The International Olympic Committee has released it’s Social Media Guidelines for participants and other accredited persons at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
The four-page document is the IOC’s attempt to recapture the ground it never had when Twitter became the must-have channel for those competing at the winter Vancouver 2010 games.
Remember the death of Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and how the footage of the tragic accident ended up on YouTube, Twitter and other social networking sites. Happening just before the opening ceremony and the online chatter accentuated the lack of control and understanding that the Olympic committee had over social media and which cast a shadow over the Vancouver Olympics.
In the guidelines the IOC ‘actively encourages and supports athletes and other accredited persons at the Olympic Games to … post, blog and tweet their experiences.’ it directs those competing to avoid using social networking sites ‘for commercial and/or advertising purposes.’ If athletes and other accredited persons do break these guidelines then they risk accreditation being withdrawn. More worrying for athletes is the threat of possible expulsion from the games.
So how will these guidelines affect the work of public relations agencies working with athletes and their sponsors? Will non-accredited sponsors see these guidelines as a red rag to a bull? How strong will ambush marketing play during the 2012 Olympics? Remember how Dutch beer company Bavaria got, as The Daily Telegraph describes, ‘36 women wearing skimpy orange dresses attend the Holland versus Denmark game‘ to promote Dutch Bavaria beer in breach of Fifa guidelines. Organisers of the stunt were then arrested.
What are your thoughts? How important will social networking play for brands that are sitting outside the tent and that will never be able to be a participant in the Olympic experience?
IOC Social Media Blogging and Internet Guidelines-London
Facebook or Bust, The Audience Is Listening
Friday, September 9th, 2011George Lucas was right, 'The audience IS listening'
Facebook has brought together an audience of incredible numbers. The social networking giant is today a community of people that keeps on growing, creating for businesses an opportunity to reach out directly to consumers. But here lies the question, why are businesses still looking like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ and failing to truly engage with audiences that can help many survive during these hard economic times?
Today, Facebook has over 750 million users worldwide. For many businesses that figure is a fantasy, after all, are we going to engage with so many? So let’s narrow this figure down into more manageable and relevant numbers. In the US there are over 154 million ‘active’ users, Indonesia comes in second with 40 million and a 16 per cent penetration rate, while in the UK there are 30 million users reaching half of the population. Malaysia has over 11 million users accounting for nearly 1 in 2 residents, while Singapore has a very active 2.5 million with 54% of people being on Facebook.
And the figures don’t stop there. Here are some more, more than have of Facebook users access the network each day, half of which do so through their mobile phones. And those that access Facebook through a smartphone or other mobile device are ‘twice as active as Facebook compared to non-mobile users.’
For many companies and organisations, these numbers are very 2-dimensional. The audience is there, but the history and culture of 20 century business dictates that for many they still broadcast to them through a given Facebook Page.
Audience engagement is much more than a Facebook Page and the apps and tabs that these Pages have. It is about, well, engagement. It is about listening and delivering. In business it is about meeting needs. And to meet business needs you needs to re-invent itself, spending time speaking an engaging with your various audiences.
Many companies are focused on the comfort of your own structure. Safe in the knowledge of how they have always delivered their business. But what about your audience? Have they been happy in how they have received your business?
As Facebook show’s us, people today are connected online. For many they check their network, their community first thing in the morning. People seek input, advice and support from their community that they have before they have spent money. Today, people are happy to share bad experience, which shapes many companies brands and reputations.
While engagement is certainly not as cheap as business thinks it is, it creates a much more personal relationship than brands have ever had with it’s audiences. It creates the loyalty, the holy-grail of business relationships that many aspire for.
Think about it this way, how do you like being talked at?
Tags: advertising, audience, business, customer service, engagement, facebook, marketing, recession, relationships, social media, social networking
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