From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

One of the people coming over is Lee Odden, who I have had the pleasure of meeting up with several times over the past few years. Lee is a successful author, speaker and he runs Toprankblog, one of the first online marketingblogs I started following years ago.

On his blog Lee every year looks at the UK Blogs, which are a must-follow. Last year State of Search featured there. This year they took a different angle and looked at the top influencers and bloggers in the UK. For that they asked suggestions from people within the UK industry and then looked at their influential status.

Very surprisingly I showed up in that list, and quite high as well:

Surprising not because I’m not an influential (I know I am), but more that I’m not English and this clearly is a list of Top UK Influentials and Bloggers. And I’m Dutch.

Lee Odden explained it to me in an e-mail:

“Quite a few of the people we reached out to for nominations mentioned you specifically for this list, more than any other person that made it.”

Which means UK people nominated me to be on that list. Which off course is great! I am very honoured to be a Dutchman this high up in the list of UK influentials and bloggers in online marketing. It is the result of hard work running State of Search, speaking, doing workshops and consulting agencies, helping them determine their strategy directions.

Thank you all those who put me on this list!

Be sure to check out our State of Search event week running up to SES London next week!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

Since quite a few years now I have been giving training sessions in different areas of online marketing. I have trained about search, about social and about online marketing in general. All for different training agencies. Most of them in the Netherlands, some outside.

One which is ‘new’ however is international and will be given in no other place than the beautiful city of Barcelona. There I will, several times a year, be training people in the subject of social search, with an international sauce to it on the International SEO School.

In these training sessions I will talk about how Social is affecting search and vice versa, but I will be taking a special look at how that is internationally. Do you need to treat people in the Netherlands and different when it comes to social search than in for example Spain or the US? The answer I can give you already: yes.

The training is part of the International SEO School, which is set up by the lovely people over at Webcertain, also organisers of the International Search Summit, where I’ve spoken several times already.

What will be the program?

I will be sending out a more specific program soon, but in general the program looks like this:

Day 1: Strategy

• What is social? How do countries differ?
• How do search and social connect?
• Google and social search
• International differences and factors in social search

Day 2: Implementation

• Target audiences: determining, finding and targeting specific audiences
• Organisational fit: How to make it work in different organisations and different countries
• Measurement and Reporting: What you should measure, and how

Day 3: Tactics

• Getting social visible in SERPs
• How to use Google+ for social visibility
• Combining Universal Search and social

Interested in joining in? Head over to the International SEO School’s website and register!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

The week had two conferences in it, A4U Expo and the Dublin Web Summit. Next to that it was a week of meeting friends and colleagues and getting things started.

At A4U Expo I spoke about mobile in combination with social and local together with Sri Sharma, on Thursday I had traveled to the Dublin Web Summit, one of the, if not the, biggest conferences in online marketing in Europe to speak about how social and authority collide. There it was also nice to see old friends which I hadn’t seen in a while who now have an interesting app they are running called Foodzy, go check it out.

Speaking at A4U as always was lots of fun, in Dublin I had never been before so that was an interesting one, especially because that was a conference which had no less than 4,000 attendees there. My talk there was actually ‘secretly’ taped.

Usually you will have to come and see me speak or hire me to speak, but in this case you’re in luck, the video of my talk is below, so here is a ‘sneak peek’ of how I speak, so you have an idea

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

Anyway, as you may have noticed I turned 40 yesterday. And as you may know at birthdays people congratulate you. I can honestly say, because of Social, I have never had this many people congratulating me for my birthday. There were so many I couldn’t reply to each one of them. So thank you all for that!

Now, some may say I’m old, but others say life is just starting when you turn 40. So for me this is apparently a beginning of new life! And in a way that makes sense. I am working on a lot of plans at the moment, aiming to get them going as quickly as possible. And to underline that I wrote a post yesterday on State of Search where I describe how I got where I am now and what lies ahead, both for me as the industry as a whole.

