Blogging comes to the Olympics

I signed up to be part of a "social media experiment" kicked off by Marketing Guru Rohit Bhargava on August 6th with a post he wrote calling on volunteers to re-post, re-purpose and link to his Olympic postings.

The goal is not really to promote the games...really (smile). It's a sponsorship gig with Lenovo who has created a site called The Voices of the Olympic Games. It's an international blogging community that is writing about all the different events. Who are these bloggers? Well they are the athletes themselves!

I LOVE THIS. Really. It so changes the event which has for so long been tied to TV, quick interviews after the contest/competition and then odd sportscaster commentary (ick). Although thanks to NBC at their Olympics site I can still watch Bela Karolyi "go wild" for Liukin. Anyway to get the full voices and experiences of different athletes is really great and it's what social media has brought us. No longer do sponsors provide on-site shwag -- they can now create a full online community where the athletes themselves provide the content. Nice.

So I have been lax in my postings to Rohit's information as part of the social experiment. Today I make up for that. Here's a quick synopsis of the things you can read about if you want more depth and more diversity in your Olympic Coverage.

The two blogs to check out are Influential Marketing and the Catchup Lady where you can find a series of great posts that include:

1. Secret Things Only An Olympic Athlete In Beijing Would Know (Rohit)
2. Notes from inside the Olympic Village (Rohit) and
3. Kleenex premiering an Olympic Documentary -- this one is cool because it will be release as a trailer in theaters as Rohit wrote, "Check out the trailer for "Let It Out" below - its actually really good and will be premiering for a limited engagement in theaters in 25 cities starting August 13th across the US. It will also be available on www.letitout.com from August 14th. To read more real athlete's stories, visit Lenovo's Voices of the Olympic Games (link to http://summergames.lenovo.com)!"
4. What the Olympics are All About (Kaitlyn aka the Catchup Lady)
5. Super Fan on the Move -- great shots of fans in the stands from the Catchup lady.

Of course I would be remiss if I don't include links to our own local athlete blogs that are sponsored by local news organizations:

1. Carissa Gump (Vermont Born Weight-lifter) blogging for the Free Press
2. Jaime Brassard (WPTZ Photographer) is blogging for WPTZ

Don't know of any others.

Anyway, that it for another post on the Olympics and Social Media. Oh wait...one more thing...

If you are a facebook user, you should check out the "Bumper Sticker" application. Whole lots of people have created bumper stickers that include Olympic Athletes -- several nice ones of Michael Phelps. Now that's viral eh?