Category Archives: News

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Introducing Speak with Persuasion

Category:News,speaking,Training Tags : 

There is an interesting exercise that might surprise you. The exercise only involves counting things:

  • Count the number of times you or someone at your office is talking to an audience at an event.
  • Then add the number of times someone is talking to a group of clients.
  • Add to that the number of times you’ve been part of a ‘pitch’ in which you are presenting your business or your product.
  • Then add the number of times people are speaking to a group of colleagues

What’s your number? Is it higher than expected? I bet it is.

Without realising, we are all speakers. Whether it is at a conference or during our everyday work. In the business of marketing, this is even more so. We are also training our clients, sometimes even teaching potential clients. We are doing webinars, creating videos, and much more.

We are always “speaking in public”.

As marketers, we are doing this all with one main purpose: to persuade. To persuade our clients to choose us, to persuade their clients to choose them. To persuade our colleagues or our management from the direction we are choosing.

We are always trying to persuade.

So answer me this: why is there so little attention for doing this right?

Too often, I am surprised about how little businesses actually pay attention to this part of the job. Because that’s what it is: part of the job.

Yet we expect everyone in our organisations to ‘do it’. Talent or no talent. They expect you to speak in one or more of the situations described above. Without any problem.

This why last year I started offering a public speaking course to agencies.

But we can do more.

Introducing Speak with Persuasion

This is why I am proud to announce a new venture: Speak with Persuasion.

At Speak with Persuasion, we aim to make every marketer a better speaker. Whether it is for internal or external purposes.

Speak with Persuasion will be offering different training options. Training that fits both individuals and businesses. At the same time, it will also be a learning platform for (marketing) speakers.

There are articles, a blog (where learnings and good examples are shared). We have unique e-mail tips and insights, and soon we will have a podcast, online training and webinars.

At Speak with Persuasion, you can learn everything about public speaking and persuasion.

Whether you experienced in speaking or not. Whether you are looking for small tips or big changes. If you are looking for information to improve your pitches. Or if you want to know more about being a trainer, it’s all there.

Go check it out!

I’d love to know what your thoughts are, so message me or drop me a tweet (and don’t forget to follow Speak with Persuasions Twitter feed!).

PS If you’d like me to come and deliver a talk or run a workshop for your business: ping me an email. I’d be happy to chat further!

PS 2 Of course, I’d love some shares on social about this!


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Friends of Search, Iceland and workshops – My month in January and my February plans

Category:Events,News,Personal Tags : 

It feels like last weekend that the New Year started. Yet January is almost over. Where has it gone? It seems like the first month of what is going to be a very interesting year has flown by. The month has been very busy. And guess what, I haven’t even been out of the country!

Where last year I spent many hours on a plane, my plan was to this year do a bit less traveling. The travel I will do would be very focused. And don’t worry, I’ll get on that plane soon, because there are many things planned in the upcoming months. More about that in a minute. First I want to quickly look back onto the last month.

What have I been doing?

As said, I haven’t been out of the country, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing. Actually, I’ve been so busy that part of my plan for January I couldn’t even get done! My plan was to make a lot of mileage on my book that I’m finally writing. Now I’ve made some progress this month, but I have to admit, I wanted it to be more. The reason for the ‘delay’ however was good and it will benefit the book as well.

This month I’ve been doing a lot of workshops in The Netherlands. Next to my regular sessions, there’s been a workshop at a Dutch Insurance company, helping them get ready for a new website they are developing. This session was very interesting because of the field, the insurance field is a very competitive one as well as very seasonably influenced. There’s also been a workshop for a foundation that supports Autism, helping them get a first grip on who they are targeting with their several different websites. There will be a follow up on that as well. And there has been a great workshop with Sports Marketers, something I also did last year, but this year with a new group. The exciting things about these workshops is not just helping people, it’s also meeting new people and learning from them as well. Each industry is different and within each industry there are differences as well. Very valuable!

I’ve also done a webinar this month with Startup Istanbul (where I’m hoping to go in October) and I’m speaking to a group of retired High Level Executives, which is exciting for many reasons, one of them being that my dad is in the room!

What’s to come in February

January has been busy and by the looks of it, the upcoming month(s) will be as well! Just looking at February I can see a few things to be very excited about. Again there are workshops (one for a team of doctors and medical experts, talk about differentiation!) and I’m speaking again. Two conferences I’d like to highlight here for February:

Friends of Search

On February 11th I will be in Amsterdam the entire day to be hosting “Friends of Search”. The entire day I will be presenting and asking questions to people on stage. Most of them will be actually my friends! This event, organised by the Dutch DMA and IAB, was one of my highlights last year. This year it looks to be awesome again. Just look at the line-up. There is Lee Odden, who I haven’t seen in ages, so I’m really looking forward to seeing him again. There are Wil Reynolds and Larry Kim, extremely knowledgeable and likeable people. And there are the amazing Emily Grossman, Stacey MacNaught with whom I always love spending time and listening to. And I’m looking forward to seeing Martijn Scheijbeler from The Next Web on stage, not to mention all the other great speakers. It’s going to be an exciting day.

