Tag Archives: training

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Learning about education: it’s important

Category:Opinion Tags : 

Over at State of Digital this summer we are talking to several digital marketing experts around a topic which is close to my heart: education.

I come from a family of teachers, my dad taught French and was head of my high school, my mom was a teacher, my grandpa, grandma and several aunts and uncles were. My sister still is. So you could say it’s in my blood.

As you may know I am a trained but not practicing teacher. I never ‘really’ became a teacher, but somehow the blood flows and you can’t stop it. Even though I don’t teach what I was educated for (history) and even though I swore never to become a teacher, I am.

I do a lot of training sessions, for business schools, colleges and in company, and speaking, though, which is also a form of educating others, as is writing on a site like State of Digital.

I just can’t help myself: I have to be involved with teaching one way or another. Simply because I believe that if we teach, we help others go forward. And because teaching is in a persons DNA, not just mine, yours as well. People like to teach and like to being taught. Humans after all want to continue to evolve and the only way you can do it is through knowledge.

Think about it, when at a birthday party, people are constantly trying to teach the others lessons. Whether it’s showing off their knowledge or showing them barbeque tips: people teach. We can’t live without teaching and being taught.

So I decided to do a little bit more with teaching and education at State of Digital. For these reasons above, and because I’ve noticed a lack of knowledge about digital marketing with marketers I ran into. Recently I did a webinar on blogging and we have been writing white papers, but I wanted to do something more.

I noticed that getting knowledge is closely related to trust. We trust our teachers and want to preferably walk the same route as they did. And we trust teachers who actually did the work more than theoretical teachers. But instead of being the teacher myself in this case I wanted to gather information from other teachers: the industry experts.

Especially in a young industry like ours it is interesting to look at how people gained their knowledge. Because they come from different, mostly not digital native, backgrounds. How can we learn what they know? By doing their jobs off course, but we can take a few steps quicker by asking them for some ‘short cuts’.

So I decided to ask several experts about their education. How did they get their knowledge and what should you do to gain similar knowledge.

I am very proud that some very knowledgeable people agreed to answer questions about their education and give tips on the education (young) marketers should get, and how they should get it.

Every few days we publish a new interview on State of Digital. So far we’ve seen interviews with for example Sara CliftonMarcus TandlerBill HuntMarty WeintraubAaron WallAndrew Girdwood and Bill Slawski. And many more I haven’t mentioned yet. And many more to come as well.

It’s a very useful series. At the end I will off course make summaries of the most important lessons, but I can tell you this: if you want to learn and improve yourself (and who doesn’t right? 😉 ) you should follow these.

Here’s the overview of the series:

http://www.stateofdigital.com/tag/summer-school/

Let me know your thoughts and how your education helped you get further in your job.

(also published on Linkedin)


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Training Social Search at the International SEO School

Category:Training Tags : 

As you know I am originally a trained history teacher. That means that in many of my talks you will find references to historical events. Since my parents were both teachers, it also means that it is ‘in my genes’ to be a teacher. It therefore makes sense that I do training sessions.

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.

Read More

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Category:speaking Tags : 

At the moment I am in Leeds, UK, where tomorrow I will be speaking at the conference “Thinkvisibility”. A conference which is close to my heart because it is organised by Dom Hodgson, a very nice and smart guy and because it is one of those conferences where it’s about great quality content, but also about good fun!

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!


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New clinic search engine marketing with DDMA

Category:Clinics Tags : 

Last year I did a clinic search engine marketing for beginners for the DDMA, the Dutch Dialogue Marketing Association, for whom I’m currently also doing a strategic project. The clinic was a big success, both for me (I enjoyed it very much) as for the people taking the course.

Because of the success we decided to do the clinic again this Quarter. On top of that we are working on some more (related) clinics, but more about that some other time. For now the demand for the clinic is good, already a week after we announced this new clinic more than half of the available seats were already sold. But there is still room, so if you are interested you are more than welcome to register for the clinic. Even if you are not a DDMA-member. DDMA members do get a big discount! 

Check out all the information (in Dutch!) here.


Short bio

* Highly sought-after professional keynote speaker, trainer and strategist
* Awarded European Search Personality 2015
* More than 15 years of web experience
* Award winning consultant, trainer and professional speaker
* Founder of State of Digital
* Longer bio here