Social Media—Bridging the Gap between London 2012 Athletes, Fans and Brands
Kicking off a 100 days to the Olympics countdown, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) launched the Olympic Athletes Hub—a social media optimized website—on 18th April. The Hub connects fans with Olympic athletes by providing a comprehensive searchable directory to the athletes’ official Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. Fans experience Social Media Optimization (SMO) at its best through the website by getting an aggregated feed of posts and tweets from the athletes they follow. Famous athletes followed on the Hub include Usain Bolt, Rafael Nadal and Michael Phelps.
Besides getting the chance to connect directly with their icons, fans also receive reward points for every athlete they follow. Fans can also earn reward points by watching videos with exclusive tips from selected athletes who will be featured on the site. These reward points will enable them to purchase Olympic souvenirs such as pins and autographed t-shirts. The site will add more sections and features once the London 2012 Olympics begin, including real-time feeds of athletes’ posts during the games, live chats and photo sharing from the Athletes’ Village and training trips from famous Olympic athletes.
The exponential increase in the number of Facebook and Twitter users from the 2008 Olympics to now has resulted in this year’s Games being dubbed as the “First Social Olympics”—a title the Athletes Hub only validates further. Recognizing this as an “anytime, anywhere” Olympics, brands and companies are making the most of Social Media Optimization and SMO services rather than concentrating on more traditional means of promotion, hoping to capitalize on the “word of mouth” and free publicity social media brings.
Already campaigns like Coca Cola’s “Move to the Beat” or Samsung’s “How Olympic Are You?” are garnering user attention. Ads like Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Mom” Olympics advertisement are getting Twitter mentions, being posted and shared on Facebook walls and P&G hopes to direct traffic to its brand pages by getting social media users to “like” the video and send out messages to their mothers.
Brands and companies hoping to make the best of the Olympics would do well to jump onto this social media bandwagon by using social media optimization and SMO services to garner attention toward their products and services. As can be seen by the Athletes Hub and other SMO efforts, as consumers continue to connect globally and share links and clips, social media could well be the bridge that brings together fans, athletes and brands during these Olympics.
Author: The author heads all social media projects at IndianSeoServices.com. Besides exploring social media marketing in newer ways, she believes in keeping social networks a level playing field, and has exposed many black-hat techniques deployed covertly by what she calls ‘certain amoral’ social media marketing companies
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