Promoting the Winter Olympics through Twitter

When the summer Olympics were held in England in 2012, it was the first Olympic Games that were really covered and followed in the social media world.

(Via http://blog.rdio.com)

More than 150 million tweets across 16 days and 80,000 a minute when Usain Bolt won his 200 meters Olympic gold led to the London games being crowned as the first "social media games".  

The winter Olympics however, while still holding just as much prestige and honor as the summer Olympics, seem to lack the big name stars and events that most of the world loves to watch.

This does not mean that people are not watching and using twitter to interact with the athletes in a mostly positive manner.

Although there have been a few instances of “cyber bullying”, as in the case of the Great Britain team after short track skater Elise Christie crashed in Thursday's 500m final. Most of the coverage of the Olympics has been very positive and very interactive with the exception of this incident.

Social media coverage of a sport is all about sharing the moments that make you awestruck and the moments that you’ll remember where you were years down the line.

Olympic athletes having twitter accounts, and using them has been wonderful for fans all around the world. One such athlete is Lolo Jones (@lolojones) a summer Olympic athlete from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London games who competed in the 100m hurdles. Jones who now is an Olympic bobsledder for team USA is very familiar with using twitter.

She is very active on twitter since becoming a member in August of 2009. Interacting with fans and re-tweeting good luck tweets that she has received is how Lolo Jones has become a fan favorite in USA Track & Field.

Standout performances at the Olympics not only increase athletes' endorsement potential. A strong showing can expand their social media profile while simultaneously gaining them followers and potential sponsors and endorsers.