By Alexandra Reid
The International Olympic Committee is launching a host of programs with the goal of making the 2012 London Games the “most social and tech-savvy Olympics ever,” but restrictive social media guidelines reveal the organization’s inability to move beyond its old and broken command-and-control communications model.
In its Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines the IOC states that it “actively encourages and supports athletes and other accredited persons at the Olympic Games to take part in ‘social media’ and to post, blog and tweet their experiences.” However, such activity must respect the Olympic Charter and comply with a confusing and contradictory set of rules that tightly controls what they can share.
The program’s centrepiece, The Olympic Athletes’ Hub, will let Olympic fans track athletes’ activities across multiple social channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google Plus. The IOC is also launching a host of Tumblr blogs and a virtual Olympic Village where fans can discuss the events with athletes and former Olympians in real-time. A gamification element called the Olympic Challenge — a game that’s integrated with Facebook and Open Graph – will encourage fans to compete with friends and other fans in predicting the outcome of the Olympic events. Foursquare check-ins are also encouraged, so long as they are at off-site venues.
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By Tony Bailetti
Conventional approaches call for a technology startup to gradually internationalize from local to home continent markets before entering the global market. Unfortunately, these conventional phased approaches take too long, cost too much, increase stakeholders’ risks, and waste the passion of many talented people who develop innovative products and services for startups.
While many founders talk about making their new technology firms global, they act as if the local market is the real home for their products and services. The reality is that only a few entrepreneurs invest in projects designed to use resources and sell products and services in multiple countries within the first three years of their technology firms’ life cycles.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Joe Pulizzi, Social Media Examiner, Memeburn, Peter Shankman, and Fast Company.
5 critical content marketing tactics to consider now
As part of its audit and to set new goals, Content Marketing Institute is focusing on a number of key areas where it wants to improve. In this post, Joe Pulizzi shares five key content marketing tactics that are standing out for the agency.
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By Jesse Rodgers
Seeking out customer feedback and using it to build a great product is not a new concept. Great designers have been doing it for a long time as have great companies. The Lean Startup manual (or startup bible to many) talks about involving the customer while developing that minimum viable product (MVP): “The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
Where that generally leads people is straight to building a simple application that might not be sexy in its design but it is functional or a landing page about a new product that might not exist yet. Using Google Analytics and collecting email addresses along with some “conversion” points becomes what you focus on. However, if you forget to actually talk to customers as well you could be wasting a lot of time. Especially when you are moving past your MVP or have a product that people are paying for.
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By Alexandra Reid
While content marketing has been around for a long time, content marketing through digital channels is becoming increasingly important in many of today’s marketing programs as social media and blogging continue to rise as influential channels where corporate thought leadership can be developed and displayed.
However, many companies are struggling to properly manage these channels, which demand a considerable amount of resources, especially the human resources required to find, develop and propagate high-quality content and engage communities. We’ve all seen corporate blogs and social media accounts flop because they lacked professionalism, resources dried up or there wasn’t a sound strategy in place to encourage long-term commitment.
To ensure professional and long-term management of their channels, many companies are outsourcing some or all of their blogging and social media activities to agencies or independent ghostwriters. Ghostwriters can take on a wide range of functions, from editing to article writing and even social media communications. While each agreement will vary depending on a company’s requirements, great ghostwriters share a number of professional qualities. If you are considering hiring one or several to write or edit your content, choose those who have the following skills:
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By Alexandra Reid 
