“I’m on a mission to unlock content marketing in Europe. To connect more people, more cases and more knowledge throughout our continent.”

For those who don’t know me yet: I am Carlijn, wife of a musician, mother of two girls, business owner, content marketing strategist, author and speaker from the Netherlands. That little flat country in the West of Europe with 17.5 million inhabitants. And we speak Dutch. Did you know that, worldwide, only 23 million people speak Dutch? Our ‘next door country’ is Germany and they speak German. In Belgium 60% speaks Dutch and the rest speaks French. Then we have the UK, English, Denmark, Danish, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Romania, en so on… 27 countries in the EU, and 24 official languages. Very charming, but also a big disadvantage for global exchange of knowledge.

Of course, we use a lot of English over here. Except for a few countries, English is a well-known second language. But mostly used if we communicate across borders. So, what happens to all that knowledge, all those beautiful cases and interesting people that communicate in their own language because that is where their audiences are. It doesn’t get shared! Only when they enter for international press or prices. But don’t you think we can learn from German cases too? Or Italian examples? Hungarian thought leaders? Of course, there are cultural differences, but how different are we really? Or are there more similarities than we thought?

My content didn’t travel very far

I feel kind of stupid, but this disadvantage of our fragmented continent first struck me only a couple of years ago. I am writing about content marketing for more than a decade now. I published some articles on Content Marketing Institute blog, and I spoke on several international stages, but most of my content was in Dutch. Like my first three books. So that content didn’t travel very far. Last year I got the chance to publish my fourth book, Binge Marketing, in English and that really opened the world for me. Not only for business opportunities, but I am also getting to know all kinds of people all over the world.

It’s a one way road of knowledge

So, I thought… If it’s a matter of unlocking content in English, then there is so much more knowledge to share across Europe! Right now, regarding content marketing it’s kind of a one way road. We consume a lot of content from English speaking countries like the UK and the US. But we haven’t got a clue of what is happening regarding content marketing in Portugal. In Sweden. Or in France. And then I received an e-mail from Al Kamara. He bought WeContent, which was a Romanian content marketing conference, but two months after he bought it Covid hit the world. So, he changed his strategy by turning WeContent into a European platform for content marketing, and he asked me if I could help him write and review content.

Our mission to unlock content marketing in Europe

And so Al, the weekly growing WeContent team and I are on a mission now. A mission to unlock content marketing in Europe. To connect more people, more cases and more knowledge throughout Europe. I bought an Interrail ticket and requested an international press card so I can keep on traveling to interview great minds across Europe. And while I am doing that I am getting the opportunity to travel Europe by train, meet interesting new people and to get inspired by content marketing cases and opportunities. In October I visited Ghent in Belgium, to interview Koen Denolf from The Fat Lady. You can read his story here.

Next stop: Munich. Germany.[to be continued]

Follow my mission on Instagram and WeContent.eu (still in progress)

Note 1: I am not a native English speaker, so it won’t be flawless. Please notify me when and where to improve the content.