SAP Global Survey: Kris Hoet in Belgium

[Kris Hoet & Bike Babe Sculpture in Brussel. Photo By Shel]

Kris Hoet is

Marketing Communications Manager for the MSN/Windows Live European team. I met him first through blogging, and then he invited me to visit Brussels last October when Canadian VC Rick Segal and I were traveling through Europe. Kris proved to be a great host. He gave us a great walking tour through the remarkable Brussels Old Town district, then hosted a blogger lunch in a most impressive restaurant where we discovered that most Belgian bloggers were friends.  We then chatted with some interesting Microsofties in an ancient tower they had converted into a meeting room with a great view. With interesting views in mind, I thought Kris would have some for the SAP Global Survey and I was right. 

1. How is the Internet adoption rate in Belgium? Are there still problems getting broadband installed into the home?

Belgium's total population is about 10.5 million and our online population is about 4.6 million. According to a recent Blognation post on the state of Belgium, “About 2.5 million of those people (or an estimated 50% of Belgian households) have a broadband Internet connection. ADSL and cable make up more than 92% of Internet connections, but the growth rate of new broadband connections is staggeringly low. The three most apparent reasons: the southern part of Belgium (Walloon region) is lagging behind, PC penetration is a mere 57%, and prices remain enormously high (about twice as expensive as neighbor countries France and The Netherlands). There is a virtual duopoly of the major Internet service providers Telenet and Belgacom (the Belgian State holds the majority of shares of the latter).”

 2. What are people doing with social media in Belgium?  What's popular? What's not?

That same Blognation article answers this one as well:

“Belgium has a relatively small but very active blogging community, with a concentration of heavy social network users (and more than 300 estimated Twitter users). This year, the Belgian blogging community organized its own awards show dubbed the Bwards, recognizing the best Belgian blogs, bloggers and vlogs. It is unclear how many bloggers use WordPress, Typepad and the likes, and how many are on Belgian platforms like Belgacom’s Skynetblogs, Telenet’s Digs Blogs, or other initiatives like Skyrock and Bloggen.be. Most media groups (are starting to) incorporate blogs and social networking features in their online properties. Belgium even has its own blog search engine, De Blogoloog, while other services like Blogium and BlogObs serve as Techmeme-like aggregators of popular links. There are a lot of opportunities for Belgians to engage in social interaction (and dating) on the web: Chat.be, Rendez-Vous, ASLpage, LNM.eu, etc. Some community websites target specific niches, e.g. Creativeskills for the creative sector or Dogsontheblock for dog owners. Join2Grow acts as a pan-European community site for entrepreneurs, and business travelers who regularly take trips to Paris and London might want to check out PlaceToBiz.”

 

The only thing I would add is that you have to know that most global players don’t localize their services (in language) for a market such as Belgium. Therefore, you will see ENG language services like Wordpress or Twitter because of the early adopter usage, but not that much for MySpace or Facebook. Again, all the key bloggers are on Facebook, but it’s definitely not widespread due to the language. One local service that wasn’t mentioned here is GarageTV, which is Telenet’s YouTube clone.

Also the Blognation post doesn’t mention anything about Windows Live Spaces, which is localized for Belgium and there are over 1 million Windows Live Spaces in the country. Neither does it talk about Windows Live Messenger which is by far the most used Messenger client in the country with over 3.4 million active users. On 4.6 million internet users, that sure ain’t bad ;)

 

3. How, if at all, is social media impact life in Belgium? How about just among young people?

I think most of the impact is among young people. Yes we have about 300,000 50+ users on Live Messenger, but it’s the youth segment that uses it hardcore. "MSN" is a verb in Belgium. e.g. "Let’s MSN later on," etc… referring to Messenger. It’s the young ones who share photos, get hooked up on new services, who only find their job through online services and as such are more quickly attracted to the Web 2.0 job services like expertize.be . It’s mainly youth that watch movies online, or post clips on YouTube and the like. But in the other age groups I don’t think the impact is that big… for now.

 

4. Let's focus on business. What kinds of companies are adopting social media?  Is it being used internally or externally?