Read it, and if you like it, share it

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

Recently I was asked if I had an overview of where I was speaking so people could come and see me speak. I realised I hadn’t. So I decided to make a nice calendar of when and where I am speaking, whether it is at a conference, an internal event or if it’s a training session.

You can find the overview of the upcoming talks here.

I will try and keep this updated as much as I can! For now there are a few beauties on the list already. Next to Thinkvisibility there is for example A4U Expo and the Dublin Web Summit. And there are some training sessions and an internal event in Kopenhagen and Stockholm coming up as well. Yes, I do have a lot to say .

So go check it out and see if you can come and see me speak. And if you are around Leeds this weekend, do come and pop over to Thinkvis!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

Well you might want to hear about the week I spent at SES San Francisco this month. I was there as part of an expert roundtable, I did some blogging and I was there together with three people from Lindex. They ‘took me in’ as part of their family and I thoroughly enjoyed that. It was nice because it was a different experience than I usually have on conferences.

One nice thing about being in San Francisco was the fact that I got picked up from the airport by Dennis Goedegebuure, a well known Dutch SEO who made a good career for himself in San Francisco. He even took a picture of my plane landing (see below). It was great seeing him again, and begin picked up made me feel like a VIP. Dennis even wrote about it on his blog.

I also wrote a post about being in San Francisco for the Linkdex blog. The intro is here, the rest of the post you can read on the Linkdexblog. Please do

The post:

Feeling inspired at SES San Francisco

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a week in San Francisco. Now the city alone is reason enough to be there and have a good time, but in this case I was there with a goal: to attend SES San Francisco 2012.

As you may know I attend a lot of conferences, many of them as a speaker, others as part of the ‘press’ for State of Search. This time around I was part of the Expert Roundtables and I blogged a little for State of Search. But I also had the opportunity to make videos about Geolocation and to ‘hang out’ with the Linkdex team, in this case being Collette, Clarissa and Matt.

If you follow my writings on State of Search you will know that I usually write about developments in the industry. In this post however I want to take a slightly different approach. I’d like to tell you about my experience of ‘working’ with the Linkdex team last week, because even for me it was a new experience, and I’ve learned a lot!

Read the rest of the post here

Image source Dennis Goedegebuure’s DPictures.com

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

In this period in which is filled with medals I want to talk about a ‘medal’ “we” won last month, a golden medal actually!

Last month the European Searchawards were held in Amsterdam. It was a fun night, and a weird one in a way because it was in my home town. Where usually I get on a plane, now all of my friends from the UK and other countries came to the Netherlands, to the city I spend so many years in, the city where I spend my college-time as well, which means the night life is very familiar as well. And walking around in Amsterdam at night felt partly like I was back in college and at the same time strange because it were my search friends who were joining me, not my college friends.

But the main purpose of the night were the awards. And one of the awards was for “Best Search Blog”. And guess who won that! Yes indeed, State of Search.

It is nice to be recognized and an award like that really shows the fact that people appreciate what we do. And as I said when I collected the prize: this one is from every blogger on State of Search. Because I think that the bloggers we have is one of the main reasons of success: all enthusiastic, talented and eager to learn and to share.

So on this place I’d like to thank all the bloggers who contributed again. Now for the next steps!

Want to know the other winners? They’re all listed here!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist

I am usually always happy to do this. After all, it is somewhat of a recognition of what you do: they want your opinion. Which is a nice thing. And as a publisher myself who has also done a lot of interviews with others I understand how interesting it can be for website owners.

It is fun to see how I’ve gone from being the interviewer (mind you: I still do that a lot) to being the one interviewed.

Last week I was interviewed again. This time however it wasn’t related to a conference or a ‘hot topic’, but it was about me. The people over at kahenadigital.com are interviewing several different people in the industry. Including me. And they asked me many questions, some of them not even search related. But it was  a nice interview, different. And that’s why I wanted to highlight it here!

Read the entire interview here

Let me know what you thought about the interview!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Strategist