Conference: Can social media help you manage a crisis?

On October 25 I'll be speaking, together with some great friends and PR colleagues from the Belgian IABC chapter, on the topic of social media and crisis communications.

You can join us in Brussels as from 16:00 at the IBM Forum in Zaventem. Full details and the registration link are below. Looking forward to meet you there !

Speakers from the corporate, institutional and consulting worlds will be sharing their insights and experience in the field of social media communication and crisis management at this late afternoon event.

On the panel:

Aurélie Valtat, formerly responsible for online communications at Eurocontrol has recently taken up the same challenge for the European Council.

Caroline Sapriel, consultant and expert in crisis communication with over 20 years’ experience in risk and crisis management, corporate and public affairs at CS&A.

Philippe Borremans, author of Conversationblog.com, social media consultant, speaker and trainer, Chief Social Media Officer at Van Marcke Group.

Philip Weiss, chief Hyperthinker and founder of ZN, a Brussels-based eCommunication agency.

This IABC event is supported by ZN and the venue is kindly provided by IBM.

Full registration details can be found here.

Best wishes for 2011

Another year has gone by...

On the personal level it has been the year where - finally - the renovation of our old farm-house came to an end and we were able to move into our new home. Not 100% finished but already feeling like we belong here.

It was not the year of long and far away travel although we spent a marvelous 10 days at one of our favorite destinations in Morocco. Both my wife and I hope to be able to catch up on that in 2011.

A good year at the Van Marcke Group as well; moving along with the roll out of our internal social media collaboration platform and our plans for external social media communications...

As an independent consultant I am planning to focus on teaching and online education this year.

I have been asked to give guest lectures on social media communications at La Sorbonne in Paris, at the University of Ghent and at the Royal Military Academy...

This, together with some very exciting conferences (Communications On Top in Davos among others...) make for a great start of the year.

I am also looking forward to create some solid educational content on social media communications and crisis communications. Still doing some research and then I will need to start writing if I want this to be online soon...

Blogging here more regularly will be back on the agenda... I plan to write more often and share my experiences in the field as much as I can.

Some of you might have missed my wishes through LinkedIn or on Twitter so here they are again:

Just wanted to say a big THANKS;

For the inspiration, the help, the talks (be it about good restaurants or the impact of social media on business communications ;-), the dinners and lunches and the many conferences where we met.

I wish you and your family a peaceful and meaningful 2011 and am looking forward to meet you again !

Above all else... have fun.

Speaking about ROI of Social Media at Brussels Conference

On Tuesday, September 14 I'll be speaking at Melcrum's "Social Media and Internal Communications Conference" in Brussels.

My keynote will be around the return on investment of social media, more specifically when applied for internal communications and collaboration.

At the hand of our own case study at the Van Marcke Group I'll cover how to define & measure social media ROI for the enterprise.

Other speakers of the day include:

• ex IBM colleagues Yves van Seters, IBM Task Leader for Social Media and  Vanessa Vyncke, Employee & Executive Communications. They talk about embedding social media into day to day business.
• Louise Denver, Director Corporate Affairs & Communications, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
• Louise McGregor, Manager Web Expert Centre, Corporate Communications ING Group
• Sonia Carter, Senior Manager - Online, AXA UK
• Neil Atkinson, Director - Global Communication Channels, Unilever
• Russell Pearson, Social Media Strategist

You can find all the details of the conference and the workshop I'll give on the second day - 15th of September on the conference website.

If you wish to join the conference, let me know. I have secured a 10% reduction for my readers. Just send me an email with your name. Hope to see you there.

Also, if you would be interested to join an exclusive workshop around using social media for crisis communications in the October/November timeframe (also in Brussels) please let me know.

I am planning this with a top worldwide specialist in risk management and crisis management and we're limiting the amount of participants at 20 people. So if you would like to learn how to integrate social media into your crisis planning, don't miss this one and send me an email.