The Olympics are in town and this city is all a buzz.  Following my post last week about how the Olympics use social media, I thought it would be great to follow up on that and take a look at how athletes are using these tools.

According to a Wired Magazine blog post, there is some confusion among athletes as to whether or not they are actually allowed to post during the games.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

But there is no Olympic rule that sets up a blackout period for athletes according to Bob Condron, the Director of Media Services for the United States Olympic Committee.

“Athletes are free to blog during the Games,” says Condron. “And Twitter is just a blog that’s written 140 characters at a time.”

There are some restrictions on what athletes can do online during the Olympics. According to the IOC Blogging Guidelines for the 2010 Games, athletes and other accredited people must keep their posts confined to their personal experiences.

Despite this confusion many athletes are using social media right now.  Lets look at which social media tools they are using, how they are using them as well as how you can find, follow and lend your support.

Twitter

Lots of athletes are using Twitter to share their Olympic experiences.  One of the best ways to find them is to follow Olympic lists like these ones.

Canadian Athletes on Twitter

US Olympic Athletes on Twitter

Olympic Winter Sports

True North Media House

Huffington Post Athletes List

Olympians

Athletes are using Twitter in different ways.  Some are simply sharing their experiences in getting to BC and settling in to their new diggs at this point.  Many are posting their experiences in their final practices leading up to their events and all are  building their fan base. By finding and following our athletes on Twitter we have the chance to share in their Olympic experiences first hand as well as to give them our support.

Many national teams have dedicated Twitter feeds too, to keep fans updated:

Team Canada

Team Great Britain

Facebook

Whilst Twitter gives athletes a quick and easy way to communicate with fans, many also have fan pages on Facebook to build awareness of their endeavors, to post video content and share their Olympic aspirations.  Canadian gold medal contender in figure skating, Patrick Chan’s page links to video clips, fan photos and updates about the skater.

One of the best ways to find and follow athletes on Facebook is through the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Page.  Theyrecently asked the question “Hey any Olympic athletes out there? What is your Facebook page?”, here is the response.  Another way is to find the national team pages and check out who they are fans of – athletes are usually listed.  Here are a few – to find the rest search Facebook for “Olympic Team”.

Canadian Olympic Team

US Olympic Team

Swiss Olympic Team

Australian Olympic Team

Blogs

How these athletes find time to train and blog is beyond me – I guess that is why they are Olympians and I am not!  Here are links to athletes using these forums too:

Dustin Cook – Official blog of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team Member

Speed skater – Denny Morrison.

Good Luck To All Athletes

Good luck to all athletes competing at the games – thanks for keeping us posted on social media.  Welcome to BC and enjoy your time here: may it be golden!

I had a slew of old friends find and follow me on Facebook recently and its great to catch up but most of them are newbies to social media and making their first forays in these networks. In watching their actions, I thought I would craft a post giving them some pointers they should consider to maintain their safety and privacy online.

1. Use the privacy settings (in Facebook click on settings at the top right hand side of your screen then privacy) to make sure that your personal information such as date of birth, home address, email etc are not there for all the world to see – don’t want to encourage identity thieves or spammers do we?

2. Off the Wall – don’t use people’s wall to communicate personal information or communications. If it is longer than a couple of sentences take it to Facebook email.

3. Remember that the first thing recruiters do these days is to check out candidates on Facebook. If you intend on ever applying for another job you should be cogniscent of this. If you plan on getting your boobs out or boasting about your drinking prowess to the world give it some consideration first. Always do the granny test, be careful of what you post and again use the privacy settings accordingly.

4. Be authentic – upload a profile picture so that people can see that its really you – or what you look like after all these years, as the case may be.

5. Be selective about who you add. Don’t add every TD&H who invites you and remember what mother said about strangers! Seriously though, being selective about who you connect with gives you more control if safety is a concern.

6. Be respectful and don’t use profanities too much – you never know when someone’s kid is watching over there shoulder (take it from me – this happens a lot!).

7. Be true to who you are. Transeparency is key to effective social media participation. Don’t try to present yourself as something or someone you are not. Imagine how embarassing it will be when someone crawls out of the woodwork and points out the truth – to everyone.

8. My friend Marc at Amuse Consulting says if its not worth saying out loud, its not worth saying on line. This is a good mantra to bear in mind when considering your status updates.

9. Block Em – If someone is rude to you in comments or on your wall, you can block them. Again go to settings, privacy and scroll down to Block List to do so.

10. Applications – you should be aware that most of the games and applications on Facebook are from third party companies you know nothing about and are often set up for the simple purpose of collecting you marketing info. Once you add the application, they have access to your information. Be wary of which applications you add and again use the privacy settings to control this.

Vancouver 2010

With only 11 days to go before the Vancouver Olympics begin, the excitement is building here and I thought this would be a good time to update on our last post about the Olympics and Social Media.

