The Olympic Torch will be passing through my small City of Chester today, with thousands of spectators set to flock to see it, it got me wondering how many people will be taking photos and uploading them to social networking sites.

There is no doubt about it the Olympics is a huge event, and it’s the first time that anybody from almost anywhere in the world can see what its like to experience the passing of the torch from a spectators viewpoint, thanks to the people who are utilising social networks to share their experience.

This you would think would be a very exciting time to see the Olympics stars from the Olympic stadium in London, from the viewpoint of a fan, however this will not be the case, as fans and volunteers will not be allowed to tweet, post videos to YouTube or use any other form of social networking to share their experience at the games. The Olympic committee issued this statement “Visitors to London 2012 will be forbidden from posting photos and videos on social media networks.” – So much for calling it the ‘twitter games’,

The rules for volunteers are as follows:

Not to disclose their location :

So using sites like 4square will be out of the question.

Not to get involved in detailed discussion about the Games Online

Basically the 70,000 volunteers are unable to voice their own opinion of the games on social networks

The only way they can share Olympic information is by re-tweeting or passing on official London 2012 postings.

Personally I think this is a great shame, as the Olympics in my mind is about unifying everybody giving people a chance to support their countries with friendly sporting rivalry.

However with all of this being said, I still think that this will be the first time where we see the whole world turned in to their TV’s AND their social media devices sharing their opinions and and voicing their support.

 I will also make a prediction that twitter interaction will peak when Usain Bolt runs the 100meter sprint.

What are your feelings about the Olympics and Social media, and do you have any of your own predictions? I’d love to know so please post in the comment box below!

The socialjamm team.

www.socialjamm.com

www.twitter.com/socialjamm

To follow my debate about ‘having an animated icon on twitter’ and whether it benefits you, I decided to ask people on twitter about their feeling on recieveing an automated direct message once you follow someone.

Personally I don’t like them, I don’t think they fit in with twitter and the people that use them, this is because I find them to be robotic, short sales pitch with generally no real value.

When I follow somebody on twitter it’s because I find their tweets interesting, I want to contribute to a conversation or they are person behind them has similar interests to myself, I don’t follow them in hope of them forcing sales pitches down my throat from the get go, I want engagement and to speak to a human. The following reasons are why I believe they shouldn’t be used:

• They are impersonal and intrusive, I see them as being quite similar to receiving junk mail once you sign up to something you are generally interested about.
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• It cheapens your brand. People are increasingly becoming savvier, and find it quite insulting to receive a direct sales pitch so soon after interacting with somebody.
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• They don’t have the desired impact for a marketer. If people are interested in you and what they have to offer they will research you further themselves, they don’t need to be spoon fed information.
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Here are some of the tweets I recieved in response to the posed question:

@AirConTechLtd wrote - '@tim_eem It's a little arrogant really that they have to little time to care about their followers!!'

@pinkspiderweb wrote - '@tim_eem #debate No. I don't like automatic DMs, they're too impersonal '

@nimuesnestgifts Wrote – ‘@tim_eem annoys me so I usually unfollow immediately! May as well be a bot if using auto DMs as far as I'm concerned’

It’s not really come to any surprise but using automated Direct Messages are not popular, my advice would be to switch them off and communicate to your new followers personally, as this will get you a higher response rate and adds a personal touch which twitter users crave. If you don’t have time to do this then don’t do it, no Direct message is better than having one which irritates people

How do you feel about them? Have you had any success in using them? Comments are appreciated!

The socialjamm team.
www.socialjamm.com
www.twitter.com/socialjamm

I personally believe that having an animated twitter icon is a bad idea, and many people on twitter agreed with me. I can see the logic behind a company or person having one, and why they think it would make their tweets stand out in search results and a twitter feed, which it does, but I strongly recommended that you change it to a standard image if you do have one, the reasons for this are as follows:

• It looks cheap. Web design has moved on from the days of the '< marquee >' tag which would make your text scroll across your webpage, as this was seen to be more of a distraction from the copy on the page, which as we all know is the reason why people have visited the page in the first place.

• It’s intrusive, a bit like an advert on TV its very flashy and loud, to gain your attention, but it’s not what the viewer has tuned into view, again strengthening the the fact that it shoud be your tweets that gain your page attention.

There are some of the responses I received: to the question this question I tweeted ‘Do animated #twitter profile pictures attract or distract you?’:

@almalbon – Wrote: @tim_eem Animated profile pics are cheap and gimmicky. Let your tweets do the talking. Quality content is king

@Bizitalk Wrote - @tim_eem Come down on the side of distraction and slightly annoying I think!

In short, you should allow your tweets to gain you more followers, rather than employing a cheap, loud tactic to get your profile noticed. Great copy is always key

The socialjamm team.
www.socialjamm.com
www.twitter.com/socialjamm

Web link-shortening giant, Bit.ly has released data about the best times to post on the top social networks.

Optimum Times to post on twitter:

The best time to post on twitter is between 1:00pm and 3:00pm ET (10am to 1pm PT) in the early days of the working week, as this is the period of time that garners the highest click rate. The absolute optimum time is 1:00pm on a Monday, the reason for this being, one can only speculate is that most people tend to check their twitter updates on the first day back to work on their lunch breaks.

Optimum times to post on Facebook:

Facebook differs to Twitter with the optimum time to post being Wednesday at 3:00pm ET. The general rule for Facebook is to post after lunch, (1pm Onwards) as this is the time that will get the most click through rates. These results could be due to office workers looking distraction in the afternoon, to get over the post lunch lull.

When not to post on Facebook and Twitter:

The statistics have shown for both Facebook and Twitter that the worst times to post, in order to get interaction with your followers are in the evening after 8:00pm up until the next working day.

*Twitter Tip – Although you may be tempted to post on twitter first thing in the morning, it would be wise to post at around 11:00am to catch the traffic at lunch time.

The socialjamm team.
www.socialjamm.com
www.twitter.com/socialjamm