Who will be there? (I think there are s few tickets left)

RIMC 2016

The evening of Friends of Search I will be returning to the world of traveling. I’m flying to Reyjavik for the yearly return of RIMC! I’m always excited to see my good friend Kristjan Hauksson, who’s organised this conference for 11 years already. The past few years I’ve been lucky enough to be part of it. Again I will be hosting the day, but this year I will also be speaking, closing the conference with a bang!

It will be great to see old friends again, like Dave Naylor, who I haven’t seen in a while and of course Russell, Matt, Pierre Far and I’m really excited that State of Digital’s Sam Noble will be speaking!

February looks to be amazing again. It will probably fly by even faster than January (it has less days anyway), but luckily this year is a leap year, so we win a day ;-). Oh and I’m going skiing in February as well, my favourite holiday!

Where will you be this month? Am I going to see you somewhere? Let me know, be great to catch up!!!


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Moving on from Linkdex

Category:News,Personal Tags : 

Life is basically a set of choices. These choices determine what happens. Make no choice and you have no life.

Today marks a day in which I have personally made another choice. Well, the choice was made over a month ago, but today the choice becomes reality.

As of today I am moving on from Linkdex. After a year at the business I made the choice to pursue directions that are close to my heart.

I have always been a teacher, trying to help people get insights and learnings and make them better. I think I’ve also done that at Linkdex in the past year. Now it is time for the next step in that.

Linkdex has been a very intense ride. Lots of travel, lots of insights, debates and lots of exciting times. I’ve seen things from a different perspective. I’ve hopefully also been able to get some of my vision on marketing inside the heads of people at Linkdex. There are great people working at Linkdex, I hope they can make their dreams come true!

In my next steps I’d like to get a bit closer to how I believe marketing should be done. I am looking forward to steering this again at State of Digital together with Sam. I am also looking forward to helping a more diverse set of clients get a better grip on their marketing efforts. The lessons I learned at Linkdex will definitely come in handy there.

I’ll still be flying the world!

So in the near future, there will be more speaking, training and consulting for me in the next year. Starting next week in Las Vegas! If you want to be part of that, just drop me an e-mail!


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Holy Crap! I won the award for European Search Personality of the Year!

Category:Events,News Tags : 

It was a crazy week last week. After I had flown to Iceland for RIMC and gotten back home I flew out again to Berlin where I was awarded with what I believe is the biggest honor award you can get in the search industry at the moment: European Search Personality of the Year!

Last Wednesday I traveled to Berlin to attend the European Search Awards 2015. With State of Digital we were mediapartners and Linkdex had 4 nominations to win, so there was a lot of reason to go.

This was going to be one of my shorter trips so I decided to take my car to the airport so I would be sure I would be able to get home quickly the day after because I had to pick the kids up from school. When I got to the airport however Schiphol had decided to close down the parking garages, which are closest to the airport without any warnings. I had to drive around for almost half an hour to end up parking in the furthest place you can imagine. I would have been better off taking the train.

Because of this I almost missed my flight. That turned out to be the only stress I had that day. It would only get better. Much better.

In Berlin I met up with old friends. When you travel to speak you meet up with some people at events. An awards ceremony always means there are many people there you know. It’s kind of like a reunion sometimes. Some people I hadn’t seen in a long time, so it was really good to catch up.

searchawards-room

I catched up with people before, during and after dinner. After dinner the actual awards started. Linkdex was nominated for four different awards so we were excited to have a shot at winning one or more. Before the categories from Linkdex came up Lisa Myers, co-founder with me on State of Search, and her company VerveSearch had already won 3 awards (congratulations!) so the atmosphere in the room was good. I was asked to hand out an award as well and the evening reached a nice peak when Linkdex actually won the award for best innovation for the Entity Search tool.

It however wasn’t over yet. During the evening there had been some hints but when Jackie Hole got on stage and started to talk about the award for Search Personality she was going to hand out it became clear to me something special was about to happen. I was expecting someone else to win the award, but when Jackie talked about the fact that the person who won it was special for her because he had helped her and she would not have been on the stage without him I realized she was talking about me. And indeed then she mentioned my name:

I am the European Search Personality of the year!

