Unlike the name suggests, there were no drinks or tents, because according to Wikipedia a BarCamp is “an international network of user-generated conferences . They are open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.”

There were a number of simultaneous time slots available to speak about various topics and the participants decided which ones were making it to the schedule and which they were going to attend.  I took a picture of the grid…5 pitches at the same time and 7 throughout the day.

Alex de Carvalho and some other people organized the event and there were some sponsors as well.  It was interesting that so many people were dedicated enough to be there on a Sunday morning at 9 am!

I did a pitch on Social+Mobile+Local and it was received well as you can see from the feedback cards.  I also did a pitch on LinkedIn, which was a follow-up of Jeff Zelaya’s pitch.  Here I explained how you can structure your profile, so you will actually be found on LinkedIn.

The conference is attended by professionals and senior executives from the social media and social networking market.

The convention will cover: enterprise social networking strategy, competitive intelligence, wireless/mobile technology, business strategy, wireless/mobile technology, legislation, funding, communication tools, and new technology.

I will do a pitch on a Corporate Social Strategy: ‘Listening’.  

Success is a relative thing, and it’s rather hard to achieve unless some important secrets are deciphered. One of those secrets of success for a company is listening to the customers, as nowadays the customers are not passive recipients anymore, the internet and the surpass of information available have turned them into people dictating their own rules.

The most important person who enters your office or workplace is no one other than your customer himself. He is not an interference with your work or business. He is the cause of it. You are not his boss at all. He is in fact your boss. Without him, you have no business. You are obliged to him for giving you business. He need not oblige you.

The art of listening is a good virtue, a splendid gift and a rewarding talent. A company doing business should have at least one official who is naturally gifted and scientifically trained well to attend its customer complaints. Let us call him “Chief Listening Officer.” His basic talent should be that of listening patiently. Whatever may be the complaint – insignificant or serious, whoever may be the complainant – low class or VIP the Chief Listening Officer should give sincere attention. Best listened means at least half solved – in many cases much more than that also.

The Online Marketing Summit (#OMS12) enables over 1500 attendees to collaborate, network and learn how to execute on the best practices in online marketing.

What sets OMS apart from the typical conference or tradeshow is its fervent focus on providing educational content without the fluff. Events include hands-on training workshops, one-on-one personalized labs with experts, thought-leadership presentations and peer-to-peer collaboration

In the Online Marketing Boot Camp on the first day from 3:15 to 6:15pm I will do the workshop:

New Opportunities for Local-Social Marketing

When Google gave every business it’s own website, it revolutionized local marketing.  Now that smartphones are in everyone’s pocket, local marketing gets a new twist. Add to this Social Media with Geo Info and you have a completely new playing field for marketing to local customers.

In this session we will discuss:

• The importance of claiming your Google places page & how to optimize it

• Strategies for leveraging ext message marketing for local results

• How to rank well in organic local search

• Maximizing visibility in the local-social web

• The leading tools & platforms for getting it all right

I found it most refreshing to come across a service called OpenMenu, where Restaurants, Bars, Take-Out services and in fact any business with a food & beverage menu could standardize their menu in XML and maintain it in one place.

The standardized menu can be used anywhere on the web and there are plugins for websites and Facebook Pages that render the menu beautifully.

For the owner of the menu this is a big headache solved: updating the menu usually is a nightmare and when there are multiple places where the menu needs to be updated, there is a lot of work involved, not to speak of the chance mistakes are made and you end up with different menus.

There is even a service that for a nominal fee takes your menu and converts it to XML and uploads it to the central repository.

If you own a restaurant or a bar, that is certainly a great opportunity to save a lot of time and attract new customers.

For more information go to http://OpenMenuServices.com

If you want to put something on your Fan Page other than what Facebook provides (Like Photos, the Wall, Info etc), you need an App created by a programmer.
Not only does the programmer need to code what he wants on the page, he also needs to configure a specific application within Facebook itself, to define where Facebook can find his code.
This is a laborious process, which makes it impossible for a non-programmer to simply put something on his Fan Page.
Today there are numerous Apps from third parties available to do all kinds of things on Fan Pages, but these Apps are usually costly or require a monthly subscription.

We decided to break through all these barriers, by offering a simple App called ‘Full Page’, that will allow a non-programmer to put ANYTHING on his Fan Page. This app allows you to create a new tab (menu option in Facebook), with a name of your choice and edit the Full Page using a WYSIWYG editor in plain text or HTML. It is now real easy to put a picture, video, song, article or even a whole website on a Facebook Fan Page.

The best news is: BrandReact will offer this App for FREE.