Since posting over a year ago, it would appear that the Olympic organisation has embraced social media somewhat and had some hick-ups on the way.

The Olympics on Twitter

In November VANOC was chastised for their poor response on Twitter when thousands were left waiting and eventually dissed because of a glitch in their ticket ordering system: rather than using Twitter as a customer service tool to let customers know exactly what was going on, their Tweets were ambiguous and erratic.

You can enjoy “timely Tweets from the VANOC communications team” at 2010 Tweets, where the organisation continues to push out information about itself with little interaction or true community building. The same can be said for their other feeds: @followthe flame, @code2010.

The Olympics on Facebook

They do rather better on Facebook, it has to be said. Both Vancouver 2010 and The Cultural Olympics are well represented there.

Again, fans cannot contribute to posts on the site but they can and do comment – most of them being positive.

The less publicised Canada Code page though is centred around community and collaboration. The Canada Code website encourages everyone to upload photos and text sharing their Olympic experiences. If you do, you could win a pair of those red mittens everyone is trying to get their hands on (or on their hands as the case may be!)  and if you are really lucky your content may be shared on public screens across Vancouver during the event. Now that is more like it VANOC! From their Facebook page:

The Olympics and Citizen Journalism

As for the Olympics embracing social media journalism, according to VANCOUVER ACCESS 2010, a collection of multi-media content; blog posts, pictures and videos covering the various winter/summer sports and cultural events, despite numerous attempts by prominent social media commentators VANOC seems to still be ignoring this vehicle:

“Over the past few years, as a group, we have spoken at various conferences and events about the impact of citizen journalism, social media and the internet on the various Olympics, IOC and “ANY”OC brands. We sent VANOC several letters over the past 18 months requesting to meet with them, and have a discussion about this change in culture… Without any replies.”

Seems a shame to ignore such valuable contributions.

Watch out for more on social media and the Olympics over the next month.

Yesterday, we talked about how you can use LinkedIn for recruitment purposes, today we look at some of the other tools available to support your recruiting needs.

Plaxo – another prominent professional networking tool with over 20 million users, Plaxo is similar to LinkedIn in that it allows you to search job listings and to connect with people who are hiring but unlike LinkedIn, it does not have tools aimed solely at recruiters yet.

Xing – Another professional network which is becoming more popular with over 8m users.  It is very similar in its functionality to LinkedIn but posting jobs is much cheaper.  The downside is that lots of users are in Europe so its not the best tool for North American recruitment purposes.

Other professional social networks that facilitate recruitment:

Viadeo

Biznik

Social Networks – Facebook

Facebook Groups:  there are groups on Facebook dedicated to getting the word out about jobs.  To do so you can join and post or participate.  Examples include:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=jobs&init=quick#/group.php?gid=29593013279&ref=search&sid=745281396.2828234181..1

Facebook Pages – some companies have Facebook pages dedicated solely to helping them find staff.  The best known example is the Ernst and Young Facebook Page.

Facebook Events – having a hiring fare?  You can use Facebook events like this one to promote it.

Facebook Ads: allow you to post ads aimed at people you want to employ: location, education level etc.

Twitter

Twitter is proving a great tool to promote job openings.  You can use corporate or staff Twitter pages to Twitter to your community about job postings or you can even have your own dedicated Twitter feed that serves this purpose alone like KPMG http://twitter.com/kpmg

As with any Twitter effort, your follow strategy will be important.

Twitter Ad-ons

You can also use third party tools like Twitter Job Search to search listings and post your own.

Here at Out-Smarts, we are looking to hire an intern right now.  So far we have had 3 suitable and interested candidates contact us and all we had to do was post the fact to Facebook and Twitter.    If you are interested please contact us, otherwise good luck in your recruiting or job search efforts.

This is a guest post from Jan Littler-Finseth.

Last night – driving home – I heard a discussion on the CBC’s ‘The Current’ about a Facebook page that has grown exponentially this week (it was set up last weekend and has grown from zero to over a hundred thousand members in a few short days). Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament is a page that provides a conduit to protest the decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to initiate prorogation and it is gathering steam.

Whether you supported the Conservatives or the Marijuana party in the last election or think that is wrong or okay for Parliament to be temporarily discontinued, the fact that a Facebook page is national news says something about the lengthening tentacles of Social Media.

In my car – windshield wipers working overtime – I was bemused at the number of ’serious’ people out there who are convinced that Facebook is mostly a vacuous portal only frequented by teenagers when on the contrary, the over 35 age group is the fastest growing.

Can Social Media sites bring about democratic reformation or real-world change of any kind? That remains to be seen but the truth is, Facebook, Twitter, and the likes are ‘little’ things that can make big change happen.

