Similar to the Opening Ceremony, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics fan page is an example of going above and beyond. The page engages its 1.4+ million fans by providing video, photos, a discussion board, breaking news and even commentary from Olympic athletes. Fans can also play one of three “mini-games” or submit their own Olympic photos for a chance to win a daily prize of two tickets to the Games.

Your brand might not be ready for a page of this magnitude, but this provides inspiration as to how a fan page can work, when done correctly. If you’re ready for a fan page, there are numerous options for filling it out: Share photos from an event, ask questions on the discussion board or upload a recent presentation. The possibilities are endless. In the international competition of social media, how can your organization’s fan page become a champion?

In a recent BusinessWeek article, Carmine Gallo spotlights Cliff Atkinson’s new book, The Backchannel, in which he shares five simple steps for incorporating Twitter into your presentation.

1. Accept it. – Gone are the days of the “please turn off your cell phone” disclaimer. Encourage your audience to use social media while listening to you and increase your brand awareness, without any additional effort.

2. Show that you understand how Twitter works. – Include your Twitter name and an event #hash tag on your title slide. By providing your username, audience members can quickly connect with you after the presentation. The event #hash tag gives people who didn’t attend your presentation the ability to view tweets in a stream as they happen. And as an added bonus, it will be easy for you to look back over the conversation and assess reactions.

3. Create Twitter-friendly messages. – PowerPoint presentations are usually crafted to include small bits of information, so when you’re putting it together, be sure to consider Twitter’s 140-character limit. Your audience will be more likely to share the information if they don’t have to rewrite it.

4. Take breaks. – Atkinson suggests taking a break and showing the event hash tag Twitter stream and addressing any questions that might have been tweeted.

5. Extend the conversation. – Social media can extend the impact of your presentation long after it’s over. Post the slides to SlideShare, link to the Twitter stream or provide a YouTube video of the presentation.

As an audience member, do you think you would be more prone to share information with others if the presenter encouraged you to participate via Twitter?

Photo credit: scobleizer

Since the rejection, the company has received an enormous amount of publicity. Stories in news outlets, blogs, television and radio have created discussions in numerous public forums. This just adds value to the nearly $3 million price tag CBS is charging for a 30-second spot.

But why the uproar? Controversial subject matter always strikes a chord and advocates on both sides of an issue will make their voices heard. In fact, it was reported that CBS believed ManCrunch submitted an ad they knew would be rejected in an effort to generate free publicity. ManCruch denies the accusation.

And while ManCrunch is receiving a fair amount of free publicity, are they better off? As of today, the ManCrunch commercial on YouTube.com has been viewed more than 400,000 times. Last year, Wikipedia reported that the Super Bowl was watched by 93.2 million people. Would the aired ManCrunch television commercial create the same level of conversation? Would the controversy have as much value without social media?

“This experiment will enable us to take a hard look at all the myths that exist about Facebook and Twitter,” said Helene Jouan, a senior editor at France Inter, one of the stations that is sending a journalist.

The experiment poses some interesting questions: How will the journalists verify accuracy of stories? And how will they decide when to report the “news” to their respective audiences? From the AFP:

Trying to sort the wheat from the chaff without access to these other sources will be a difficult task for the four men and one woman confined to the farmhouse in Perigord.

Very true. But, there are a few issues with the experiment. For example, at the time this blog was posted, the five journalists were following 852 Twitter users, combined. That seems like a pretty small sample for the basis of an experiment of this magnitude. And, I wonder if they are considering the sources of their followers? For instance, are they following childhood friends or traditional media such as CNN International? Do you think that Facebook Friends and the Twitter equivalent are more likely to post news because the experiment has been announced?

Despite the obvious problems with the experiment, I can’t wait to see how it pans out. In fact, I’m already *following each reporter. I’d just recommend taking their findings with a grain of salt … but if you’re in the communication profession, you already knew that.

*Note: Since all tweets in this list will be in a language other than English, check out this quick video on how to translate Twitter updates. Hopefully, the powers-that-be at TweetDeck will soon create an auto-translate feature for groups.

Photo credit: Rob Enslin

Think about that for a moment. Customers aren’t even giving companies a chance to fix poor service before telling their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and blog readers about how their expectations weren’t met. The study even says that only a small minority of dissatisfied customers bother going to the offending organization at all.

Without a social media monitoring program in place, how is a company to know this situation even exists? Odds are, they won’t. And that presents a serious problem.

The study did have a bright side, though: Individuals who are vocal about their criticisms are also likely to share positive experiences. That means companies who are keeping an eye on their online presence have the opportunity to turn complainers into happy customers – right in front of their networks’ eyes.

Check out PR Cog’s response to his experience with the lack of one company’s social media monitoring, over on Sarah Evans’ blog.

So, what are you waiting for? If you have questions about monitoring programs, where to start, online tools, etc. – ask away in the comments!

Providing good counsel requires in-depth understanding of each individual client. One size does not fit all.