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:
“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 “ANYâ€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.
We’re celebrating our first year of podcasting with the Out-Smarts podcast, and what better way to do so that by going back to the source of inspiration for one of our first posts: Northern Voice.
This year’s Northern Voice conference for social media and personal bloggers was another resounding success. We talk with attendees to get their take on the highlights of the 2 days, why they attended and what they liked most. Contributors include Ruth Seeley, Tzaddi Gordon, Bruce Sharpe, Raul Pacheco aka Hummingbird604, Gus Fasarolli, Louise Desmarais and the very drole Christine Rondeau.
Thanks to all who contributed and thanks also to the folks at Northern Voice for organizing another great event.
Our podcast today looks at a serious alternative to gift giving – Dreambank. We had the pleasure of talking with Dawn Bowles who is the CEO of Dreambank, a local Internet company that truly offers a different way to make dreams come true, to give and receive gifts and to donate to charity. Its a unique and innovative service that really gives you an alternative to the sock and underwear dilemma.
In follow up to my last post I wanted to provide some guidelines to bear in mind when networking on-line. Here are a list of things you should never do in these forums as they will be detrimental to your efforts.
1. Avoid posting nude or inapropriate photos or vids of you or others.
2. Check your profiles regularly to make sure others haven’t posted inappropriate images or other material. If they have then delete them.
3. Avoid profanity, swearing and rudeness. Its not professional.
4. Don’t tell lies or fabricate information or you’ll likely get caught out. There’s always someone out there who knows you and who could call you on it.
5. Ignore privacy controls – every social network has privacy settings, use them accordingly to manage who sees what.
6. Plagiarise – don’t do it, be original – it will be much more interesting for your audience.
7. Don’t be overly narcissistic. Who cares what colour your socks are or what you had for breakfast?
8. Don’t try to participate in every forum – you won’t get anything else done for social networking. Focus on those which offer the most benefit.
9. Don’t spam people. On Twitter I immediately delete anyone who tries to direct sell to me – thats not what the social network is for.
10. Don’t inundate people with unwanted guff: Facebook apps are the worst. I don’t add anything to my Facebook profile that takes me away from the site or worse, spams me.
These days developing relationships online is as important to growing your business or reputation as networking in the real world. The Internet is a great way to expand your horizons and get to know new and influential contacts.
1. Don’t try to network in every Internet networking hub out there. Choose those where you get the biggest impact (i.e. those that your existing contacts already use, those that reflect your target audience, or those most applicable to your niche). The most popular are LinkedIn (Professional Network), Facebook (fastest growing), MySpace but there are many networks that are industry or job specific too so take time to check them out.
2. Leverage existing on-line networks to grow new ones. I recently used my MySpace profile to promote my Twitter account and add more contacts in that forum
3. Promote your activity in your chosen forums by including it in business cards, profiles and on your website.
4. Use widgets. Most of the social networks allow you to widgetize a link to your profile. Add this to your site, blog etc and include widgets for other networks in your networking profiles.
5. Always remember to be professional in these forums – ask the Granny question and make sure your content is appropriate to your professional standing.
6. When you meet new contacts in the real world find then on-line and add them to your networks.
7. Trawl the friends of your friends and contacts and add those you know or those gurus in your business.
8. Don’t spread yourself over to many networks or allow them to suck up your time. Schedule it into your day.
9. Join groups. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer groups. Join applicable ones and gain access to more people in your field.
10. Participate in the right forums.
11. Ask questions and use your status to attract news contacts.
I don’t know about you but every day my in box was overloaded with unwanted email. You know the stuff I mean: grow your penis, bank detail links, lottery winnings and the list goes on. Here are some of the steps I have taken to reduce the amount of unwanted and unsolicited mail I get.
Use a firewall and anti virus software
Set up a Gmail account and use that email when listing you contact details online
Use Gmail – of all the mail systems I have used Gmail seems to be the best for filtering unwanted crap
Use Akismet to reduce blog spam – its a great anti spam tool to catch unwanted comments
Don’t answer or open email from anyone you don’t know
Never click on links or open attachments in emails from people you don’t know
Only give your primary email address to trusted contacts
Complain to the spammer’s email provider (this works for fake bloggers too)
Change your email address (or at least the one you surf with) regularly
Don’t forward those emails that say if you forward to ten people in ten minutes something good will happen – it won’t
Go incognito – enter fake email addresses rather than real ones when filling out online forms.
Those of you just getting to grips with online social networking take note: the trend has gone mobile. There’s a plethora of new mobile social networks out there. Its no longer good enough simply to update your status next time you get around to going on-line: you should be updating it on the go using your cell phone or similar doohicky. Or should you?
Here’s a scenario for you: you’re walking down Robson Street (Princes Street or Yonge for that matter) and your phone rings to say someone in your social network has updated their status or added a photo. Turns out a colleague you’ve been trying to meet is at a cafe round the corner passing some time. Question is do you pretend to bump into them or to you respond via your mobile network in the hope that they will respond?
BrightKite is one such social network that lets you do exactly this. Its in beta right now but you can request an invite and if you blog about it you are likely to get one. Add friends on the network according to where they are or make new friends according to where you are. The system also allows you to upload photos and add comments in a map view from your phone and it piggybacks on the success of Twitter, allowing you to link to the microblog (posting once to both and avoiding texter’s finger).
Its all very cool but is it simply another distraction in an already overwhelming sea of noise. Like many of these innovations it will depend on how you use it.
Sadly, BrightKite (the mobile version) isn’t available in Canada yet (or Scotland for that matter) but I signed up for the on-line version nevertheless in an effort to get an understanding of mobile SN. My first post lamented the lack of Canadian availability and the second post was inadvertent – I tried to get support assistance because I couldn’t include my url in my profile (invalid URL indeed!) but instead my post for support was sent out to all. The response was a warning about “crass commercialization”. Thankfully BrightKite staff quickly flagged the issue and, showing great attention to customer service, apologized for their over zealousness but to be honest I was a bit put off – and my URL question still hasn’t been resolved.
I love the BrightKite concept and I am looking forward to trying out the full blown network on my phone one day (when Canadian service materializes). I hope that by then they have worked out all their processes. In the meantime, if you are just getting used to on-line social networking don’t worry, you have some time before it hits the masses.
Are you on BrightKite or using other location based social networks? Please let us know and share your experiences with us.
May was so much fun it came and went without our regular new media reasons to be cheerful post. Better late than never, here it is:
Tweet Scan – real time Twitter search: who is saying what about you or your company. BrightKite – location based social networking Squidoo - create your own mashup site about something your interested in. Friend Feed - all your friend feeds in one central place.
Flock – manage feeds from your favorites in a browser setting.
I came a across this great video from Common Craft on the Twist Image blog. The clip explains social media in an easy to understand way by putting it into a context the beginners can relate to: ice cream .
And if you like that you should also check out their podcasting, Twitter and wiki explanations too.
