Happy New Year! Let me start of by wishing all of you the very best for 2012. I hope that the new year will bring everybody exactly what they are hoping for.

For me personally 2011 was a great year. I have been speaking a lot on several occasions, the different training sessions I did have been very successful, I have enjoyed doing work for the DDMA very much, and last but not least: State of Search has grown immensely in popularity, which was shown on the last day of the year and made me very proud.

Speaking

I have spoken at many different places. I loved doing the ‘big ones’ like SMX and SES, but also thoroughly enjoyed Thinkvisibility and the talks I did for company purposes (“in-house talks” like for AEGON).

In 2012 I hope to continue doing this and especially do a lot more talks for companies which can be very inspiring because you get a lot of direct response and you can actually help people right away.

Training

Training sessions have grown so quickly I hardly could manage doing all of them at the end of the year. Off course training sessions for Frankwatching and Beeckesteijn, the ones I already did, but also sessions for HAN (a complete marketing training) and an entire Social Media Manager Training course for Euroforum, were fantastic to do.

In 2012 I will do all of those again and more, but we are also looking into different kind of training sessions which we will be doing via State of Search.

State of Search

The site has done amazingly well in 2011. I wrote about that on the site last week. We saw a huge growth in numbers and we are now definitely a force to be reckoned with. I am sure 2012 will be even more successful for State of Search, we have some big plans there.

I believe State of Search is such a big success because we have a great team of bloggers who create fabulous content. That team surprised me on the last workday of the year with a “tribute post”. I was very much surprised and honored for such kind words. And very very proud. Of my team! Thanks guys!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

It has been a great ride. But now it is time to move on. As of immediately I will be saying goodbye to the title “Social Marketing Ambassador” for the Dutch DMA.

For the past year I have been working part time for the DMA setting up the Social Marketing activities of the Association. We have set up clinics, set up special Social Marketing Group, a new website and I’ve been talking to and helping members of the DMA making “Social” more part of their everyday life.

As said, I have done this part time, the other part of my work life has been dedicated to speaking, strategy advice, doing workshops and State of Search. All these elements have become so successful that it became hard to combine both of them. And even though I loved working at the DMA with the people there I wanted to expand my personal business. I therefore chose to go in that direction, a direction I love very much and suits me like a perfect glove. Training, speaking and writing is who I am.

I will not leave the DMA entirely. We have agreed that I will stay on as an external adviser and I will continue to be doing clinics for them. I look forward to that, also because it fits into all the other stuff I do.

I will continue to work on the fine line between search and social: findability on the web. And I will do great things there, starting with State of Search this week at A4U Expo .

I want to really thank the team at the DDMA. They are a truly great team who doesn’t get enough credit for everything they do.

Byebye AmBASsador (sorry Dom, the title is gone), Hello Bas

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

I have some really exciting news to share with you. Starting today I am A faculty member of the Speakers Academy. This means that from now on you can book me as a speaker, trainer or moderator through the Speakers Academy. I am now featured in between some of the biggest names in the speaking industry, which makes me very proud.

I decided to join the Speakers Academy because, well first of all because they let me of course , but mostly because I feel that the Speakers Academy stands for class, something I’d like to connect my name to.

Also speaking and workshop projects have become really busy lately with a lot of speaking and training sessions planned. Arranging them all became too much work so The Speakers Academy is kind enough to now arrange that for me.

I am very happy with this and hope to to have a long lasting relation with them. You can find my profile page in Dutch and English right here. Hope to see you soon on some workshop or when I’m speaking! Go book or spread the word .

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

It has been a crazy week this week. It started with a “day off” on Monday because of a national holiday here in The Netherlands. Somehow we have adopted the idea of “2nd holiday days”, we celebrate an extra day of Eastern, Christmas and in this case Pentecost, or as we call it “Pinksteren”.

Now for somebody who works for a boss these days are great, an extra “free” day off. For somebody who works independently it is horrible. You lose a day. And the work you are supposed to do doesn’t wait. It just becomes more so an ‘extra’ day is just a postponement of what you were supposed to do that day, which you then have to do the days following. You lose time, it is as simple as that.

In this case the free day however was well spent. My oldest daughter (she is the middle one, I also have an older son and a younger daughter) turned four this week and she had her very first children-party. Which definitely was worth it.

But in the end this week had three working days for me, because I don’t work on Fridays (I spent that day with the kids). One of these days I was on a conference in Amsterdam so actually sitting down behind my computer and getting work done was two days, almost, because there were some appointments too. And off course Tuesday I did the radioshow, this time with guest Jon Henshaw from Raventools, which I think was one of the best shows we have ever done.

