I’ve been interviewed at least a dozen times about how social media people are covering the Olympics in Vancouver. However, I think an equally interesting story is how traditional media outlets are using social media to add to their coverage.

CTV Olympics Video
The official broadcaster of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games has been posting footage to YouTube. The type of event action videos that would get pulled down with a cease & desist letter from the IOC are up and running in full glory on the CTV Olympics channel. Although you cannot embed the videos, you can watch clips of medal moments and even streaming replays of televised events on their main website.

Government of BC
The Province of British Columbia has been capturing Olympic moments and posting them to their official YouTube channel as well. They have athlete interviews, montages, and even an interview with yours truly.

They don’t have Games footage but they have been everywhere around town, profiling businesses and the fan experience.

Global has added a video section to their website and although they’re not posting the videos as shareable items on YouTube, they are blogging and tweeting to enhance their coverage. Same goes for the CBC who has a Road to the Games section of their site, acting as a 2010 newsroom complete with sidebar event listings. You can read more about their coverage game plan in my post from last week.

With such restrictions for non-official broadcasters these Olympics haven’t necessarily made journalists out of citizens, they’ve made the mainstream realize that social media can help them with their coverage — and it can make it that much more interesting.

To help aid the abundance of folks who are finding their way to Twitter, the one element that I find to be poorly used is the way people share URL’s in their tweets. I know that sounds very picky, but there are more effective ways to do this so you maximize the overall reach of what you are trying to share with your Twitter followers.

So why is this a big deal? Why can’t you copy and paste any URL from your browser and post it to Twitter?

Well, the answer is that you can. There is nothing to stop you from doing that, and if that is the way you want to do things, then keep doing what you are doing. However, if you want to be sure that people follow through on viewing that link, you might want to think a little differently as to how you do this because not everyone uses Twitter the same way.

Third party applications don’t display links the same way as twitter.com

The biggest thing to remember about Twitter is that it is not a strictly web based service. The advanced user will tell you that Twitter.com is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to telling the world what you are doing in 140 characters. Stand alone applications and mobile devices are among the numerous ways that updates get sent to Twitter by various users, and each one displays those updates in their own way.

For example, I’m using a local Vancouver radio station, 99.3 The Fox, and their Twitter stream to exemplify what I mean because this isn’t a matter of what’s right or wrong. The point is to show how you can be doing this better.

The following is a screenshot on Twitter.com of an update they made that has an intention of driving users to their website. You can see that the website address is automatically linked because of the way the Twitter developers have programmed their service.

The major issue with this is not everyone interacts with Twitter the same way. For myself, I know that my main method of interaction is a third party extension for Firefox called Twitterfox, a tiny application within an application that allows me to view and send tweets from within a browser window.

So in comparison, this is how the same tweet up above from @993thefox looks like in Twitterfox.

Notice how the same, implied website address isn’t actually linked when viewing this same tweet in this application. When you consider that there are multiple applications for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Blackberry, video game systems, and so on, I find that to be a negative impact on the reach your trying to accomplish. Without having that URL being automatically linked, you’re missing out on someone going directly to it as soon as they see it.

So, how do you do this more effectively?

Use “http://website.com” for links, not “www.website.com”

In the world of Twitter, you have 140 characters per tweet, so the key is being direct and to the point. Have a message and get your followers to click on your link as soon as they see it, and the easiest way to do that is to drop the “www.” and put “http://” ahead of your domain name.

As you can see in these two examples, each of these users that I follow on Twitter have made tweets that include URL’s with no “www.” but include an “http://” on the front of the websites they want you to visit. Additionally, this type of addressing crosses over from third party applications like Twitterfox to Twitter.com itself. Ultimately, you increase the amount of possibility that someone will follow that link back to where you are trying to drive traffic to.

But what happens when you don’t include either “http://” or “www.” in your URL?

As you can see, not using either won’t have the URL linked either way (even though I don’t have the update from Twitter.com as a screenshot, this address was not automatically linked as well). Is this the wrong way to use Twitter? No, but it’s not as effective.

Keep your URL’s short and sweet

Keeping the 140 character limit in mind, not all URL’s are as short as we’d like them to be, especially for Twitter. So what do you do when you run into a link you want to tweet but doesn’t leave you very many extra characters to say anything else?

