Picking up where we left of...

Wow, so this has been a while since I've last published on my own blog. But what the heck. After such a long time and since I've picked up some experience in certain matters along the way, why not pick up things where we left of...

Summarizing the last 5 years

What the hell have I been up to? Well, I've finished my studies of Science in Communications at the VUB (Brussels) and got my Master's degree. Jeej for me! Got a job at holland.com first being a Project Coordinator. Awesome job, when you're of dutch origin and you get to promote your country to Belgian people...where I lived from birth 'til 3 years ago. Met the love of my life...decided to move to the Netherlands (bet ya didn't see that one coming) and got a job at Copernica Marketing Software. And decided to stay there for a while. So in a nutshell...that's what I've been up to.

Learning the tricks of the trade

Working at Copernica taught me a lot. Not only did it turn me from an HTML-noob into an HTML expert. Somehow, it brought along a love and fondness for email marketing and all aspects to this medium. Am I an email marketeer? Yes, you could say that.

However, I'm not the guy setting up those spam messages you get every day or those boring newsletters you receive every now and then. Nope. Copernica develops marketing software enabling you to set up your very own marketing campaigns using email, web pages, social media, mobile & print.

Yes, did you get that. Caught the commercial side to that story? Great!

Email marketing nut in the making

So yes, I'm an email marketing enthusiast since about two years after I started working at Copernica. You get to see that this medium works. It's not just a matter of setting up a mailing list, creating a good-looking template and then hitting the 'Send'-button...well ok, basically it is. But there's so much more you can do with it.

I've seen companies grow from scratch with the help of awesome email marketing strategies. Not only by using Copernica Marketing Software, but also with the help of our competitors. There are numerous success stories out there.

So are you getting the point of my story? No? Let me tell you. As of now, I'll be sharing my experiences, cases, cool success stories with email marketing, email marketing trends, tips, tricks, you name it...on my blog. It's time to refresh Busicomm! Time for some email marketing mayhem!

Catch you later!

I'm back!!! :)

I've been out of the blogosphere for a while working on my thesis in the summer of last year and work from end of summer till now!
Glad to say that I completed the university time succesful with an honorable graduation!!! Thesis was about the use of social media in the context of corporate communication and what role these media could have in the internal corporate culture...
Professors were very excited and afterwards full of praise about the thesis...I would like to thank everyone who helped me in this progress; Bert van Wassenhove, Shel Israel, Alain Heureux, Frank De Graeve, Joanne Yates, Terry McKenzie, Ulbe Jelluma and of course my professors!

At the moment I'm working at the Dutch Tourism & Congres Board at the B2C department with a strong focus on online marketing. Working in the Belgian market appears to be a little different as to our surrounding markets! Netherlands, UK, France and even Germany are a little more advanced when it comes to media usage in marketing strategies. But nevertheless online media/marketing is moving up and moving up fast in Belgium! The need for social media and other online tools seems bigger then ever. Allthough print media is still a must have tangible for Belgian consumers.

So now I have the time again and more, and growing, knowledge of the online scene and I hope to be posting regurlarly on this blog. I'll start on a two-weekly basis and see how that works and if I have more time I'll try a weekly update! By the time I'm really used to the entire social scenery again I'll try and get back to the daily update :). But then again there's always Twitter!

Cheers
Michael

MTV: To blog or not to blog

Since this is just my second post I just hope that I make some sense here :).

It's been over a couple of weeks now since I started blogging and since then I've talked, listened and read about a lot on blogging and podcasting and all the other possible apps that social media have brought about these days. I seems to me that this business is booming.

Seeing my subject of research for the moment is corporate internal communication and the use of social media within this area I've come to the conclusion that for the moment there's one question that pops out: To blog or not to blog?

It just seems so interesting to me that some companies (and some of these companies are normally the trendsetting companies mind you) haven't picked up the whole buzz around social media yet.

Take MTV Networks for instance. (I'm taking this corporation as an example seeing I've done my internship there).
Now here's a company that has been on the market for over 20 years now and has had the reputation of setting trends for younger generations since the beginning. What I did notice during my internship there, was that they (the Benelux department that is) were struggling to get more visitors and hits on their website. But nothing really seemed to work.
I sat down with Bert van Wassenhove (One Agency and has worked on projects for MTV Networks) two days ago and I brought it up during our conversation. I asked him wether he thought blogging would help this company in getting more visitors and attention. He told me he was more than certain this would help the company gaining more visibility and hits on their website. But that a company like MTV was a company bound to tradition and that this was probably why they didn't apply blogging (especially internally) yet.
Now this did get me wondering. Why would a company that has a reputation of setting trends towards a younger generation not want to promote blogging. Like Shel Israel states it: kids these days are the online generation. They will pick up on you if you promote and manage to profile (can't find a better word for now) yourself in the online community.

It struck me as well that the Benelux department of MTV Networks was still using something that looked to me as a very old and poorly maintained intranet site with several dead links. Internal communication happened via e-mail which is of course ok if it concerns important matters and subjects but not if it's about someone's car which is still in the parking lot with its lights on...For this you have Twitter now (oh yes I've found my way to this new wonderful gizmo as well) You promote Twitter on the work floor, it doesn't need that much explanation and boom you're workfloor is IM'ing each other via Twitter and their mailboxes only get flooded with notices of the fact that they've been tweeted to (hey, you're battery's gonna be dead if you don't turn off your lights!!)

Trendsetting companies, companies where youngsters look to these days should, in my opinion, promote the use of all kinds of social media at both an internal as well as the external level. From CEO blogs and Twitter use to the employees that blog about the company itself or who blog so they can cooperate more easily with each other.

Introduction

I'm rather new to the entire blogosphere but I'm hoping that by launching my own blog I can gain valuable insights on this topic.
I am writing my thesis about the role of blogs and podcasts in an organisations internal communication structure. So far I can only be positive on the effect these communication channels have on for example a corporate culture.
I'm hoping to share my visions and opinions with all of you in the near future on why organisations should be using these channels as a way to communicate with employees and other actors.

Also I will be blogging about business communication in general seeing this is a particular area of interest to me. I'm looking forward to discussing and reading all about this topic with you.

Thank you

Michael Heering