The Olympics and Me

Confession time, pre Olympics I wasn’t overly concerned with getting tickets for an event or just being anywhere near the capital at all whilst the games were on. That was until an opportunity came forward which combined two of the things I enjoy the most, watching sport and yes I’ll admit it, social media. I was lucky enough to get myself on the team as one of four Social Media Commentators at the games with a fifth member of our highly successful team being Joe Morgan who was Digital Media Manager for Team GB.

Pre games this Olympics was built up as “the first games told in 140 characters” and so it proved to be with athletes, brands and TeamGB all sky rocketing in follower numbers during the Olympics. Our day to day roles involved an 8 hour shift starting at staggered times during the day and a simple divide and conquer method to ensure coverage of each and every sport. In terms of content we pushed out; when GB athletes were performing, gold medal winning moments, exclusive photos and got several #tags going such as #GoMo and #BigBen.

I was lucky enough to be covering the opening ceremony and also super Saturday and would rank having the opportunity to share that with so many people as one of the most enjoyable things I have done in my career so far. Seeing a picture of David Beckham in a speedboat and looking typically sharply dressed go from 0 likes to 200,000 in a matter of minutes was impressive. The pressure on each tweet, Facebook post or Google+ update was fairly intense given that the Internet will crucify you for any factual or god forbid grammatical errors! I am also the proud owner of a Tweet with 44,000+ Retweets, (I have now officially told everyone of this feat).

Some Team GB Olympic Stats:

During the 17 days of London 2012, 306 billion pieces of content where shared across the Open Web. That is 208,233 shares per second. Source = RediumOne

– Over 620% increase of Team GB social media fans/followers during the Olympics Games

– Over 2000% increase of Team GB social media fans/followers since the start of the Our Greatest Team campaign in March

– Over 35 million people engaged with #TeamGB or #OurGreatestTeam

– Closing Ceremony tweet received over 65,000 Re-Tweets & Opening Ceremony Tweet received 45,000 Re-tweets

– #OurgreatestTeam averaged at 542,000 views per day with peaks on August 4th/12th at over 750,000.

– #TeamGB averaged at 1.8 million views per day with peaks again on August 4th/12th at over 2.8 million

The impact the games has had on the lives of athletes who are involved in sports that don’t normally command the level of attention that they received during the games is staggering.  They have been lifted in the spot light and they deserve every second of it, the commitment and sacrifice put in to becoming the elite of your sport is astonishing, what is most impressive though was the pride all athletes performed with, they were simply happy to be out on the big stage in front of an adoring home nation doing what they loved doing, competing.

Team GB Social Media Team

From left to Right

Jonathan Sebire ; Alex Brinnand ; Joe Morgan ; Kelly Somers ; Tom Scott (Me)