Grass roots politics has long been a facet of the Canadian political landscape but now tools like Facebook allow for communication and networking, bringing geographically diverse (but likeminded) communities together to join forces, communicate their message and have more impact.

Let’s face it, however, if your group, your idea, or protest is poorly focused and unsupported – no one thing will help. Social Media is only a part of a program – changes come when we act and believe that what we do makes a difference.

In December I read an article in the Vancouver Sun that inspired me.  The article, called “How Social Media Have Globalized the Shopping Experience”, related how the writer, Gillian Shaw, simply had to Twitter about her choice for next car and lo and behold she got a response from a GM dealer offering her a test drive. Here’s an excerpt:

My Social Media Experiment

So, I decided to try this out for myself to see whether organisations using social media are actually doing a good job of listening and responding to customers and prospects.

Twitter

First stop Twitter where I decided I would use the tool to plan a ski trip.  So I Twittered:

To date I haven’t had a response.  I tried a different tact and sent a Tweet to Sun Peaks who were listening to direct messages and did, thankfully, respond:

A few days later I got stuck in an elevator: what a perfect opportunity to see if anyone was listening and could help me.  So I posted my dilemma on Facebook and Twitter.  Followers we’re listening – I got 2 responses from friends, both in Alberta, both in no position to help me escape!

Facebook

On to Facebook, where I commented on the Marks & Spencer Page about my frustration with their delivery service (more often than not gifts for my family in the UK arrive broken or damaged):

Here was an opportunity for M&S to respond to my concern and to correct it in the public forum, to enhance their customer loyalty but again I had no response.  Very disappointing – this year I will find a more reliable supplier and M&S just lost a loyal customer of 20 odd years because they weren’t listening or were choosing to ignore my comments.

Shut Up and Listen

Whilst I might not have the following of a journalist like Gillian Shaw, I do have over 2000 Twitter followers and am very active online – I really expected to get more response to my social media comments.

What is my point here?  I have two:

1) Shut Up – First of all companies should realize that we are living in a new world, one where they can and should interact with their customers in these forums to build loyalty and improve customer service.  Your audience expects this and not doing so puts you at risk of negative exposure.   This is no longer a push to market model where companies bombard their audience with one way messages but a two way street where they can build loyal and valuable relationships with customers and prospects and enhance brand value.  Shut up about yourself already and focus instead on your audience and providing value for them.

2) Listen - the first step any company should take when approaching social media is to implement effective listening strategies.  Listen to what online communities have to say about your products or services, company, industry and competitors.   By doing so you will not only get a feel for what is appropriate (very useful when building your social media strategy) but you will also identify sales opportunities, chances to improve customer service and to build loyalty so that customers keep coming back.  Our article Are You Listening? talks about tools you can use to do this effectively.

Conclusion

I look forward to the day when companies stop talking about themselves and start listening to and fulfilling the needs of their audience on social media.  There is a vast source of information and opportunity about your company and your market online just waiting for you to tap into it.  What are you waiting for?  Shut up and listen!

Despite this being his busy season, Santa has been really active online:

Check out Santa’s trip on Twitter via NORAD and his Twitter profile.

On Facebook there are several Santas - its hard to see which is the real one but NORAD is on there too keeping track of his whereabouts.

Santa now ships to Canada – oh wait, I thought he lived here:  shifty You Tube promotion.  Ho ho ho.

Santa and Mrs Claus share some of their recipes on MySpace.

For more on Santa, check out his wikipedia listing.

And last but not least rumour has it that Santa uses an iphone app to track wish lists now.

I wonder how he finds the time.

Happy Holidays to all our readers.  We hope Santa is good to you!

This month we’ve invited some guest bloggers to contribute. The first is by friend and colleague Guacira Naves (Owner, The Online Strategy House):

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Over a decade ago, an online marketing strategy was comprised by separate tactics that had only one concern in mind: to drive traffic to a site. The game was relatively simple: a site would be built, it’d be supported by email newsletters, advertising, maybe some traditional media, and that was all that there was to it.

Then, marketers became aware of the importance of search engine optimization, and added that component to their plan. Today, social media marketing is the new kid on the block. Not only that – it’s changing how the other online marketing elements interact with each other.

Below is a sample of how this interdependence plays out – and how you can combine each individual channel for the greater good:

Twitter and Google:

• Google’s new real time search results mean that tweets with your brand may now appear in search results. So, a strong visibility on Twitter can very well influence your site’s exposure on Google. That’s another reason to maintain an active Twitter profile, and populate it with quality content.

Twitter and Customer Opinion:

• Not only is Twitter the most important micro-blogging network, it is increasingly used as a search tool. It is a channel where people go to find the online equivalent to “word of mouth” about a product, service, etc. On Twitter, frustrated customers often share their gripes, and loyal clients rave about their favourite brands.  Here’s an example:

Imagine if you were looking for reviews on Virgin Mobile and came across the two tweets above.  They may very well sway your decision-making.

