  shows that word-of-mouth triggers 39% of the Belgian consumers to try a new product, the future is already here, no?

The social presence of a brand is important but is only the first step to social media marketing. The main challenge for brands is to establish a strong relationship with fans and followers and keep their community alive. Below we summarize the nine key takeaways. The full article (in French) can be read here.

1. A brand needs to know and understand its fans for better conversation and interaction. The tone of voice on social media is more direct and personal than in traditional media and allows brands to develop a closer relationship with its customers.

2. To establish a good relationship with its customers, a brand has to know where, when and how people talk about it on social networks. Hence the importance to monitor online channels on the brand’s name, the brand’s products and brand’s related keywords.

3. For an efficient customer relationship it is important to align the customer service of a company to its social media management.

4. Whatever the messages a brand receives on its social channels, the answer has to be efficient and polite.

5. More than answering questions, a brand has to post continuos relevant and attractive content to build and maintain a strong relationship with its fans/followers.

6. Post quality content by asking two questions: Why would people be interested in this? Why would they share it with their friends?

7. Social media are different from traditional media: people who follow a brand don’t want to be harassed by advertisement and pushed content. They prefer something which reflects who they are and make them feel involved.

8. A day-to-day communication turns the dialogue with fans more dynamic and less intrusive.

9. The number of fans is not the best KPI to measure the impact of a Facebook fan page. It is essential for a brand to understand its community by keeping the conversation ongoing. Focus on measuring interactions and engagement to define impact.

Here is our Top 5:

1. Evernote Food: available on Appstore and Google Play
   Evernote Food presents you a splendid experience to discover and save delicious recipes and amazing restaurants. Anything you save in Evernote Food will show up in Evernote on any device you use.
   With Evernote Food, you always have your favorite recipes with you, you can share these with your friend (and the world), find a nice restaurant near you by checking the pictures and reviews made by others. If you love food and like sharing your experience, this app is made for you!
    
2. Open Food facts: available on AppStore and Google Play
   This application lets you discover everything you want to know about a certain food product: ingredients, additives, labeling and nutritional composition.  Search for a food product description or directly scan the barcode from their database of more than 4.000 references. A fast, handy and instructive application for food lovers!
3. Pizza.be: available on AppStore
   Thanks to the built in geolocation of the iPhone app, you quickly see which delivery restaurants are near you. In no time the app displays a list of delivery restaurants. Choose a restaurant based on reviews of millions of users and start with online ordering. Pay digital with PayPal, or traditional with cash.  Ideal for those who don’t want to cook!
    
4. Ma vie en couleurs: available on AppStore and Google Play
   This app is great  if you are looking for a nice recipe to cook with your kids, a recipe ready in 30 minutes, something to do with your favorite brand (like Amora) or even if you need ideas for a girl-only evening. You also have a few great tools like a calendar of fruits and vegetables, a converter, a thermostat, a timer and a shopping list. All very nicely designed with excellent user experience.
    
5. Freshbox: Available on AppStore
   Freshbox is an application which helps you to keep track of expiry dates of goods in your fridge. The application automatically reminds you when to use before you have to throw them away. The built in photo option allows you to directly put your fridge goods in the application without typing a word.
    
   

During our last Friday Session, Kim Recour joined us to talk about the big business behind food blogging. Being an influential Belgian food blogger herself (cookanista), she explained us her personal experience and how brands more and more use food blogs for marketing purposes. 

Thanks to the social amplification, strong blogs get noticed much easier and much faster than before, which helped reviving the blogosphere.

Bloggers attract readers with good content, personal opinion, criticism and full transparency. That is why brands consider bloggers more reliable than journalists. Brands become more interested in the engaged audiences of strong blogs which offer them numerous business opportunities.

Kim is passionate about food and understands how to make her blog attractive for food lovers but also for brands.

How brands get noticed and picked up by bloggers?

• * offer products/dinners in preview to allow bloggers to test it and talk about it with their community
• * invite bloggers to press conferences/events and let them share their experience in live through social networks
• * targeted advertising on the most influential blogs (cheap and yet quality and high reach)

Most important lesson: be passionate by what you write about and do not forget to promote your blog!

Feel free to go through the slideshare and see you next time for another great moment of digital knowledge sharing. Stay tuned!

• Find more about Kim here:
• * Facebook: Cookanista
• * Twitter: @Cookanista
• * Pinterest: Cookanista

The first challenge? Cracking the briefing. Then, feeding it with insights. Check out the complete presentation of FAS #52 and come to us if you have any questions or comments!

After six years leading various innovative projects at Telenet, Jerry joins Cleverwood as an Account Director to help growing the business.
With more than 12 years of experience in mobile, social and content marketing we are very happy to have him aboard. As a multi-channel communications expert with a digital background, Jerry knows what service adds value on which channel for what specific client. And that is exactly what we do at Cleverwood !

Read the press release in FR or in NL, or visit our press room.

After studying Public Relations more than 4 years ago, a first professsional experience abroad and long-term travelling around the world, I decided to go back to school to carry on with a Master in Digital Communication.

It’s there that I met Philippe Deltenre, a Digital Strategist who quickly became a real personal coach. Thanks to Philippe and all his precious advice and contacts, I got in touch with Cleverwood and soon became a « clever » member of the « clever » team.

More than a company, this team reminds me to a big family with a great team spirit in a very friendly work atmosphere.

I arrived as a trainee for an internship of 7 months and everybody treated me the same way as any other full time new employee. My very first working day was filled with warm welcome messages.

Jochen Cloetens, the Project Manager of the team, took me immediately under his wings. During my first week with him, I learned about Cleverwood, its clients, its objectives, the various roles within the team and the specific competences of the consultants. I familiarized with all the digital and collaborative tools used on a daily basis and I soon understood that Cleverwood is a real « zero email » company. A new experience for me, a bit hard to adopt, but after a month of working with these tools, I just find this way to communicate and share information within a team very enriching and much easier than getting lost in a mailbox.

I was very lucky to join the Cleverwood team at this time of year because the second week of my internship, we were all invited to attend a wonderful two-days team building in Knokke. This gave me the opportunity to quickly know the team and I realized that Cleverwood does not only talks about being a human and authentic company but really is a people centered company.

In one month time, I have learned many things about the digital world, how it evolves, its strengths, its weaknesses and how a digital company works. I have participated in the organization of different events (Learning Hub, Friday Session, Trends Session), taken part in interesting meetings, shared ideas and knowledge, …

I still have 6 months left to learn more and make my contribution to this «clever» company.

I have started with a « Thank you » to Philippe Deltenre… I am going to end with a « Thank you » to the whole Cleverwood team!