There’s nothing worse than having your update get cut off or Twitter telling you that what you’re trying to update with is too long. Fortunately, there are services out there to help you make your URL’s shorter.

TinyURL is often a popular one that I’ll use for this example, but there are many others like Bit.ly, Tr.im, etc.

@ctvolympics is the official Twitter account of ctvolympics.ca, a website dedicated to CTV’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and every update they make to their website gets a tweet with a URL to the post.

The address for the page here is:
http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/newsid=11000.html?cid=rss

Using TinyURL, anyone can easily “shrink” the length of this URL, making it perfect for a tweet.

In this situation, ctvolympics.ca has all of their posts automatically updating their Twitter stream, and this is a great way to drive traffic to your site. It’s worth noting that a great plugin that can do this for your WordPress installation is WordTwit, made by our good friends at BraveNewCode and used on our site as well.

If you are looking to use Twitter to drive traffic to your website or to any other location on the web, this is something you should consider when trying to spread the word. It sounds picky, but if you make it that much easier to someone to go through one motion of clicking on a link, then you’ve upped your chances for accomplishing what you want to do.

With all the social networks that are out there these days, it’s so common to get into conversations and have someone ask you, “Hey, are you on (insert the name of specific network here)?”

More often than none, you want to say that you are, following that up with an easy way for that person you just met at some great networking event to remember how to find you on that specific website. Be it Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn, there are multiple sites that all have different ways for you to be found on their service. It could be a search based on a name or email address, but how could you simplify this process that makes it easy for this person to find you?

These following is going to get quite technical, so if you’re uncomfortable with the following directions or just don’t like dealing with the settings on your web server or getting into code in general, don’t let this overwhelm you. Look over the idea and consider using this with your web presence. After that, consider finding someone with the skills to get this implemented.

Just as an example, I’m going to use Twitter. To find anyone on their service, you can usually find someone by typing in the following URL into any web browser:
twitter.com/mybrand

It’s fairly easy to tell someone that URL, but there is actually a way to make your website’s domain name, what you should also consider as your brand, do a lot of the work for you. Using what is known as URL redirection, you can use a simple, one line of code to use your brand to promote your presence on a particular social network. This is where we get a little more technical.

In my example here, I’m using some simple code in the htaccess on my website’s server. It should be said that you need to be very careful when editing this particular file on any website because altering it incorrectly can cause problems with the overall function of your domain. Of course, not all web servers are the same, so consult your host if you are not sure where or how you can implement this yourself.

Redirect /twitter http://twitter.com/mybrand

Once you have added that to the bottom of your htaccess, test it out by going to:
mybrand.com/twitter

Once you have this working, you should be able to go to that URL and have it automatically send anyone who visits that address to your account on Twitter so they can find you easily, efficiently, and, ultimately, follow your Twitter stream.

This also cuts down on any confusion because what if your brand’s name is hard to spell or there is another account on Twitter that has an account such as “twitter.com/my_brand” or “twitter.com/mybrands”? Having this redirect in place will save someone time and any confusion over who is who on any social network.

A live example of this would be the Flickr group that we just started. Since Rebecca and I both have our own accounts on there, we decided to create a pool of photos of all things related to sixty4media.

Here’s the actual address to the sixty4media Flickr Group:
http://flickr.com/groups/sixty4media/

To simplify things, I’ve used this trick to create:
sixty4media.com/flickr

When anyone clicks on that URL or types it into any web browser, they will be directed to the appropriate page on Flickr to see our photo group there. I’ve even gone a step further and added another line to compensate for any misspellings in the event that someone tries to type in “sixty4media.com/flicker“. It’s really up to you as to how specific you want to get.

This concept was something I caught wind about via a Twitter post by John Chow, and it made a lot of sense to me as soon as I saw it.

My instant thought was how much it would make sense to be able to hand someone your business card at an event. Since your website is usually on the card with all the rest of your contact information, telling that person how to find you on Facebook or LinkedIn is easier because all you have to do is point out your website on the card and tell them it’s “slash, (enter name of social network here).”

I heard this story on the radio this morning, and it got me thinking. Why are there not more city services, such as those run by a city hall in any township, using more elements of social media?

One local politician wants the Vancouver Park Board to get in on the act.

A motion going before the Board Monday night will ask members to look at not only posting audio of their meetings on-line but also to explore providing citizens with regular updates via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. [...]

“I think that with all this social media that we have there is just so much that we can do. The more we can bring people in, the more we’ll know about what people want and the better job we can do.”

Blyth says the web is a good way to keep people informed about issues covered in upcoming meetings, as well as little known Park Board events. [news1130]

Now before you start rolling your eyes at the notion of another pusher of the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon, you need to start considering the ramifications of what these free and easy tools of direct contact really are.

Let me say those keywords again. Free and easy. Direct contact.

These terms should be enough for those organizations and committees to perk up a little bit if you have ever heard or said the notion of things getting done in local government but the public doesn’t get involved. Perhaps they judge interest on who shows up at those meetings in which anyone can attend.

Even better, how many times have you heard of something being decided by a city council to only have it be exactly the opposite of what the majority of the public wanted to have happen? Usually that happens because the public was unaware of it even being a matter of discussion because, and let’s be completely honest, reading those city council minutes are not the top priority of every single person that they affect.

So, to give you some basic idea of what your local government could be doing, here are some tips that I brainstormed this morning. Consider them starting points because you can really push things much further depending on how far you want to take these concepts.

Facebook: I’ll start here because there are some brilliant ways to use this service. Most importantly, starting Groups and then using it to announce and invite members to Events are great. It gets added to their profile and they can see when, where, and who is going to be there. And since you don’t need one person to moderate the group, you can utilize your whole organization to interact with the community online and in person. In fact, you never know if your members will start having meetups, outside of official meetings.

Twitter: Say what you will, but Twitter has a reach that is tough to beat. Announce scheduled meetings, send out updates, remind followers of scheduled events, take feedback from your followers, make live updates of what is going on at meetings or events, send out links to your agendas and minutes as soon as they are published to your website, etc. The possibilities are really endless.

UStream: In the past month, I’ve seen more and more high schools using UStream’s free, live video streaming service to show basketball games as they happen. So why can’t more local governments being using the same technology to “webcast” city council meetings or school board meetings? You don’t need a local cable access channel to do it. All it takes is an Internet connection, a laptop with decent audio input, and a webcam. It might not be the ideal setup, but you can embed that video into your organization’s website where anyone can watch and listen from home. You’ll also want to send out an update on Twitter to let everyone know that the video stream is live and that the meeting is about to start.

YouTube: President Barack Obama is using YouTube to do his weekly address to the nation, so why can’t your local mayor do the same thing? Get a video camera, edit, upload, and release it. Embed that to your city’s website and keep the people informed on a regular basis all the while giving your mayor a face and a voice rather than just a name. Twitter that as well when the new video is posted.

Podcasting: More often than none, official, city meetings usually have a PA system in the rooms they are held in. Get something you can record audio with and find out how you can get a feed off of the system in the room so you can record it, and then you can post every recording as an episode of the official podcast of your local city council. Even if you have some device you can stick in the middle of the room that can capture all of the conversations in an audible enough manner, that’s perfect, too. It might take some work to edit and publish every episode, but the more you do this, the more archives you’ll create over time. Oh, and be sure to post an update on Twitter that the latest podcast episode is up as well as a link directly to it.

Blogs: Text is always going to be the saving grace of any official organization, and creating content that is search-able is key. If you have a new resident to a community, what better way is there to get to know a community than to have an official blog from the office of the mayor with his weekly/bi-weekly/monthly video addresses, thoughts on events going on in or around the area, progress reports on his or her city plan, or announcements of great community events that you should go check out because the mayor will be there as well? I think the new person in town might have to subscribe to the RSS feed of the mayor’s blog because it seems like a good way to stay informed about this new city they are now living in.

On top of that, the more text based content you have, the better your search engine optimization (SEO) goes up when some one tries to search for something on Google about your community. Wouldn’t it be best if some of the first search results that come up are those coming directly from the folks running the city? That would seem very important to people involved in local tourism and chamber of commerces. Of course, Twitter any and all updates to the blog or website so your followers are reminded to check it out.

By no means are all of these thoughts complete or are they everything that one could do when taking social media into consideration for a governmental organization that run cities large or small. The fact is, the tools are there and within easy grasp of using, and it’s not out of the question to get going on some of these concepts within a matter of days, on little to no budget. The results might surprise you as suddenly a public service actually opens itself up to the public it is meant to serve.

If you have additional ideas or even examples of cities doing concepts like this, feel free to share them in the comments below.

Expanding on my Twitter for Business post from last fall, I was giving the opportunity to speak for the IABC’s local chapter this afternoon. It was great to meet so many professionals who have their company’s best-interest in mind, including many who are on Twitter but are still unsure who to use it. My talk was a general overview of this tool and how you can get your company started — using Twitter for communications, networking, customer service, and even support.

There’s much more to be said but I feel this is a good starting point for a business – find the tools, create a complete profile, update, engage, take conversions offline, and be part of the discussion about your company or product that is more than likely already taking place online.

There were many questions at today’s talk and should you have any regarding this online version, please feel free to leave a comment.

Last month I wrote about using Twitter for Business and it was the most popular post we’ve had on sixty4media to date.

Tech Crunch just released some Twitter stats and the proof is in the numbers: Twitter is here, now, and it’ll be staying for quite some time.

Twitter is having its hockey stick moment in terms of its growth just shooting up. Last week it may have delivered its billionth Tweet, at least nominally. And it looks like it is approaching escape velocity. If it doesn’t break up from all the pressure and is able to keep its service up and running more or less, it could soon—gasp!—break into the mainstream. [TechCrunch]

When I was first on Facebook some people laughed, “Why would you need to do that? Who wants to know all that?” and since they’ve recorded 15.8 billion page views in 2007 [TechCrunch]. Twitter was next. It is the latest platform (even though it’s been around since 2006) to start slowly and build momentum – just like the Tech Crunch article says, this could now be going mainstream – and it can definitely be used for Business.

The popularity of social networking is skyrocketing and it’s encouraging to see Twitter taking off. However, even though it is a microblogging platform, there is still such a stigma attached to blogging in general. I’m waiting for the day someone can say “I’m a blogger” and not be immediately pictured sitting in their parents’ basement in their pajamas writing a diary blog entry about their cat.

All of these social media sites are tools that can help you and your business reach the world, or your own specific local audience. Websites these days can have the full functions of a blog but not necessarily be just a blog. They become content management systems that can integrate blogs, pages, Facebook and Twitter updates. It’s for this reason that all of these technologies (together) are so beneficial. It’s where your audience is, so it’s where you need to be.

As a blogger (on my personal site) who is sometimes approached by other businesses, PR firms or marketers, the one thing that makes me click “delete” on an email almost instantly is the opening phrase, “Dear Sir or Madam”. Aside from using the correct pronouns you don’t want to sound like a press release, a robot or a faceless entity when dealing with bloggers and the same goes for running your own business blog.

Last April I attended Open Web Vancouver and sat in on two amazing keynotes, one of which was by Tim Bray. I have since used some of his quotes in presentations and have seen his sentiments echoed across the social media sphere since they are simple, accurate, and they make the most sense.

On the topic of writing your content, here are a few suggestions:

Be human: Don’t have an eleven step editorial process ie. if you’ve ever been in an organization that needs to put out a press release. You may have experienced that it could take 2 weeks for 2 page release and “then you end up with something no human being would have ever written…. or now would want to read.”[From Miss604 Live Blog]

Think about the text you put on your site. Write long, then cut short. If you have 100 words you can fit into a screen without scrolling, write 150. Then, slash back to 75 and see if you’ve got the right message. “Say what you have to say with the fewest possible words.” [Crawford Kilian at the IMC]

Aside from writing in a readable and comfortable tone for your audience you also need to put a face to your blog. This doesn’t mean hundreds of self portraits from your webcam, it just means that people, clients, and customers respond better to names. “Admin” or “Company Name” as an author on your site may not be as well received as “Betty”, “Jim”, or “Sue from Marketing”.

Example: Carnival Cruise Lines

The final tip is to not dupe your audience. If you are an official blog of ABC Company, please state that in your sidebar or on your about page ie. “This is the official blog of ABC Company”. That way it lets readers know you are a reliable resource, and you are accountable for your content. Disclosure is everything.

For many reasons, some companies may be apprehensive about sharing too much or being too transparent in the online realm and that is a valid concern. However, having a reliable, strong, and open community within your business blogging space can still be achieved if you are calm and professional. Write in a readable tone, disclose your objectives, address readers as people (have authors that are “real” people), and start conversations with your audience.

Most importantly, read other blogs (especially if they are in the same industry as you). You can see what others are doing right, have discussions, and make real and lasting connections.

The first thing we did when launching sixty4media was pick a domain name, from there we were able to register everything we needed and get the company off the ground. The next few steps were establishing our online presence and that pretty much started with Twitter, a service we have been using individually since early 2007.

John and I each have our own visibility but taking sixty4media out of the shrink wrap and putting it out there is currently one of my biggest tasks. A large part of being online and being visible isn’t necessarily judged by how many FriendFeeds, Tumblrs, Plurks, Jaikus, BrightKites, Identi.ca or Pownces you happen to be on. If Blog World Expo taught me one thing, it’s that the population is on Twitter.

sixty4media’s account is alive and well, although admittedly we have to step it up a bit since right now it’s a publishing platform for our new blog posts. The main thing is that we’re there.

Now, some people think Twitter is a joke – that it’s nothing more than a chat room or Facebook status updates on steroids. I would love to take a few minutes and educate the population about social media and the “power of millions” that Twitter has harnessed. One need only look at the election stream to see the effectiveness of an open global conversation online.

Not only can you find out what Bobby had for dinner or what Susie’s cat just chewed, you can also use Twitter for business. It’s a way to engage your audience, update, take polls, and share information. To prove it, here are a few choice examples:

Whole Foods Market
Blog: Whole Story
Twitter: @WholeFoods
Updates: Whole Foods updates their shoppers on in-store events and specials, as well as their latest blog posts and podcasts.

Learn more about cooking dried beans at home with this week’s food podcast: http://poprl.com/1ky [October 2008]

We’re sponsoring this year’s Chicago Gourmet event at Millennium Park and hosting a special family friendly section: http://is.gd/38p3 [September 2008]

Carnival Cruise Lines
Blog: By Senior Cruise Director John Heald
Twitter: @CarnivalCruise
Update: Carnival loves featuring their talented staff, crew and even interns through videos, blog posts and promotions.

Meet the Carnival Splendor crew- check out a video interview with Claudia, Casino Host extraordinaire – http://tinyurl.com/6n7yer [August 2008]

Commemorating the arrival of Jacksonville’s largest cruise ship- http://tinyurl.com/4k7qoo [September 2008]

Taking our social efforts beyond onboard fun – http://tinyurl.com/6eo8jq [September 2008]

Luxor Hotel and Casino
Blog: Luxor Insider
Twitter: @LuxorLV
Updates: The Luxor’s updates include featured performers at the hotel, Las Vegas trends, marketing tips, and during Blog World I was able to pick up some drink vouchers at Aurora thanks to their answering their shout out on Twitter for bloggers. The updates also have a nice personal feel.

At Mandalay Bay… Big meeting with all my counterparts from our sister properties. We’re talking about mobile mktg [September 2008]

Headed to CatHouse for a CRISS ANGEL Believe cast and crew party! – http://bkite.com/01GXP [September 2008]

Another great thing about Twitter (compared to other microblogging clients) is that there are so many applications and outside tools you can use to update such as the WordPress plugin, WordTwit, or managers like Tweet Deck or Twitterffic.

Because of their authenticity and genuine interest in social media as a way to keep in touch with their clients, and potential customers, I can see people having more trust in businesses like those mentioned above. I am probably more likely to book my next Las Vegas visit at the Luxor because of their outreach, and I’m seriously interested in this “Blogger Cruise” I read about on John Heald’s blog.

Twitter can be professional and also productive, as with any service you need to know when to ignore all of the noise and find out how this powerful tool can work best for you.

As we have been slowly molding sixty4media into shape, we have recently made our very own Twitter account open and available to the public.

Twitter is a popular social media site that combines micro-blogging and instant messaging to an international phenomenon of letting people know what you’re doing. Sounds insignificant to some, but there are more ways to use it other than telling people that you’re hungry or doing the laundry.

For instance, we use a great plugin for WordPress called WordTwit. This was made by our good friend Duane at BraveNewCode, and the whole purpose of it is to make an update to your Twitter account when you publish a new post on your WordPress site. Combined with any other updates we do on the account, you can get the latest news from our site as we publish it.

In the age of iPhones and Blackberries, what better way to connect to your audience directly?