"I had only given myself one week to write it, and wrote nothing worth saving in the first three days. Fortunately, I had been putting all my notes in a mind-map. When I exported that to a Word document, I already had about half the pages I needed." Hang on - a week? How good can the book be?

Apparently good enough. Willaerts (pictured) is one of the foremost experts on social media in the country. Published in February in English and in March in Dutch, The Conversity Model: Making Money with Social Media is already required reading for students at EHSAL Management School in Brussels.

"The hardest part for a first-time author like me was getting ‘into the zone'," she says. "But once I got a kind of writer's high, I kept writing day and night."
Willaerts is a prolific public speaker and guest lecturer in the Netherlands and Belgium. As the organiser of Brussels Girl Geek Dinners and Business Unit Manager of Conversity.be, a division of Sanoma Magazines that assists companies with social media presence, she leads the way in all things online and has more than 8,000 Twitter followers.

"Social media is an area where you have to learn and teach every single day," she explains. "It changes so often. When I work with clients, I focus on their industry, company objectives and company culture."
Her client list is extensive, and her work has an obvious impact. "I like the way Flanders DC uses Twitter to stimulate entrepreneurs to use more creativity in the way they do business. I love the way Flanders Investment & Trade is using YouTube movies to convince Flemish entrepreneurs to enter their yearly contest."

Examples like these pepper her book, which is split into three parts, the first of which distinguishes between social media and social networks. In the second, she discusses social media in business and concludes with her "conversity" model. She clearly describes various examples such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Netlog, LinkedIn, Hives, Facebook and blogging, while offering extensive references and links.

The conversity model is based on four layers: observation, conversation, conversion and innovation. Observation is knowing your customers, conversation is engaging with them, conversion is where Willaerts works her magic and innovation is about empowering and caring for the people using the social media tools, both internally and externally.

She explains: "Companies should train their employees how they can use social media. For example, by keeping their eyes open and being a kind of antenna for what's being said in social media about their company, or about their competitors."

Willaerts' desire to share her passion is one of the driving forces behind the book. "I feel like I'm on some kind of a mission to convince people that you should only put time, effort and money into social media if it helps your company reach its goals. I don't expect managers to read my blog or my tweets every day. A book allows them to have some kind of archive.

She also wants to serve those looking to spend more time on the subject. "When someone's reading a book, they're opening their mind to the voice of the author. It's as if they are saying: for the next hour, two hours or six hours, I'm going to let you into my head, and, at the pace I want, I will let you talk me through a way of thinking. I see that as a privilege and an honour." www.conversity.be