So a ‘short’ week. But that week turned out to be pretty successful, especially for State of Search. It was one of the most successful ones for State of Search ever. And I was very proud to see there wasn’t much I had to do for that. This week several bloggers posted a few pieces of gold on the website. Just take a look at these:

• Schema.org – What does it really mean for us – by Peter Young
• We’re doing Google’s job for them – by Barry Adams
• Link Building – You Can’t Always Get What You Want – by Annabel Hodges
• Brand SEO, Information Retrieval and Ecommerce – by Nichola Stott
• How to Use Xenu for the basis of a SEO Campaign – by Sam Murray

And then I am leaving out some great posts from the week before (I think Sam Crocker with his “Future of SEO” post has already won the post of the month). I myself posted a few too which attracted a lot of attention, but these posts were all rocking. That resulted in almost 20.000 visitors this week to all these posts. State of Search is “Going Sky High.”

But more important than the numbers I saw on the backend was what everybody could see at the front end: the quality of content. That was acknowledged by a lot of people sharing that content and some people actually expressing themselves in that matter:

This is what makes me really proud and happy. And even more because it is an acknowledgement of the quality of the bloggers on State of Search.

All in all, this short week turned out to be pretty darn successful.

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

A few weeks ago I spent the entire week in the UK doing several talks (I still have to put my presentations online, will do that soon!). I was then at the conferences SMX, ISS and SASCON (check State of Search for the coverage there!). Next week I’ll again be taking the plane, over to Germany this time. To be more specific: Munich. I will go to A4U Expo Europe which, like last year, is held in the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Last year I was one of the speakers there, but unlike then and unlike last week I won’t be speaking this year. That is because I am doing something else.

This year at A4U we from State of Search are trying out something “new”. At A4U Munich there is, as always, an Expo Hall in which sponsors can exhibit and people can network. Looking over that Expo Hall there will be a special booth in which I will be talking to people about A4U Expo, what their experiences are, but also what is keeping them busy in their day-to-day business. Off course we will also be getting speakers to talk about what they have been telling the audience on stage. For the duration of the conference we will be doing this in several ‘sessions’. This will all be live streamed on State of Search.

I am grateful to both Affiliates4U and Linkdex, who is sponsoring this, that this can be set up, because I really believe this is an ‘extra’ in the conference coverage we usually do. This can really give readers (or viewers in this case) the opportunity to get some more out of it than the ‘regular’ blogposts.

As you know I do a weekly radioshow on Webmasterradio. Als I am a big fan of the TWIT-format and on top of that I really enjoy conferences which have ‘interview-formats’ like for example the D-conferences, of which version 9 is now live (Eric Schmidt spoke there, see an extract here). That mix, and stuff I saw here in Holland, made me come up with this format. I hope it works!

Speaking of new formats in this line: last night I saw a format in this line being launched in the Netherlands, fastmovingtargets. For the Dutch people out there: this is worth following. They are doing something similar to what Leo Laporte does with his TWIT, it is a known format: interviewing online, but they are actually very ‘open’ to the crowd, which means that as a viewer you actually have influence on the discussion. They take your questions and your feedback and immediately act on it, which is very difficult to do if you are doings something live. But it does give them that little bit extra.

So I will try and learn from them and be open to instant feedback next week in Munich! So if you have questions or feedback send it in and we’ll act on it! And off course if you are in Munich, come say hi! (If you still want to go, State of Search gives you a discount)

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

For somebody who has been working on blogs and promoting them to the bigger public it is always nice to see how others became successful. In this case I found the video of a Bloomberg item about Mashable. Though not the site I want to be content-wise, but I like it and it can be an example in how they are growing and doing their business and reaching a bigger audience. A nice video to watch.

Video found via

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

The coming week is going to be all UK for me. My wife and kids will have to miss me for a week when I head over to the UK to do several talks.

On the Monday I will fly to London to attend and speak at SMX London. I will there be talking on the Tuesday on the panel “Social Signals & Search” alongside Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, Marcus Taylor, SEO & Social Media Executive at SEOptimise and Cedric Chambaz, EMEA Marketing Lead of Microsoft. I’m especially proud to be talking alongside an looking forward to the talk of Cedric. I interviewed him for State of Search recently and I believe Bing is up to some pretty interesting stuff.

I myself will be focussing a bit more on Google in my presentation in which I will highlight the changes which have been going on over at Google when it comes to integrating social into search. I will ‘reveal’ Google’s social network .

