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.

European Communications Summit - July 2 & 3, 2009

This week I'll be speaking at the European Communications Summit organised by the European Association of Communications Directors (EACD) of which I am member since the start a couple of years ago.

The agenda is full with top keynote speakers like my ex-colleague Mike Wing, Vice President, Strategic and Executive Communications & the man behind the latest and very successful "Smarter Planet" communications campaign of IBM.

Mike Wing, IBMThe funny thing is that Mike and I have been colleagues at IBM for about 10 years and never really met in person. This will be the occasion to catch up in real life...

I'll be talking about how we're taking the first moves at Van Marcke Group to implement social media both for internal and external communications. I'll also touch upon the differences and/or similarities between a B2B and B2C approach/market.

Next to the interesting sessions with top communicators it is always nice to catch up with other colleagues from the profession. I am looking forward to meet again with Médard Schoenmaeckers, Head of Media Relations, Syngenta and Dirk de Muynck from Volvo Group among many others.

From a more personal angle I'll definitely be at the session by Jon Worth from the Atheist Bus Campaign, one of the most successful and daring NGO campaigns ever.

I also set up a TweetUp during the conference. You can find the invitation here and if you're on Twitter and coming at the conference, please sign up and let's meet.

The conference will be covered on Twitter, not only by myself but by several other people present. You can follow the updates by searching for the hash tag #ecs or right on the conference's Twitter page here.

If you come, looking forward to see you there !

The impact of social media on corporate information management ?

These last couple of days have been hectic....

Caroline Van Marcke (middle) at IOD2009I officialy left IBM last Friday and started to work for Van Marcke Group as their Chief Social Media Officer on Tuesday... Just on time to immediately fly to Berlin for... an IBM conference of 3 days on the topic of information management !

The interesting sessions on information management (from a business perspective for me) and hearing some very good speakers - author Frans Johansson has definitely some passion going there - were definitely worth the 3 days in Berlin.

But what struck me right from the beginning was the incredible, and largely underestimated, impact social media will have on corporate information management.

Imagine an organisation which truly uses social media to connect with employees, business partners and clients...

Not just a company that sets up a blog because it is fashionable but an organisation that really wants to engage with its constituents and gain insight from it.

Frans Johansson - AuthorThen think how all these data streams, conversations and connections could interact with existing infrastructure.

Example; the Twitter updates used by customer support of company X, integrated with its CRM system, its stock management system, the monitoring system of its PR department and so on...

All that information could then be data mined, classified, analysed etc.. in order to improve customer relations, customer support, product developments and so on.

Because to me that's the real use of social media on an enterprise level.

Real Time Twitter Feed at IOD2009Enabling employees to respond correctly and quickly to client questions by connecting with them in a transparent and direct way.

Enabling diverse teams (think development, creatives, research) to work together on a same problem through the use of wikis, blogs, and social networking in order to find a better solution than the standard one.

How will all these data streams be managed ? Can they be managed ? Are organisations even thinking about this already ?

During the Information On Demand conference the subject popped up... but not as a clearly defined topic on the agenda.

I do think this area of "social media impacting information management" is really challenging and interesting to research as it will impact more and more organisations in the near future.

What do you think ?