Social Media at the Games

Social media has been one of the stars of the 2010 Olympic Games. I experienced the paradigm shift at the Vancouver airport when I was approached by a publicist from Flint Communications. She overheard me talking about winning the Microsoft Office Winter Games Contest and had heard the buzz surrounding it on Twitter.

There are two factors that are not surprising: 1) She eavesdropped on a loudmouth like me. 2) She was familiar with the contest.

Despite being used by millions of people, Twitter is a surprisingly close-knit community. This woman’s PR company was hired to train the speed skating team in social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

The lesson here is simple: there is no more powerful publicity vehicle than connecting the athletes directly to their fans.

Organizations are starting to understand that. The United States Olympic Committee has a Twitter feed of the athletes on their Press Box site. The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) has branched out to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, as well as other offerings such as podcasts and photo galleries. The tools I am using with the Microsoft Office '10 Beta allow me to upload my posts from Word directly to my blog.

Microsoft Office’s publicity gurus came up with the brilliant plan for me to host a casual meet-up for Vancouver mom bloggers. We met at Trafalgars Bistro, a quaint restaurant with a dessert menu that made me gain five pounds just by looking at it.

The women and I talked blogs, tech and kids. They clued me in on where to find Wi-Fi in Vancouver (in the parking lot at Best Buy, Safeway and Future Shop). And we dished about desserts. We were, after all, at a dessert emporium.

One of the women attempted to explain it all to me.

“Well, if I was given a choice between chocolate and vanilla, I’d choose chocolate. But put chocolate up against a carrot cake? I’d choose carrot. So basically, chocolate is not an addiction but it could be considered an issue.”

The same could be said for my attitude about social media.

===========


Check out these lovely Vancouver bloggers and twitterers: Nicole @nicole013; Stephanie @thetsunamimommy, Gwen @leftcoastmama, Cari @canigetrecipes, Kerry @crunchycarpets, Naomi @namtastetravels, Krista @KristaU.