Also BrandReact has re-launched the Facebook Apps World website where it displays the Apps it has created. This collection of Facebook Apps will do just about anything you need on a Facebook page. Such as a Video, a Shop, Tweets, an RSS-feed, a PortFolio, SweepStakes, a Sign-Up form and much more. BrandReact is offering these Apps at the ridiculously low price of $9.99 for unlimited use, with life-time updates. Just a one-time fee, no subscription or recurring cost.

I have followed his advice and I have drastically revised my profile on LinkedIn.  When people are searching for profiles using keywords, my profile shows up on the first page when they look for the keywords that are relevant for me.  (Try looking for ‘Social Media & eCommerce Speaker’ on LinkedIn in the People search box: I show up as #1)

Using the techniques in the video I have also expanded my network , with relevant people and forged some great new relationships.

So if you want to learn the ins and outs of LinkedIn, have great use of LinkedIn and expand your network, you should definitely get this course…  It is not free, but well worth the (modest) fee…

Go here to get the course

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Many high-level executives and business owners are very good at convincing themselves that Social Media is not for them, but they fail to realize that with a little effort, they can change their life a bit and achieve enormous benefits from Social Media.

In today’s world it’s very difficult find a job just by submitting your resume.  Not only are you expected to have a presence on the web, you are also required to show what you have done in real-time.  No more vague resumes where you brag about past accomplishments, but a real-life snapshot of who you are and what you can do for the world (and your new boss).  The best way to find a job is to show that people endorse you, follow you, appreciate you.  That means you’ll have to give. You have to share your thoughts with the world and help people you’ve probably never met.  You have to show your expertise and be respected for it.  Respect has to be earned, and unfortunately that requires hard work… and trust.  People have no respect for someone they don’t trust.  Earning their trust means you have to be open, transparent and fair.  The time that you can hide yourself on the internet is over!  It is all there, it needs to be there, so it better be good!

For business owners the same thing is true.  It is no longer enough to put up a website and shout a few catchy phrases about your business; you have to engage with your customers and potential customers, show your expertise and earn their respect.

To start doing that, they’ll need to listen… Listen to what their customers and prospects are saying and engage in conversation.  Customers that have complaints especially need to be engaged.  They are the ones that can make or break your business using social media.  Making them happy, usually means they become satisfied customers and since they took the time to complain about your product, they very likely will also take the time to praise it.

For executives this is even more true.  They are perpetual job-seekers by nature, so they’d better make sure they can be found and that their expertise is clear. For their business, listening is even more important.  Especially in large corporations there needs to be a culture of listening.  Everyone in the organization should be aware that listening to the customers is the only way the business can grow…

Our first webinar will be on Thursday May 19^th, 2011 – 12:30-1:00 pm.  We will repeat on Thursday the 26^th 2010, 09:00-09:30 am and on Thursday June 2^nd, 2011 – 03:00-03:30 pm.

If you’d like to attend our free webinar please go to http://TheSocialMediaTalk.com for more information.

The Small Business Edition is an extremely powerful monitoring tool, although it is simple to use. This version allows the user to define up to three listening topics, each with up to five keywords. It provides a wide range of filters on language, text, date, and sentiment can be fine-tuned by source. All news sites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter are followed by BrandReact.

The stream of messages is conveniently placed in an inbox and can be viewed and managed there. The power of the BrandReact tool lies in the fact that the user can react to all that is said from within the system.  He can create an appropriate response to the subject, by tweet, email, or Facebook/Blog post. In addition, BrandReact offers a unique translation module that makes it simple to follow messages in a foreign language.

“We are very happy to release our product today to the business community at large”, says Dick Raman, CEO of BrandReact, Inc. “Companies are now realizing that they need to ‘L-i-s-t-e-n‘ to their customers to stay in business. We can now help them with our tools.”

The Small Business Edition is ideal for small businesses that want to know what is said about their products, their brand or their staff. The unprecedented advancement in technology and online social networks have brought in a whole new dimension in customer experience and customer service. What people say about a companies product or service is contagious and like it or not, negative connotations are more viral than positive ones.  In the age of amplified public opinion, smart businesses, big and small alike, are realizing they need to start listening to their customers.  The BrandReact offering assists companies in this effort.

For further information you can visit http://BrandReact.com, where you can also sign up for a 15-day free trial on the service.

@Dubbelzinnig started as an experiment… I was just testing my application Tweeteronix, to see if you can really get many followers if you tweet something interesting. It turned out to be an enormous success! Within 6 months @Dubbelzinnig had 16.000 followers with tweets only in Dutch!

The interesting thing was that the followers started to tweet their own linguistic quirks, which were retweeted by @Dubbelzinnig so all the followers could enjoy them. In this way a whole community of language-lovers grew, which prompted publisher Terra-Lannoo, to contact me to create a book.

The result is this booklet, which is a nice gift for anyone that appreciates the Dutch language.  You can find the book in the bookstores in The Netherlands or you can order it from the publisher online.