Overview: Communication Strategy

" "It takes courage to talk to customers but you have to do it,” Ritson would say. “First the qualitative, then the quantitative," he repeated. Interview customers (qualitative) before you create surveys (quantitative)."

Some of the comments to my initial post showed me that I have to show, not tell, what I mean when I refer to technologies like semantic analysis and faceted search. So, a quick video about faceted search and the role it could play in helping people find opinions and ideas on EU policy via a rebooted BloggingPortal.

I used to refer to great-websites-for-the-wrong-audience as Meatball Sundaes, but this visual metaphor is much better... using Sharepoint to deliver social intranets for organisations that don’t want social intranets, due to the passionate conviction that they need a social intranet.

"This is the first course in Google's newly launched Analytics Academy -- which will feature a variety of self-paced video lessons. The course includes 22 video lessons, each 3-10 minutes long, and provides learning activities. Google estimates this course will take a total of 4-6 hours to complete. The first three units of this course cover indu…

I received a couple of interesting reactions to the post about rebooting BloggingPortal, but as some of them were by email I decided to reply in FAQAO (Frequently Asked Questions And Objections) format, which I just invented, in case others have the same questions.

"That’s why today we’re excited to announce Analytics Academy -- a new hub for you and your colleagues to participate in free, online, community-based video courses about digital analytics and Google Analytics. With Analytics Academy, we aim to provide you with a guided learning experience to become an analytics expert in no time. Our first cours…

As I've mentioned now and then (e.g., BloggingPortal's 3rd birthday, 2012), a desultory conversation amongst Bloggingportal editors dragged on for several years, before dying after it became clear that the lack of decision-making process made it impossible to move forward.

"Persona research is a science in itself, where the basic idea is identifying your audience. It is unavoidable to have a clean understanding of the audience's requirement, the discovery process, their knowledge and their interests in order to deliver appealing content, ultimately helping in your conversion process. This post focuses on how to c…

"Now that content marketing is the hot marketing buzzword, what are the critical elements your content needs to rise above the noise to drive measurable business results? To help you, we surveyed 19 top content marketing experts to get their advice and here's what they say." Good stuff here. PS. Point 1: "Stop being amazing, and start being…

"A comprehensive 360 view of what you can measure in Google+, including: -Measuring Activity Within Google Plus -Measuring Activity Surrounding Your Website in Google Plus -Measuring Activity On Your Website Driven by Google Plus 14 Activities You Can Measure from Google Plus 26 Metrics You Need to Pay Attention To 10 KPIs That You Can Use for Yo…

"The Beginner's Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is an in-depth tutorial designed to help you convert more passive website visitors into active users that engage with your content or purchase your products."

A great article on preventing the data tail wagging the editorial dog. " It turns out that what loyal audiences care about is what good editorial teams care about too: great articles that capture time and attention."

" In the long term, extorting, selfish strategies did not work as well as more generous strategies. Players who defected instead of cooperating suffered more over time than players who recognized the value of cooperation--though extortion might provide an advantage in a single head-to-head matchup, in the context of a whole population, over time, …

I won the epale online community of practice project and steered its inception phase. Years later, it is still one of the EC's most successful online communities, notably by its ambitious multilingualism strategy and high userbase, despite lacking any financial rewards for participation.

The ever-excellent For Immediate Release (episode 638) put me onto 10 things you still need to know about social media / social business, by Olivier Blanchard (aka the Brand Builder), which sounds like every other post you've ever hear of. But it's worth a read...

The subject of Klout has come up a few times on Twitter, so I'm posting this so I can point people toward a few articles I've found useful. Something I can't do in 140 characters. Which proves my eventual point.

This is the sort of post which could get me into trouble for a number of reasons. Particularly as I'm going to comment on the celebrations to be enjoyed next month at the Festival of Europe, where one can do everything from "seeing the political groups at work inside the European Parliament" to "experiencing a fest…

I've finally gotten around to updating my avatars here and there to show my support to Benoit Poelevoorde's call earlier this year to stop shaving. Why? And why won't it help solve Belgium's political crisis? And what's this got to do with Europe? I don't tend to write much about Belgian affairs ...

If I recall correctly, a lot of us in the euroblogosphere reacted to the announcement of the European Public Communication Conference and Network (EuropCom) with a mixture of scepticism, hope and amusement, particularly with the original launch video, which was so badly done I for one was actually charmed.

The lack of specialists in EU-oriented blogs is impeding the development of the European online public space.

Any survey which lists my blog as a Top 20 'influential' blog (see Stuart's post and interview with the authors, and Jon's post) must be either very generous or not have more than 20 blogs to work with

That's right - curation. Now officially Web2.0-buzzword-of-the-month (not quite sure which one).

So the debate about the Euroblogosphere, or the Eurosphere, or the European Public Sphere, or web2eu, or the European online public space, of whatever-we-call-it-next-week, has sparked again into life, like a Frankensteinian monster with dodgy spark plugs screwed into the base of its neck.

One of the topics I've been developing on this blog for quite some time came up at last week's get-together organised by the Belgian IABC chapter: the need (or not) for social media guidelines for EU staff.

PR firm interns posting fake reviews about iPhone apps for their clients. Ghost blogging and tweeting by just about everyone, including thought-leaders in social media.  Bloggers not disclosing sponsorship. It's just a matter of time before someone poisons the well for EU social media.

Over on Nosemonkey's blog, in yet another debate on the pros and cons of EU membership, Insideur is of the opinion that there is a real gap in the market, that Open Europe has sought but failed to fill, for serious, informed, and therefore constructive criticism of the EU

Constructive discussions generally require good discussion documents. One of the Commission's major contributions to any European online space should therefore be a EUROPA that supports the conversations

Quite a few people look at me in quite a puzzled way when I mention how the techniques and approaches of online community management 'may have something to offer' the EU in terms of communications, but that this may require 'a change in mentality'. When they look like that, I say "You know, something along the lines of the…

Following rapid and significant expansion into new markets and sectors of governance and policy, innovative union of nation states ("European Union", or EU) seeks an experienced Online Community Manager to gain buy-in at all levels throughout our 27 Members, as well as with external stakeholders on a global level.

When you want to create a community, asking uses what they need is the best way to start. We launched the 1-page website, with user survey, newsletter signup and social, inside two weeks of winning the project. Everything we developed the following year (2010) was based on the results.