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Trainer Profile: Jelle Annaars

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Jelle Annaars has worn many hats in the communication industry. Originally a copywriter and content marketer, Jelle fell into media training by chance. Asked to fill the shoes of a colleague who ran media trainings for Voice, Jelle never looked back and has hosted that same training session more than ten times since. In March 2016, Jelle was awarded an honourable mention in the Gouden Veer competition, which recognises best-practice in Belgian communication. He has also created copy for BNP Paribas and the European Parliament and was the first Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer in the Benelux. Jelle is excited about the future of a smarter media training industry and wants to help clients understand how they can use social media and blogs to advance their business. When he’s not conducting trainings himself, Jelle often finds himself attending trainings on media training.

 

Q: Why is a strong presence on social media important for businesses?

A: Social media connects you to the world and it creates serendipity. You have a massive amount of people spending a huge amount of time on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Every organisation or company has an interest in connecting to this target audience. When you’re not on social media you are missing out on an opportunity to connect and have a positive interaction with this group.

 

Q: What is the biggest mistake on social media that businesses make?

A: Too many businesses forget about the social aspect of social media. They treat these platforms as a TV channel or magazine where they only create messages that suit their perspective. The messages are one sided but they expect that to work for them. I cannot stress enough that social media is a place where two-way interactions happen. Social media should not be about broadcasting how great you are, it’s about interactions.

 

“When you’re not on social media you are missing out on an opportunity to connect.”

 

Q: What content should be posted on Facebook vs. Twitter vs. LinkedIn?

A: In general, people go to Facebook to relax. People open up Facebook because they want to see what their friends and relatives are doing. On this platform people want fun and lighthearted content. There are a few exceptions to this but people go there for general interests. So as a brand you should use your content to bridge whatever is between you and their personal life. On LinkedIn, people visit the site because they are looking for a new job or because they want to stay in touch with their professional network. Everything that involves business is great for LinkedIn. And Twitter is a strange animal because you get a variety of content. You see silly cat pictures but you also see very serious business articles.

 

Q: What is the next big platform?

A: Snapchat is not the next big platform because it’s already popular. However, I think it will continue to grow. I believe there are more Snapchat users than Twitter users currently. Snapchat is interesting because it marks the movement away from publishing content for everyone. If you do a Facebook post anyone can see it but marketers are fed up with creating content for everyone. They now want to create something and decide who it gets shown to; whether this is only their friends, or only their colleagues etc. Unfortunately, I believe people are reading less and less, and they are becoming much more visually oriented. As a result, I predict that live video is going to be big. Periscope is one example. It is a platform owned by Twitter where you use your phone to open the Periscope app and start filming. This sends out a tweet and people can follow what you are filming live. This is spectacular and I think we will see more of that.

 

Jelle teaches the course Mastering Social Media for Clear Europe.

 

About Ed Sawyer

Communication Assistant at Clear Europe and Journalism student at Southampton Solent University. Twitter: @ESJourn

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