The interactive advertising agencies are pushing for it very hard, but there are only few companies that have adopted much of it. There are great campaigns out there coming from Belgian agencies, that make very good use of the social media aspect. One of these that got launched just recently is Jealous Computers to promote the Nokia N95 cellphone. Some companies have CEO bloggers, but very few and if there are, these companies are mainly online businesses. Skynet (the ADSL operator) used to have a blogging CEO for instance. The idea of opening up for comments, feedback, 2-way conversation still seems to scare the hell out of people.

 So I would say, that if you see companies making much use of social media, their agency is probably the one to thank and, of course, as everywhere you have individuals who totally get it that fight the systems from the inside. The last business segment that is maybe getting into this, is the traditional media in their online presence (newspapers, TV, radio). They introduced their blog(s), RSS feeds, podcasts, debate options, interactive TV shows that made use of the online …

 5. Got any interesting case studies?

All examples are either in Dutch or in French so hard to read for your int’l audience I guess. I think of the Nsights website (for Nokia N series) at http://www.nsights.be/ (hey is that Shel Israel in there? J). We had the Paola246 case, which is quite interesting as it concerned a video of a mysterious new blogger in the beginning but ended up being a creation by Het Paleis which is a theater, and the whole online conversation with this Paola246 was the piece basically (almost only online (more here: http://www.hetpaleis.be/events.php?id=157&parent=53). Once you’ve put these answers up online, I’ll post the link to some of my distinguished online colleagues, I’m sure they can come up with some other cool stuff.

 

6. What about at Microsoft? How is the Blue Monster using social media in Belgium? What about in the EU?

I would think of it as two-way: (1)  I feel like we can go a lot further in using social media ideas on our own products like the MSN.com portals in all countries but most of that is driven from Redmond, and (2) We try and be part of the conversation and there we do have quite a track record already.

We’ve been trying things out for the last 2 years. We invited bloggers to small events where we open up discussion on our services. We invite bloggers to what used to be press events only. We were present at events such as Barcamps, several Microsoft colleagues started their own blogs to reach out to their audience on a specific topic or to engage more in the conversation. We sponsored LeWeb3 last year, invited some bloggers with us to MIX07 in Vegas (Microsoft Web Conference), … and so on. With +17.000 Microsoft colleagues on Facebook and 3.500 Microsoft bloggers I think we’re not lagging behind here.

 

7. What impact do you think social media is having on young people in the EU?

It is significantly changing the way they consume media. Think about multi-tasking, more on demand viewing, etc… but none of that is unique to the EU. I guess the main difference with the EU and the US or Asia is probably the speed on how people hook up on this. In Asia, the mobile element of it is key, more than anywhere else. In France, blogging is quite big, but less so in Germany, … but you know all that. It’s in your book .

 

8. What social media tools do you use?  How do they impact you personally and professionally?

I have accounts everywhere, but there are some services that I use a lot.

• Bloglines: because it syncs with my desktop feedreader and so I can read it on mobile as well
• Wordpress: for my blog(s)
•  Live Messenger: with 350 buddies on the list, a lot of conversations happen here
• Facebook: more and more addicted as we keep using it
• MyBlogLog
• Technorati, Blogpulse, … :blogtracking (my own and others)
• Twitter (and Jaiku/Pownce – although most interaction is on Twitter)
• Delicious: for my bookmarking
• Windows Live Writer: for offline blogging, and handy for multiple blogs
• Digg, Techmeme, …: keeping on top of the tech news

Key to all this is my Feed reader, in which I have around 300 feeds, together with my own blog. Reading and commenting with others, as well as writing and creating your own conversation got me new conversations, got me meeting new people, like you for instance, … I learned a lot from that and had conversations that would have been almost impossible without it.

 9. What advice do you have for EU-based corporate communications professionals regarding social media?

I would give the same advice to any corporation with one special remark when it comes to Europe and that is that you have to think about language. As for the US, we can easily interact with anyone out there from Redmond, something that is hard to do in Europe in a sense that I don’t want the interaction to happen from HQ in London, but on a local level. Now this only counts for bigger corporations, but it’s an important element. It will force companies like Microsoft to make sure we can educate our local offices on this, instead of hiring someone in HQ to understand and takes care of things.