However, Virgin Mobile could have stepped in to have their say. It’d potentially have an impact not only on the three individuals involved in that dialogue, but Virgin’s update would’ve been found in searches made for that brand.

Here’s a positive example of how proactive companies observe Twitter conversations, and interact with users: on December 10th, I decided to try Pearltrees. I then tweeted this update:

Minutes later, I received a reply from Pearltrees CEO, Patrice Lamothe, with this message:

That update was not only relevant to me, but to any other individual making a search query for “Pearltrees” around that time.

So, the lesson is: people are going to use Twitter’s search tool to find information on your products or services. You might as well help them find information that is as positive as possible.

YouTube and Search Engine Optimization:

• YouTube videos are prominently represented in Google’s search engine results.You do have a YouTube channel, don’t you? Then, make sure that, among other things, your videos titles and tags are optimized. And guess what – this will help your presence in search engines, too.

YouTube and other Social Networks:

• YouTube also gives viewers the option to share a video via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, orkut and StumbleUpon, directly from the video’s YouTube page. You can also embed a video into your blog, and invite readers to share it – either by embedding into their own blogs, by adding it to Facebook, or inviting them to share it through social bookmarking sites like Reddit. Earlier today, I embedded this third-party YouTube video about Hewlett-Packard into my own Facebook profile:

I wasn’t the only one. According to the video statistics, it was watched an additional 279 times as a result of links from Facebook. Reddit, a popular content-sharing site, had also generated 1,317 views.

Blogs and Search Engine Optimization:

• By frequently adding fresh, relevant content to your company’s blog, not only will you improve your brand’s presence and clout in the blogosphere, but you will help your site become more appealing in Google’s eyes. That is because Google naturally gives more importance to sites that are updated on a regular basis.

Blogs and Twitter:

• Blogs can easily be set up to automatically promote a new post, as soon as it is published. You will be not only be driving traffic to the blog itself, but will also help to keep your Twitter profile active with new, original material.

I could go on and on. This just scratches the surface, but gives you an idea of how, nowadays, online marketing elements are so interdependent. When planned accordingly and executed in an orchestrated manner, these tactics will make the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.

About the author: Guacira Naves is an online marketing strategist who has 18 years of Internet experience. Her company, The Online Strategy House, develops and executes holistic online marketing strategies to help clients achieve their short, medium and long-term goals.

Thanks to Guacira for this.  If you are interested in contributing  a post – give us a shout!

The question has come up a few times lately as to how to import your blog so that it appears on Facebook.  With all the apps, tools and functionality Facebook provides, its difficult to know the right approach.

The best way is to use Facebook Notes to publish your blog RSS feed to your Page or Profile.  Here are 5 easy steps that will help you to easily do this:

Import your Blog to Facebook

Step 1 – Go to your Facebook Page or Profile,

Step 2 – Click “Edit Page” right below your profile picture, your Page editor screen will appear,

Step 3 – Scroll down the applications on your page until you see Notes – click to edit,

Step 4 – On the right hand sidebar you will see the option to “Import a Blog” – click on this,

Step 5 – Where prompted, add the web or RSS feed URL of your blog then click the permission check to begin importing your blog.

If you have done this right, your blog will automatically post to your Profile or Page and to the feeds of your friends or fans.  Good luck!

There have been a slew of changes to Facebook recently and there are more coming.   I wanted to document the most notable of them from a business use perspective.

Competitions
The first is the new rules regarding competitions. Earlier this month Facebook announced that you could no longer run any kind of competition on Facebook without getting prior consent from the company to do so (and good luck trying to get that). For more on that check out Mari Smith’s post – thanks Mari!   Also check out Facebook Promotions Guide.

Page Updates
Wondering where the update fans link went to? Up until a couple of days ago if you wanted to send an update to fans you would click on the link just below the image on your Facebook page. Now its gone but the capability is still there, you just need to look in another place to find it.

Click to edit your Facebook page. In the admin screen look on the right hand side bar then scroll to find the promote your page heading then click on “send an update to fans” there. The process is the same from there.

Privacy
Changes are also ongoing in the form of privacy settings. The goals is to make them easier to understand.  Here is some more info taken from the Facebook blog:

* Most of you liked that we removed more complicated technical and legal terms and replaced them with simpler language that everyone can understand.

* You preferred the structure of the new document, which provides key points at the beginning and easy links to jump to the different sections.

* A few of you asked for a redline version so you could compare the proposed revision to our current policy and see exactly what’s changed. We weren’t able to provide one this time because the policy was completely rewritten, but we think it’s a great idea and are committed to doing it for future proposed changes to our governing documents.