On the Wednesday I am also speaking on the International Search Summit, which has now joined forces with SMX. I’ve spoken twice before on this conference organized by Webcertain and am always very happy to be there. Organizers Andy Atkins-Kruger and Gemma Birch (who I suspect does all the ‘real’ work ) are two of the nicest people in the industry.

I will be discussing differences between SERPS in different countries. Did you know that a search in Spain might give you a whole different experience than in the US for example?

When I’m done at ISS I will take the train up to Manchester to go to SASCON. A conference which is also organized by my good friend and fellow blogger Peter Young. Here I will be doing two talks, one on international search and one panel.

This trip will also be another possibility to ‘hook up’ with my UK friends who I love so much. I always feel at home there, so a week in the UK is not a punishment for me at all!

Are you going to be at one of the conferences? Come see my talks, but especially: come say hi. I’d love to chat with you and hear your ideas. If you do come up to me, let me know what you think of State of Search and what we should change or keep.

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

Tonight Ajax played FC Twente in the Dutch Cup Final. As many of you and certainly many of my Twitter followers know, I am a huge Ajax fan. And I tweet about the games I see on TV. I did that again tonight, but I’m not going to do that again. I’ll tell you why.

The game ended in extra time. In that extra time Twente got a free kick which in my eyes (and I think in the eyes of many supporting Ajax) should have gone the other way. From that free kick Twente scored the winning goal.

Now, whether I am right or wrong doesn’t matter here. What matters is that I share my feelings about it on Twitter. And as an Ajax fan those feelings at first were disappointment, feeling cheated and disillusioned. That means I tweeted out stuff which I might not tweet out on a regular day. I would normally congratulate the winners and move on, if they win fare and square. In this case because I was emotional at first I didn’t do that, again, because I felt it was unfair. And when something in my eyes is unfair… well, let’s say I can’t stand that.

It means that at the moment I read back my tweets when I’ve calmed down I’m not very proud of all of them. Don’t get me wrong, I stand with my point that I feel the free kick was a wrong decision, I just don’t feel comfortable when I read back my tweets.

So I’m gonna stop tweeting about Football games I’m watching in which I have an emotional connection with one of the teams. Why? There are a few reasons next to the fact that I don’t feel comfortable reading all of them back. Some of my best friends can support another team. Even though I know they know I’m biased in my tweeting sometimes, it doesn’t feel right. I want to be able to look them in the face. Second, I want to be a fan which might have his emotions about the game, but also one who can control them. Especially, and this is the main reason, because I have a five year old son who I want to grow up to be a ‘nice’ football fan. I don’t want to be the wrong role model so to speak .

But its social right?

Yes, tweeting about my ‘normal stuff’, my everyday life is social, and I’ll keep continuing to tweet about my everyday life, but I also feel that social media asks for well thought of communication. I tell everybody that you have to think about what you put online, because it might not go away. So that is what I’m doing here, thinking about what I’m putting online. And it won’t be tweets about Ajax-games anymore. To protect myself .

Oh and yes, I DO congratulate FC Twente for winning the cup. And I DO hope Ajax wins the title next week .

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

Yesterday I spoke on the “Marketing to the European Union” panel at SES London. I was joined by Mikkel deMib, Ciaran Norris and Kristjan Hauksson and we were moderated by Andy Atkins Kruger. It was a good session in which many different cultural aspects of Europe were brought to the attention. It wasn’t a very ‘technical’ session, but sort of an ‘introduction’ to Europe. Here’s my part of the session:

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

It’s that time of the year again: SES London is this week! It is the biggest search conference in Europe and I always love going there. I’ve only missed one show in the past years because my youngest daughter was born.

For the second time I will be speaking at SES London. On Wednesday morning (11am) I will be speaking on the panel “Marketing to the European Union“. I will be in the panel with some very big names in the industry: Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Ciaran Norris and Kristjan Mar Hauksson. The panel is lead by international search expert Andy Atkins-Krüger.

Andy asked me to talk about search in Holland (The Netherlands). I will try to give an insight on what can make or brake your success when trying to reach the Dutch online market. I won’t give away too much here, but it will most probably be both entertaining and informative!

I will also be working on State of Search coverage, we have bloggers doing live coverage of the event and I will be doing some interviews and we’ll try to do our radioshow coming from SES.

Are you also going to be at SES London? Come say hi!

Not going but thinking of going? Do come! And use the discount I can give you. Register online and to use the following priority code: SPG20LON. It will give you 20% off!

See you there!!?

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer