… that’s the message LOCOG, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games are telling the 75,000 Olympic Volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of other hopefuls, in the lead up the the biggest sporting event in the world.

As someone who uses social media daily, in both personal and professional capacities, I can understand the need to produce guidelines on what can and can’t be done, but 75,000 volunteers are finding themselves unable to tell people they’ve been selected for a role, what they are doing and where they are. They’re also forbidden from publishing photos and videos.

Security is a huge consideration in this year’s games – so publishing your location, or taking photos of something potentially sensitive are guidelines I can completely understand and support.

I can tell you I’m one of the 300,000 who applied to be an Olympic volunteer – or GamesMaker as they’re being called. To be a part of London 2012 is something I would be incredibly proud of, and would want to tell my family, friends and other contacts about. Especially as I will be giving up two weeks of annual leave from my full-time job, to give up my time for free to be a part of the Games. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you any more than this for fear of breaching these stringent policies.

Do you think this is taking things too far, is censoring the 75,000 biggest fans (they must be, to be willing to give up their time, travel across the country and all this without being paid) of the Olympics a wise move?

I’ve recently had the pleasure of working with a local ferry company to build a new and complex website. Part of the suggested technical specification was to provide methods of alerting users to issues and cancellations that would affect the service, and I’m going to run through how we achieved this here.

The plan

We looked at all the available methods of easily showing service updates on the service – we decided we would approach it in a number of ways in order to get maximum exposure.

1. Provide a graphical representation of the status on every page on the site
2. Provide a mobile version of the website that focuses solely on the operational status of the ferry
3. Provide an RSS feed of status updates, allowing users to subscribe and therefore be alerted to any change
4. Automate alerting through Twitter under a specific hashtag
5. Email alerts to the ferry operator to ensure the status is returned to normal following an event causing disruption to the service
6. Provide a secure method of updating the status, with prepopulated choices of alert to prevent potential abuse

Planning

Firstly, we needed to decide upon the best way to allow the flexibility of altering and creating statuses, but only for authorised users (ie the senior management team of the ferry company). We embarked on some custom PHP coding to interface with the CMS allowing each status to essentially be a page within the system – this then tied in with the relevant forms needed to facilitate the updates and worked perfectly.

We then built a HTML form, which generated the values dynamically from the database and populated the select box with the options required. This was built to prevent tampering, as the submission was sanity checked against those allowed values.

Secondly, we needed to get this information out. We used Twitter and RSS feeds as an effective way of relaying the information alongside the graphical status information. The RSS feed was relatively simple and could be subscribed to by a number of pieces of software and used within other services. Twitter would be used to instantly distribute the news to a wide audience. We were aware that local media use Twitter and would take this information on board and potentially help with the news distribution.

Thirdly, we needed to remind the staff that they had changed the status – if ferry users planned around these updates, and the issue was no longer relevant, it could cause lost custom for the company. We decided that we’d alert the staff that the status had been changed away from normal, and keep reminding them regularly that this was the case – sure this would generate a lot of emails, but it would encourage the status to be updated as soon as practical.

Finally, we needed this to work on a mobile platform – the ferry crew are the best placed to make decisions on the safety of the operations, and they don’t necessarily have access to a computer. The solution therefore needed to work from mobile devices over a 3G connection. We provided a mobile template that showed the status, and allowed authorised users to change this – the mobile interface had exactly the same effect as updating from a regular browser, in that the emails would be generated, and Tweets sent.

The results

See them for yourself, visit Gosport Ferry’s website and you’ll be able to see it all in action. If you are local, and make use of the Gosport Ferry, follow them on Twitter.

Huge demand for the HP touchpad at it’s heavily reduced prices caused websites of many huge retailers to buckle under the strain, with thousands of frustrated customers either unable to get on the websites, or unable to complete their purchase.

HP had to stop and rethink their entire thought process over the dead tablet, and have now decided that there will be a further production run, of up to 500,000 units. To me, that says the Touchpad is actually far from dead, why commit to manufacturing half a million units of a device that they are making a loss on unless you have a bigger plan? Of course at the moment, it’s not technically alive either, rather it’s undead. A zombie in the tablet world.

I stand by my original hunch, this is their strategy to do some serious market penetration – the Touchpad quickly took the throne as the number 2 selling tablet device in a matter of days. HP may be making a loss on the hardware, but with it’s own App Catalog growing quickly and offering applications both free and paid-for, could this revenue subsidise the losses they are making?

With the huge demand for the Touchpads, it caused a headache for many retailers – Amazon took a number of orders and subsequently cancelled them without hesitation or warning. A similar situation happened at Comet, and also at Insight.

Personally, I had three orders placed, with three different retailers – Comet, Insight and John Lewis. After queuing for 40 minutes to be allowed onto their website, Comet finally accepted an order and confirmed it to me on screen. I thought that meant I had secured an elusive Touchpad, however it wouldn’t be that simple. They contacted me a few days after receiving my order saying that they’d oversold and would I mind waiting for more stock. I was happy to oblige as this mean’t I would definitely be getting one. A day after this, I received an email saying my order had been cancelled. Very frustrating.

Fortunately, at this time, there was still rumours of stock at other retailers, so I turned to InsightUK – they happily took my money and promised delivery the next day. When I didn’t receive it as promised, I picked up the phone and they told me there were still some orders waiting to go out, so again, I waited patiently. Another day passed and I called again, this time I spoke with a Corporate Accounts Manager called Gio. He looked into it and saw that although I had an order confirmed, there was no stock to fulfil it. He refunded my money, and offered little more than a half-hearted apology. So, a second national retailer had let me down too. I later heard they were selling 16GB Touchpad’s for £150 + Vat and delivery, not so much as a call asking if I were interested.

Finally, I heard there was stock coming to John Lewis, and sure enough, their website had some listed – I placed an order, made a payment and waited patiently for confirmation of my order. What I received instead was a message informing me there was no longer any stock and my order was being cancelled.

What is it about retailers and their estimation of stock levels? Surely, if you have 1000 units in stock, you only sell 1000 units on your website.

My confidence is severely dented when dealing with any of these retailers now, so unfortunately for Comet, John Lewis and Insight, they will not have my custom in future. Not that they will care of course.

I eventually turned to eBay, as even at double the new RRP, I thought it would be worth the price, and I’m glad I did. With Android for the Touchpad progressing nicely, even if WebOS disappears from existence, I’m sure the hardware will have a use.

Did you manage to get a Touchpad for yourself through normal channels? Did you purchase more than one and sell on for a profit, or did you turn to eBay and pay over RRP to get one? Comment and let me know.

The HP Touchpad arrived to lukewarm response in an already Apple-dominated market, but nonetheless it offered impressive hardware specs and was build on the WebOS operating system HP inherited from their purchase of Palm.

Just a few months after the launch, HP announced a u-turn in their strategy, and a shock exit of the Tablet and PC hardware market. HP then made steps to sell off their remaining stock (up to 250,000 units) by making heavy reductions to $99 for the entry-level model.

At this price level, it’s a serious consideration as a digital photo frame, or inexpensive web tablet – but there are already plans from groups of independent developers to try and port Android to the hardware.

Today, the UK had their turn at getting ahold of one of these devices, starting at £89. Within hours of it’s announcement, major retailers had been brought to their knees, with Carphone Warehouse and Comet’s websites becoming inaccessible and Currys, Dixons and PC World also receiving huge visitor numbers. 3 hours on, it is believed that the retailers who reduced their prices have sold out.

This leads me to think, what is going to happen to these 250,000 Touchpads in existence? Are HP really turning their back on them just months after their launch, or was this part of some master plan to do some serious market penetration?

Of course sales numbers are nothing like that of the iPad, but thousands have flocked to try and get one. The WebOS operating system was promising when launched on Palm devices, and perhaps reports of it’s death were premature, and this was part of a seriously clever PR stunt.

I spent a good hour fighting with Comet.co.uk to eventually place my order, and fingers crossed they have the stock to fulfil my order. Did you order one? How was your experience? 

There has been much speculation recently as to the exact role Social Media played in the Riots, which spread quickly across the nation, causing up to £200million in damage – all as a result of a peaceful protest that turned bad.

In Tottenham, London on Saturday, 6th August, tensions were building in the community after an incident involving a local resident and the Police. Initial reports suggested that shots may have been exchanged, however the injury sustained by a Police officer was found to have been caused by a Police-issued gun.

Mark Duggan, a local resident, had been shot dead. The people of Tottenham felt many questions needed to be answered of the Police, and launched a peaceful protest outside a police station – this escalated to violence and destruction and lit the fuse on what would turn to nationwide rioting, looting and violence.

It was believed that early on, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was used as a method of planning and spreading information among individuals, as this method of communication was private and relatively secure. Groups soon sprung up on Facebook, and discussions also took place over Twitter. Events such as ‘Smash Northwich Down’ were created, openly inviting and inciting violence at predetermined times and locations. The Police were able to take swift action based on this posted information, and tough sentencing was delivered to those found guilty of inciting rioting and violence.

It’s important to remember, Social Media, and the networks associated with them, are simply tools. When somebody gets stabbed, do you blame the knife?These tools can be used for good as well as bad. A very simple analogy that I think sums things up perfectly is comparing Social Media to a knife. Now a knife is very good at cutting things, whether it be chopping vegetables, carving meat or stabbing someone. When somebody gets stabbed, do you blame the knife? No! You blame the person who used the knife – Don’t blame the tool, blame the user.

To me, Social Media played a much more important part than that the media had sensationalised – the sense of community, charity and co-operation that was to follow meant that people were using Social Media to plan and co-ordinate events where huge numbers of people came together to clean up riot-affected areas and provide assistance in many ways to those affected. Topics such as RiotCleanup, CleanUpLondon and RiotRebuild became Twitter trends, and people from far and wide made donations, sent food, clothes, building materials and all manner of other goods to help those in need.

It also played a role in quelling any rumours that had been spread across Social Media, the ability for misinformation and lies to spread quickly had become apparent, with places such as Portsmouth and Southampton supposedly coming under attack and causing wide discussion over Twitter.  Nothing of the sort ever happened there. Local users took to Twitter to calm concerned users who had heard of disorder and destruction hitting their home-town, with very specific rumours being posted. They also took action to identify those behind the misinformation and rumours. Four arrests were made by Hampshire Police.

Hampshire Police and Portsmouth City Centre Policing Unit both used their Twitter accounts incredibly successfully to confirm and reassure people that there had been no reports of any disorder, and it was perfectly safe to go about their usual activities.

With the talk of the UK Government taking steps to deny access to BBM and Social Media sites in future cases of disorder – I think they are seriously underestimating Social Media’s power for good.

Was your area affected by rioting? Do you think Social Media can be to blame? What good have you seen come using Social Media in the aftermath?

Social Media can be a powerful tool when looking for a job, with LinkedIn and Twitter providing ideal platforms in the search for employment. Blogging is also a great way of sharing your expertise within a particular field, although be mindful of any content you post, anywhere online.

I’m going to focus on the right things to do online as a potential candidate in any position, rather than the process of finding a job itself.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a network for professionals, allowing users to host an online version of their CV, showcasing achievements and taking part in discussions with like-minded users as well as offering job listings and other recruitment tools. Over 100 million users are signed up to the service worldwide.

When connecting with users, instead of the default greeting, take the time to tailor your request – you will be taken seriously and are much more likely to succeed.

Ask for recommendations – they are incredibly valuable, and can really work in your favour, especially when applying for jobs through the site.

Twitter

Twitter has over 200 million active users, and is a great platform for engaging in conversation in ‘tweets’ limited to 140 characters. Twitter really gives you the opportunity to shine when talking about areas you are passionate or knowledgeable about. To get the most from Twitter, be mindful of the following:

• Engage with people – don’t just be a lurker, get involved
• Talk to people who work in the field you are looking to work in, ask questions and contribute to discussions
• Be seen as an expert, or at least having a valid opinion on topics relating to the industry you are looking to work in
• Share relevant and interesting content, discuss your findings and ask people’s opinions
• Follow and engage with companies you are interested in working for, checking regularly for information on recruitment. Just by conversing regularly over Twitter could put you at an advantage in your job search as there could be some level of familiarity already in place between you and your potential employer.

Blogging

Blogging is also a great way of showing a potential employer the depth of your knowledge within a subject, as well as your ability to communicate and put across a balanced argument whilst building an audience for your content. Platforms such as Tumblr, WordPress.com and Blogger make it easy for anyone to create a blog, with software packages such as WordPress allowing more customisation and flexibility.

Privacy

With the rise in popularity of Social Media, and the sacrifices you make in terms of privacy, it has never been more important to consider what information you share on social profiles. Here’s some top tips:

• Ensure you have selected the correct privacy settings allowing only those who you wish to access your content, the ability to see it.
• Think before you post – be especially wary about using vulgar language, and your behaviour towards others.
• Again, think before you post anything particularly political or something that could be deemed offensive – as much as you are entitled to an opinion, it could stand in your way.
• Do not write anything negative about your current or previous employer – you might not think anyone will see it, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
• Regularly audit your online presence – search for yourself on Google and take steps to update any pages you might have forgotten about and have control over.

Finally…

The most important piece of advice I can offer you is one that has worked effectively for me, and it has a great chance of working for you too. BE YOURSELF – bring your personality to your online presence and let people find out more about who you are.

This was by far the most complex and challenging website project I’ve had the pleasure of working on, addressing some real needs of the users of Gosport Ferry and bringing their online presence up to date.

The website features:

• Ferry status updates, including alerts over Twitter and on an RSS Feed.
• The ability to update the status from an internet-enabled mobile device, allowing for statuses to be incredibly timely.
• Attraction guide for both Fareham and Gosport.
• Ferry timetables and Price Tariff, both easily edited in the CMS.
• Special linked tickets with other transport providers and attractions.
• Information about the Summer Cruises the Ferry operator also provide.
• Social Media integration.

Social Media – a buzz word that is gaining immense popularity among businesses of all sizes, has become something one simply cannot ignore anymore. It’s becoming part of the day-to-day operation of companies and something used often by potential customers.

There are a number of platforms for Social Media, growing almost daily, but there are a few networks that attract huge numbers of users that you should really be paying attention to.

Facebook is by far the most popular Social Media platform, boasting over 750 million active users, of which 30 million are in the UK (that’s almost half the entire population), with 20-40 year olds making up 50% of this number. Facebook offers features such as statuses, photo and video sharing and location check-in, as well as ‘Pages’ which can be used by businesses to have an online presence on the network and a comprehensive advertising platform.

Uses: Promoting events, music artists, venues and service businesses.

Twitter has over 200 million users, with around 500,000 new users signing up every day to use the micro-blogging platform. Over 7 million of these users are in the UK. Users send ‘tweets’ which are 140 character messages, which are publicly available in most cases. Users can choose to ‘follow’ what you are saying and future updates will appear in their ‘stream’. This model differs to that of Facebook, where updates are usually only viewable by those who you are friends with. Twitter is widely used by businesses and individuals to have conversations and share information – the near real-time nature of the network makes for some exciting discussion and the ability for any message spread quickly and to a huge audience is a real consideration.

Uses: Sharing expertise and opinion, one-to-one and group conversations, discussing current affairs and sharing news.

LinkedIn hosts over 120 million users, around 6 million of these are in the UK. LinkedIn is a network for professionals, hosting user’s CVs, achievements, recommendations and group discussions. It also offers job listings and has recently launched the ability to apply for jobs through the network. LinkedIn is a specialist social network, unlike Facebook and Twitter which aim at the mass market. The network is great for networking with other professionals, and perfect for self promotion, job hunting and group discussions among experts.

Uses: Job hunters, B2B networking, Expert discussion amongst like-minded individuals

Google+ is a newly launched social network in June 2011, it is still in ‘field test’ preparing for its official launch in the near future. The network has sparked great interest, promising to revolutionise social media with innovative new features, enhanced sharing and privacy features and a ‘Circles’ feature trying to emulate real-world social interaction where you can share information with circles of friends – allowing you to control who sees the information you post, and filter the information you receive. The network has great potential, but the uses for business have not been clearly identified as Google do not currently allow commercial users. The network is however the fastest growing site in history, with 25 million users registered within the first month and continuing to add up to a million users each day.

Uses: People who are privacy conscious and want to take advantage of simple sharing options.

Foursquare is a location-based social network allowing users to ‘check-in’ to locations they visit, unlocking badges, special offers and sharing where they are with friends, either through the network itself, or linked with various other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. 10 million users are registered generating 3 million check-ins per day.

Uses: Restaurants, Retail, Leisure Facilities – businesses open to the public. Brands can now claim their own venues, creating specials and to-do items which users will see when checking in. DO THIS! It’s simple, free marketing.

Benefits of using Social Media for business

Firstly, it’s important to note that Social Media is a tool, and forms part of an overall marketing strategy. It will only be effective if you have first established your target market, and you provide content that is relevant to your overall goal.

Social Media opens up many possibilities – there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to making it work, but some real advantages of using Social media are:

• Social media is an effective and cost-efficient tool
• Can help to promote and develop your business
• Can increase product or brand awareness
• Helps you communicate more effectively with your customers
• Most services are free to use
• Potential to reach millions of prospective customers
• Integrates with other types of media and can lead to increased web traffic.

What’s the right choice for your business?

There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question – Social Media is as much about experimentation as it is about the conversation, engagement and sharing aspect of its success. It’s important to understand that Social Media is not simply a platform to broadcast a message – certainly, this can be done, but the success of this kind of campaign will be limited.

Think of Social Media as similar to conversing with a customer face-to-face – they will not easily tolerate a hard sell, nor will they appreciate being talked at, and not being talked with. Look at your competitors and other similar businesses, see what they are doing on social media and see how you can do it better.

Have you found great success with your Social Media campaigns? what has worked for you? What could you do better next time round? Comment below:

Social Media can become the worst nightmare for a business in the time of crisis, whether there is a particularly disgruntled customer, a poor service has been provided, or even at a time when events outside of your control have caused some issue.

This can be said to be true for Airbnb, a startup business who allow their users to easily rent out accommodation for holidays, short breaks and other stays. Backed by some huge names, including Ashton Kutcher and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos it could be expected that they would have handled a crisis in a much better way than is being reported presently.

In their case, a customer “EJ” had her apartment ransacked by her Airbnb visitor, with almost all of her personal possessions being stolen or destroyed – a life changing event, made worse by the fact that “EJ” had reported that Airbnb were doing little to help the situation. Airbnb were also implicated in an effort to silence “EJ” by raising concern at a blog post where she described what had happened and asking her to take the blog down altogether because of the worry of negative attention.

This news hit the headlines, and the media widely reported what was going on, leading to many questions as to the viability of the Airbnb business model and it was clear that Airbnb were in trouble – only within the past few hours have Airbnb taken real steps to rectify the situation, issuing an unconditional apology and admitting to the mistakes they’ve made.

Airbnb have taken positive steps to protect their users, including the Airbnb Guarantee, which offers some level of insurance against such events as those affecting “EJ” and increasing and improving their customer service teams and availability.

This whole situation raises valid questions on handling crisis situations, especially where Social Media can escalate the situation by an order of magnitude because of the reach and speed a message can spread.

Here’s my top tips to dealing with a situation like this:

• Take ownership of the situation, don’t try to hide what’s gone on.
• Communicate quickly and effectively – remember, the message of any wrongdoing will spread and potentially reach millions causing real damage to your reputation.
• See the solution through, and follow up on actions you’ve promised – “EJ” was not contacted by the customer service team after their initial dialogue.
• Provide a solution – put right what has been wronged. Provide ongoing communication regarding any steps to a proper resolution.
• Learn – bad things happen, sometimes out of your control, evaluate how you could have handled things better and take practical steps to prevent similar events happening again.
• Don’t be afraid to admit you’ve made a mistake – you’ll be respected more for admitting your shortcomings.

This is the first in a series of ‘Social Media Success Stories’ where I seek to highlight the best or most imaginative social media campaigns I come across. Campaigns featured here are those that and offer valuable insight into using social media in new and successful ways and as such give me inspiration for campaigns I work on.

KLM is a Dutch airline, based in the Netherlands and believe strongly in promoting their heritage and staying true to their roots – their uniforms, tableware and even their meals are proudly created by Dutch nationals.

Their latest Social Media campaign, Tile and Inspire takes a step further to showcasing Dutch heritage, by inviting users to design a Delft Blue pottery tile with their photo and favourite saying on, with the potential that it will be included on the livery of a Boeing 777 aircraft in service for the airline. A special application was provided on Facebook, on Hyves (a social network in The Netherlands) and on their website, making it simple to create the tile in a suitable format.

4,000 entries were picked from over 77,000 that were submitted across the globe to be created into the final aircraft livery. The entries were judged on originality and each successful entrant was emailed a link to a photo of their tile on the aircraft and a behind the scenes video of how it all came together.

“With this Delft Blue aircraft, KLM is establishing a link between its history and the social media. The successful online Tile & Inspire campaign has enabled us to actively involve our passengers in relation to an age-old Dutch product: Delft Blue. Delft Blue is of course inextricably linked to both Dutch culture and KLM.”

The campaign was an incredible success for KLM, raising awareness and causing a stir. KLM gained 50,000 new fans on Facebook alone, with the accompanying video presenting the aircraft receiving over 440,000 views on YouTube.

Not only does KLM benefit from the immediate success of the campaign (the numbers above), but this aircraft is in active service and travels across the world – with its unique livery, it’s bound to get people talking at the many destinations it serves.

Have you come across a unique and innovative Social Media campaign or just want to comment on this one? – please comment below.