Golden Goals and Bad Bands: Social Media Chronicles the Olympics

February 28, 2010 – final day of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver…

Gold medal semifinal in men’s hockey between Team Canada and Team USA…

Seven minutes into overtime, Jarome Iginla is knocked down in the corner. On his knees, he passes the puck to Sidney Crosby, who deftly, with Gretzky-like instincts, shoots the puck from an angle, past Team USA’s goalie and into the net.

The Golden Goal…

And with that, Team Canada wins its 14th gold medal in these 2010 Olympic games and its first gold medal in hockey since the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002.

Throughout the streets of Vancouver, a loud roar went up as crowds cheered and celebrated. Car horns honked, ship horns blared and, according to one Vancouver resident, the noise continued for hours.

The cheering also continued on Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook. Within minutes of the Golden Goal, jubilant Tweets and Facebook status updates appeared. Within two hours, the newly created “Crosby’s Olympic Goal <3” Facebook Fan Page had 95,000 fans.

After the Closing Ceremonies, a Facebook Fan Page called “2010 Olympic Closing Ceremonies were REALLY BAD” was also created, but it wasn’t nearly as popular. As of this writing, only 23 fans have joined this page and embraced the description: “Bad bands, and awful floating beavers.”

Actually, throughout the Olympics, Social Media played a huge role in recording people’s reactions to events and athletes. The athletes themselves even participated.

According to the blog post “So long to 2010 Olympics, we’ll tweet ya later,” American short track speed skater @ApoloOhno “shared his ever infectious and magnetic positivity to stand tall and be proud of who you are and your accomplishments.”

Alternatively, @JuliaMancuso, alpine ski racer for Team USA, fueled the fire of an alleged rivalry with lifelong competitor @LindseyVonn by posting and quickly removing comments after her first run on the giant slalom.

The Sysomos blog reports that the Vancouver Olympics attracted four million tweets and 300,000 blog posts and had a 91% positive sentiment rating according to Sysomos MAP.

That’s great news for Olympic organizers, who may have been concerned about how this unprecedented Social Media activity would affect their personal branding and online reputation.

This is a new age, where Social Media activity will continue to grow, even as the roar of the crowd fades and the streets of Vancouver return to normal. Online Reputation Management for Virtual Assistants and their clients will be key in the years to come, and certified Social Marketing Specialists are the ones who will be armed and ready to face the challenges of this new Social Media landscape.

This is something Olympic organizers might also want to think about as they look towards the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Charitable Organizations Using Social Media to Spread Christmas Cheer

Can you believe that December has already arrived - this Fall season has just blown by hasn`t it? I came across an interesting article that I thought might interest you. In these tough economic times, great charitable organizations like The Salvation Army are feeling the crunch and overall giving is down this year. The Salvation Army and other non-profits have gotten creative this Christmas season and are making use of the popular Social networks, Twitter and Facebook to connect with the younger generation and ultimately increase their donations! This article confirms an interesting trend taking shape with a growing number of non-profits and charitable organizations starting to use Social Media to spread awareness and bolster their donations. The emergence of non-profits using Social Media presents an ideal, niche opportunity for those considering working as Social Media Specialists and Consultants! Many of these organizations are just feeling their way through Social Networking and need a consultant to help them to chart the right course! As many of you know, we are currently running the Social Marketing Specialist Training Program to about 40 students. We just actually finished the training session involving Facebook and Twitter and talked about non-profits being an ideal client prospect! Check out this interesting article on The Salvation Army and the virtual `Red Kettle`. CNN Article on Salvation Army

Social Media Marketing Training Program Sold Out

Well, this has been a crazy busy week as we just starting the first run of our live Social Marketing Specialist Training Program. We have an enthusiastic group of about 40+ who are very pumped about learning how to position themselves as a Social Marketing Specialist in 2009. It is amazing to see the demand for this kind of niche! One of our students mentioned that she connected with one of her clients on what she had learned in the first session of the Social Marketing Training Program and the client wants her to get started right away with building a Social Media Strategy - very cool. Another Virtual Assistant mentioned that one of her clients was waiting to hire her once she completed the course. Also, last week, I got a call from a marketing firm, who asked if three of their Virtual Assistants could attend the program as they really wanted to bolster their Social Marketing efforts in 2009. All of this is pointing to serious opportunity for those seeking to offer a Social Media service in 2009! Although this course is sold out right now, we will be offering another opportunity in January. Free Free to jump on our alert list at our Social Marketing Training page here. Until next time!

Adopting a Social Media Marketing Mindset

One of the key first steps to becoming a successful Social Marketing Specialist or Consultant is to understand and adopt a "Social Marketing Mindset". As many of you know, Social media is really all about building relationships, adding value to the community and being real and authentic. I had an opportunity to dialogue this week with three team members from one of the fastest rising Web 2.0 companies on the Net, Freshbooks.com. Some of you may use their Invoicing and Time Tracking system, which is ultra cool. But, they are SUPER innovative when it comes to social media and have fully adopted this Social Marketing Mindset. They were recently listed #2 for the Top Web 2.0 companies in Canada (Backbone Magazine). Check out this out the very insightful 22 minute informal discussion between myself and Saul, Rayanne and Gregg from Freshbooks by signing up at our Social Marketing Page. You will see that they are very passionate as I am about Social Media and share some great prespectives on this fast growing industry. For our upcoming Social Marketing Specialist Coaching Series, I am fully hoping to recruit Saul Colt and/or Rayanne Langdon (Social Media Gurus at Freshbooks) to join our Expert Panel. More on that later...

The Top Seven Social Marketing Services for 2009

Well, many of you that follow my blog regularly know that I love to talk about what is going on with Social Media. For the past two years, Social  Marketing services has become of passion of mine and I have absorbed pretty much every PDF guide, webinar, ebook, podcast I could my hands on regarding this topic!

It is an undisputable fact that 2008 was the year Social Media dominated the Internet and ultimately changed the way we comunicate and market our businesses in the online world!

But, most experts predict we are just at the tip of the iceberg! Social Network Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LInkedIn all experienced tremendous growth 2008, but that does not even come to close to what is anticipated for 2009.

So, with the rapid growth of Social Media and the influx of businesses using it to build their brand and exposure, I am going to make a bold, but obvious prediction for 2009.....

Social marketing services will become the most "in-demand" skill and service requested by small businesses (possibly with the exception of design and copy) As I listen to Internet experts and connect with my online business pals, Social Media is quickly moving to the top of their marketing priority lists. Many of them took Social Media Training Courses such as StomperNet's SMARTS program, but here is the fundamental problem: "Most simply don't have time to maximize the potential of Social Media Marketing for their respective businesses.

So, it probably goes without saying that one of the hottest niches to further develop your skills falls in the area of Social Marketing Services.

Based our our extensive research, I have broken it down into the Top Seven Social Marketing Services that businesses will be desperately seeking in 2009....

On October 28th... we will will be running a live, FREE webinar event,

"Seven Profitable Social Marketing Services To Offer Your Clients in 2009"

If you are interested in Social Media and and see the huge potential in positioning yourself as a Social Marketing Specialist in 2009, then this webinar is for you.

Just visit the below web page to view a short video on this upcoming Social Media event. We are limiting this webinar to 200 seats so be sure to sign-up as soon as possible. I will be in touch soon with some more details!

http://www.vaclassroom.com/socialmarketing