Dirk joined our community during its nascent days in October, 2007. He didn't start posting right away due to his responsibilities as director and digital planner at the London brand strategist and planner at the communications agency Cow, where he was one of the founders eight years ago. Since then, Cow has grown from a £10k loan and two clients to being the industry body's agency of the year in 2008.
He began sharing posts on SMT as an offshoot of doing his own company blog, News from the Herd. "There are a lot of company blogs out there that are huge turn offs by virtue of using the space to shout how amazing they are," Dirk says. "I try and tell readers something they don't know, which is how it should be in social media."
Dirk's secret, wrapped in modesty, is that he is practically a social media native, having gotten on the train during the Dot Com boom; everything Dirk has learned in social media has been self-taught.
"Twitter and microblogging services fascinate me because they speed up the news cycle even further," he says. "Though there's been some recent talk about the Twitter bubble, Twitter has an importance that's not solely dependent on the mass of people that join."
Here's a great presentation from Dirk on Justifying Social Media in a Recession.
Like Dave Brock, last week's Blogger of the Week, Dirk takes the long view as seen in this post on the value of video advertising.
And he's not bashful about stepping outside the box when it comes to new ideas and cause related marketing.
Congratulations Dirk, and thanks for being with us since the herd left the barn!