Bas-winner1-450x600

Holy crap!

It truly is great to receive an award like this. It is a huge recognition of all that I have been doing in the past few years, trying to educate the industry and getting it to the next level. For those not in the industry: you can compare it the winning best player of the year in Europe in sports, but then in the industry ;-).

On stage I told a story about how different people in the industry, starting with Collette and Dom had helped me when the site got hit about a year and a half ago and that Dom had said he helped me because of ‘Karma’. I truly believe that is what earned me this award as well. Giving makes that at one point you get as well. That also shows in tribute post the editorial team on State of Digital wrote for me.

Thank you!

When on stage I didn’t have time to thank all the people that made that I won this award and to be honest I was a bit overwhelmed so probably also forgot some names. So I would definitely want to name them again and some more here.

winning-searchawards

Starting of course with the editorial team of State of Digital, lead by the fantastic Sam Noble, with Barry Adams, Jo Turnbull, Russell O’Sullivan, Louis Venter, Jackie Hole and Arianne Donoghue. Lisa Myers, without whom it would have never happened if we hadn’t set up State of Search all those years ago. And of course the Linkdex team lead by my friend Matt Roberts with a huge role for Collette Easton. The marketing team there with Valbona, Pat, Matt and all the others. And then the industry friends. Too many to mention of course, but think about Roy (former co-host of the radio show), Paul Madden, Dom Hodgson, Gareth Hoyle, James Murray, Dave Naylor, from whom I learned so much, Kristjan Hauksson and so many others that I would have to mention names here forever. Of course also a big thank you to the organisers of the event Don’t Panic.

The most important thing is to realize that this award is one that shows that working together pays off. It’s the people that make the business, not the tools.

So thank you all for this fantastic award. I am hugely proud of it and will carry the title with honor!

Find below some more images of the evening, if you want to see more, the organisation has some here.

Winners with Linkdex!

Winners with Linkdex!

The great host of the evening, Mel Carson

The great host of the evening, Mel Carson

Dom and Gareth

Dom and Gareth

Handing out an award

Handing out an award

Lisa and her Vervesearch team

Lisa and her Vervesearch team

Jackie announcing my win

Jackie announcing my win

Winning! With Jackie

Winning! With Jackie


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Yes, I am joining the Linkdex team!

Category:News Tags : 

I have some news, which some of you saw coming, and may surprise others: I am joining the Linkdex team!

In the past few years I have been doing a lot of different things. I’ve set up blogs like Searchcowboys and State of Search/ State of Digital. I’ve been doing training sessions for business schools and colleges, I have worked with the DMA, I have been consulting for big and small companies like KLM, MTV and Koozai for example and I have been speaking around the globe on digital marketing related topics.

All that time there was one thing that I was missing: working with a team of smart colleagues. Of course there is the State of Digital team, which I love working with, but they all have day jobs on the side as well. At Linkdex I will get the opportunity to work with smart people who are actually hired by Linkdex.

In the past four years I have met with the people of Linkdex many times. Mostly at conferences. People like Matt Roberts and Collette Easton have turned into friends on those trips. We also worked together on different occasions, like for example the e-books we published together with State of Digital and Linkdex. In all those years Matt Roberts from Linkdex has asked me a few times if I didn’t want to come and work for them. The timing was never right.

Linkdex2014Now however the moment seems right. With State of Digital we are on route and the site is ready to take the next steps based on the strategy we have set out and with Sam Noble helping me out there I am getting a bit more time on my hands. Which makes that when Matt asked me the last time I started considering working with Linkdex and got more excited every time we talked.

And now we are making it official: as of December 1st I am joining the Linkdex team. working on the Social and Digital PR and Marketing for Linkdex and Momentology!

This gives me the opportunity to work with a great team of people and built out a product and a website which both have a lot of potential!

But wait, what about the other stuff?

As said, I do a lot of different things. And I will continue to do so. I will be spending a lot of time at Linkdex yes, but the consultancy for companies like MTV and KLM will still be there, as will the training sessions for Beeckestijn and others. I will also still be speaking around the world and State of Digital will run as usual. I will be more on the background there, but don’t worry, I will be there!

Is there time for that you ask? Well, we’ll have to see of course, but I think there is, since the way I do consultancy is different from others: you hire me for example for half a day, not for a long term period, it’s session based. The training sessions are usually in the evenings anyway and State of Digital can be done everywhere. I also won’t be working full time for Linkdex so there will be plenty of room for other things as well, so don’t be afraid to get in touch about that!

For now I am happy to make this announcement and excited to be working with Linkdex. Keep an eye out for all other things! More news to come soon!!


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