Geert Conard's Blog, page 14

Global Networking for World Leaders

Back in 2005, while I was researching for my first book 'A Girlfriend in Every City', I also read a Belgian reference book called "De Elite van België" written by Jan Puype, a journalist I recently met face to face in Antwerp.

This book was a summary of all clubs and networking organizations in Belgium at the time of writing. What fascinated me was the fact that it wasn't limited to the typical Chamber of Commerce and Rotary kind of organizations, but Puype also disclosed a lot about more...

The Facebook 5000 friends limit

This weekend I ran into the Facebook 5000 Friends limit. In the last couple of weeks I had been receiving warnings because my friends-count together with the Pages I liked was already over 5000 and Facebook wants you to keep below that number.
The reason for this limitation according to Facebook is that nobody has 5000 real friends in life. If you have more connections you must be a celebrity and in that case you need a fanpage where your network can just click on a Like button to enter your...

Social Media Day 2010 - Mashable

The Nr.1 Blog on Social Media, Mashable, is organising Social Media Day 2010

Wednesday 30 June over 500 Social Media Meetups will take place all over the world.

I will be attending the meeting in Antwerp, which seems to be the second most popular after New York !!!

This is probably one of the most interesting networking events this year !

Are your children safe on Social Media ?

Last week, after a workshop in Brussels, someone from the organisation of the event approached me with the question "Are my children safe on Social Media ?"
I think it's a sign of the times that we worry a bit too much. When I was a little boy, I was always out and about, playing with friends. Later, as a teenager, I only came home to eat and sleep.
A lot could have happened out there, but like most others I survived.
Yes, I'm pretty sure child abusers are using all possible tools to...

Introduce yourself to your grandmother

An essential part of networking is introducing yourself to others.
This is often described as the very first part of the networking process, "Know Me" (Read more about this in Penny Power's book "Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me")

Introducing yourself might sound simple and easy but often isn't that simple at all.
As professionals in our trade we are used to talk to peers, customers and suppliers in our own industry. Typical tech-talk or jargon for your industry automatically slips into most...

Integrate and automate your status updates

Since Social Media is time consuming, we need to search for ways to integrate and automate most of the daily processes we use for communicating with our network.
Recently I was interviewed by a journalist for Bizz Magazine, the leading business magazine in Belgium for startups and small businesses. The result of this interview you can find in this article (in dutch) : http://www.friends-with-benefits.eu/images/press/BIZZ105.pdf
I want to share a few essentials in this blogpost :
For each...

The mobile revolution

Some techies will claim the real mobile revolution already happened years ago, but I can't help noticing how new mobile applications are popping up every day now.
Since my primary interest is Social Media, I couldn't miss the Social Media applications recently launched by the most popular online social networks.

The latest Blackberries are sold with the Facebook application already installed. If you missed it, it can be found here.

LinkedIn recently launched a full set of applications for...

(Dutch) Persbericht : Businessclub M4M lanceert nieuwe netwerkformule

PERSBERICHT – VOOR ONMIDDELIJKE VRIJGAVE
Businessclub M4M lanceert nieuwe netwerkformule

Nieuwe formule : M4M Business Advisory Boards

De meeste ondernemers gaan netwerken met enkele doelen voor ogen. Ze willen hun netwerk vergroten, zichzelf profileren, credibiliteit verwerven en indien mogelijk ook hun business stimuleren. Mits het spenderen van de nodige tijd en moeite zal je regelmatig doorverwijzingen krijgen vanuit je netwerk.

Voor het grootste gedeelte van de ondernemers is dit waar het...

Foursquare : The next big thing is location !

The newest hype in Social Media world are location-based web-applications such as Foursquare.
Foursquare is a very simple mobile Internet tool to build your network and tell each other WHERE you are. The question is no longer "what are you doing ?", but "Where are you doing it ?"
The big thing in this evolution is of course peer promotion. This new platform has all the keys in hand to become the leading network for marketing and business purposes. Users can add tips to trigger other users to...

Outlook integration with Social Media

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Since many years Microsoft Outlook is one of the most important tools in my professional life.
Already a while ago Microsoft announced their plans to integrate connections with Social Media platforms, straight into the contacts and e-mail features of Outlook.
As a Proactive and Professional Networker, this was of course something I was very excited about. Normally I'm not much of a beta-tester, but this time I just couldn't resist and downloaded the Outlook Social Connector , the plugin for...