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Monday 19 July 2010

This blog has moved!

New blog: Social media tactics you can Trust

Great tips, tricks, insights and practical advice on how to develop the skills and knowledge you need to be a successful marketer on the social web.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

All the best,

Michiel Gaasterland












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Tuesday 25 May 2010

New Twitter followers: do you follow them back?

9 Cross-check questions to evaluate new followers

So, you are now on Twitter and you are welcoming your first followers. You must be thrilled with all the self promoting DM’s (Direct Messages) you receive every day. Sure, there are a lot of gold diggers on Twitter.

What you are after is building a qualitative network of followers. People that actually value what you have to contribute to the online conversation, and vice versa.




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Thursday 20 May 2010

Looking like a schmuck on Twitter

The courtesy of your Twitter profile

Currently more than 300.000 people a day, register an account on Twitter. Registering an account is easy. Basically Twitter only needs your full name, user name, and email address.

So before you know it “John Doe (john_doe_67) is now following your tweets on Twitter” rolls into people’s mailbox. I often get these kind of followers. Sigh.




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Tuesday 18 May 2010

Exclude internal web traffic from Google Analytics

Start measuring your actual results

Measuring traffic and behavior on your website or blog is one of the cornerstones of online marketing. Without a measurement tool like for instance Google Analytics, you’re a sailor without a compass.



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Thursday 29 April 2010

‘The more the merrier’: old mass marketing habits die hard

Being followed by the right people

Last Monday I was writing about ‘Twitter eyeballs on valuable content’. The essence of the story was that if your content is valuable and if you make sure the right people can find it, you have a much better chance of converting them into readers, followers or buyers.

Read full article here: "The more the merrier’: old mass marketing habits die hard".




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Monday 26 April 2010

Twitter eyeballs on valuable content

My own little bi-monthly experiment


Last year July my business partner Steve published a document on Scribd called “Business leaders and social media: a 4 step strategy framework”. It’s a useful little document for business leaders who need to direct their teams in setting social media strategy.

Read full article here: "Twitter eyeballs on valuable content".



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Wednesday 21 April 2010

Are you helping your customers create more customers?

A personal little story about customer service...

I’m constantly amazed how many companies are still living in the old world.

A few days ago my HTC S740 phone broke down. Pretty good news, because I wasn’t happy with it at all. The thing is running on Windows Mobile 6 point something, and well… it just ain’t working.

Since I’ve been a client at Vodafone for many years, I called them up to renew my contract and get a new phone. I had my eye on the Google Nexus One with Android operating system. Unfortunately Vodafone couldn’t deliver that phone.

Read full article here: "Are you helping your customers create more customers?".


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Sunday 18 April 2010

More than 50 bookmarks of Social Media Case Studies

A selection of case studies that all mention clear results

Everyone likes a good social media case study: marketers or communications people trying to get internal buy-in or business leaders looking for ideas, entry points or examples of where the industry is. But they can be hard to come by.

Read full article here: "More than 50 bookmarks of Social Media Case Studies".



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Saturday 23 January 2010

B2B services & communication on the social web

Free presentation and article for PR & Marketing folks


View more presentations from Steve Seager.

Last week, we do communications’ PR & Strategy director Steve Seager gave a presentation the Dutch Architecture PR Group in Rotterdam.

Read full article here: "B2B services & communication on the social web"


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Wednesday 13 January 2010

Targeting one instead of many

Power to the Retweet

Last night my business partner Steve Seager and I finally cleared some time to study the analytics on our blogs. We usually do this every day, but the last few weeks have simply been mad busy. When we took a closer look at Steve’s stats for December we saw a huge spike in traffic on December 7. A bit like a whale in a fish pond.

Where in the name of Zeus did those people come from? Did we post a great presentation? Send out a press release? Publish a ground breaking blog post? Got a mention in the New York Times? After some research we found the answer.

Read full article here: "Power to the Retweet. Targeting one instead of many".



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Wednesday 6 January 2010

Building a website? Start with your content!

The perks of creating a website content plan

If you have ever been involved in the process of developing a website, you are probably familiar with terms like navigation, functionality, interaction design, css design, use cases, flow charts and so on.

No matter how well designed & executed your website or application, it’s the content in them that determines your success. It’s your content that drives people to click, download, subscribe, & buy your ideas, products or services.

So why is it that in 9 out of 10 cases, content is the last thing that is attended to when creating a website?

Read full article here: "Building a website? Start with your content!".



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Saturday 2 January 2010

My last blog post of last year (is this one)

Taking the best of 2009 into 2010


Typical. I intended to publish this post on December 31st 2009 but didn’t manage to get it out in time!

Publishing meaningful, valuable content is one thing. To keep on publishing is another.

Yes, blogging takes time and so does building a new business from scratch. Sometimes the two don’t blend very well. Also, I was busy building a snowman with my two year old sun Rijk, aka The King of Construction.

Read full article here: "My last blog post of last year (is this one)"



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