For non-football fans, Andrey Arshavin is Russia’s most talented and flamboyant player, currently plying his trade with Arsenal. His talents on the pitch are there for all to see but a recent article in the Evening Standard highlighted his willingness to engage with his fans in a far more personal and human way than many (if not all) of his Premier League counterparts.

His official website is not the most cutting edge in terms of design and interactivity. There is no ‘real time’ features in the way of chat rooms, forums, or integration with social media. The questions in the ‘Ask Andrey’ section have been vetted and then written and posted on the site, so the authenticity could be questioned, plus some stuff may have been lost in translation!

Humanising Celebrity

However, the personal nature of the questions and answers shows a willingness to engage and give his fans a window into his life outside of football. The text in the header is a good mantra that many other athletes could adpopt,  “On the pages of this website you can learn a lot about me. Not only as a footballer, but as an ordinary person. I’d be glad if my website helps you to communicate with each other”

Give Mr Arshavin some better tools (Facebook, Twitter, live streams) and I reckon you could have a new web celebrity on our hands…check out Chad Ochocinco , the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver , for the benchmark of what mega talented, ever so slightly insane, athletes can do with social media.

To non-fans, it may seem banal to want to know what colour Arshavin’s bath sponge is, his thoughts on extra terrestrial activity and body art….but to his fans, this is the type of stuff they want. You won’t get this type of content on a Sky Sports press conference or posted on the Aresenal official website and that is probably a good thing, but as a fan, this type of personnal connection is what creates a bond that is intrinsicly hard to break. The same goes for athletes who engage in an authentic manner on Twitter and Facebook – check out Shaq. Now compare that to what many of the Premier League footballers have allowed to happen to their pages on Facebook – Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney for example.

Personal Branding

These pages should not be used as ‘bear traps’ to move traffic to generic football news websites, they are a potentially golden piece of real estate for the players to build their personal brand – not just their professional one. Ignoring all the commercial possibilities which are flying out of the window for the players, their agents and their sponsors…. they can be used as a way to raise awareness for the good causes and charity work they do and be a trusted communication point for when things go pear shaped.

The real time web and democratization of content means that whether, these athletes like it or not, it is now impossible to ‘control’ the spread of information about them, good and bad. Ask John Terry, Ashley Cole or Tiger Woods. In the past, with a press gagging order in place, any runours would gradually vanish…not so anymore. Athletes are always going to find themselves in some kind of trouble during their careers (we wouldn’t want it any other way!) so creating a channel where you have a loyal group of engaged advocates who feel they know the person behind the celebrity can be a powerful tool when having to rebuild your personal brand.

Let me know in the comments any athletes you think are using social media for good, evil or nothing at all!

There has been a fair amount going on this week in social media with the Social Media World Forum (smwf) on Monday and Tuesday and SXSW the other side of the pond. Due to this, there is a bonus post in our top six this week.

1. Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance – Brian Solis

Always on the money in terms of in depth analysis and forward thinking, Brian Solis looks at how brands have to become adept at creating content and actually becoming media. He also breaks down the differences between paid, earned and owned media and looks at how, as content creators, brands and individuals can use social media to build influence and trust within their niche.

2. Social Fans More Likely to Buy – emarketer.com

Who’s looking for some ROI ammo? That’s most of us then! A recent study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate (US) indicates that if you are a friend or follower of a brand then you are more likely to buy their stuff. Not exactly a Eureka moment but anyone working with B2C clients, it may be worth throwing pointing them here.

3. 4 Ways the Entertainment Industry is Getting More Social – David A. Yovanno

If you are a fan of something or someone then social media should be your friend. TV companies, Movie studios, bands or labels and especially sports teams or athletes now have the tools to bring their fans into their world like never before. In this guest post by David A. Yovanno on Mashable, he looks at some examples of how the entertainment world is getting its social on.

4. Hats off to Heineken - Molly Flatt

I had originally credited this one to Mashable but a tweet from James Whatley at 1000Heads set me straight on how they had it first! This is one of the best WOM (word of mouth) campaigns I have seen in a while. The video is below so doesn’t need too many words, but note the harnessing of: real life, both genders, online and offline and the human touch. Enjoy.

5. Social Listening for Economists? – Aaron Lewis

Interesting angle from Aaron Lewis on how social media can be used as an economic prediction engine. By using the social media monitoring tools (in this case Crimson Hexagon), a decline in social chatter about job hunting pre-empted a slight increase in overall economic performance in the US. Not sure if we should hang our hats on the data just yet…but I like the way he is thinking!

6. Sequoia’s Kvamme: Social Media Marketing Can Replace Advertising – Liz Gannes

According to Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme, “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising any more.” With so many people now creating their own media, if marketers and advertisers of old can navigate the new waters and find a way in to these communities then they can turbo charge their messages. They are going to need to learn the new languages and etiquette though.

7.  Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv #1 – PianoChatImprov (Merton)

Controversial, I know but I couldn’t resist throwing in a seventh this week. If you aren’t familiar with chatroulette then go here or here. Then watch the below video and laugh accordingly!

“Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise” (Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent)

Human beings are visual creatures and the experiences we get from seeing someone or something is far deeper than reading text or hearing audio. The good news, is social media and the web in general is becoming more video friendly. It is easy to make videos, easy to upload them to sites with potentially millions of viewers and easy for those people to share them. With the search engines and advertisers now more interested in engagement levels and time and depth of a site visit, it is a bit of no brainer for media owners and brands to not harness this.

You hear online video and you think YouTube, and why not? There are over 400m people per month watching between 6-9 million channels! Impressive. Also, we have the social networks who have their own video upload platforms and streaming sites such as Ustream or JustinTV. A recent, and very interesting entrant is Vpype. I saw them in action at SMWF on Monday and think this has some real legs from a fan engagement perspective.

This is truly social video . Sure, you can watch a video on YouTube and comment on it or watch a live event or broadcast on Ustream (even with some nice social chat features running alongside) but the ability to run a live, unscripted, ‘meeting’ or ‘party’ with your friends or fans is a far more engaging and authentic proposition.

Features include:

-          Live chat alongside each video

-          Chat History and storage

-          Viral tools to promote broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter

Bring out the Celebrities

I think the real winners in this will be celebrities or brands who have a community of advocates such as bands, fashion designers and especially sports teams and athletes. The ability to provide an experience such as Vpype to fans, embedded into a platform where they are already investing a huge amount of their online time is one that they should be seriously looking at.

Too many media owners are still thinking they need to use this type of golden content as a way to drive traffic to their ‘official websites’ or require a two page registration form before you can access this good stuff. You don’t need to put your audience or fans in a headlock before giving them what they want! The tools are available to provide remarkable experiences outside of official sites and it will be interesting to see who starts putting some stakes in the ground and experimenting.

Would love to hear you thoughts…and Happy St Patrick’s Day!

The winners this week, in no particular order, are…

1. Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats” – Erick Schonfeld

Mark Andreesen (Co-Founder of Netscape and prolific investor) likens the development of the web and new media consumption to the discovery of the New World and offers the same advice to old media luddites today,  that was given to the Mexican’s over 500 years ago…”Burn the boats”. In other words, shut down your printing business and focus online. Unlikely we will see them abandoning a multi billion pound industry overnight…but I like the thinking!

2. SuperPower: Visualising the internet – BBC

Not much use to man or beast but a lovely visualization of the growth of web access from 1998 to 2008 around the World. Did you know that Congo only had 200 registered internet users in 1998…and Africa still lags way behind the rest of the globe ten years later. Check it out…we like the slider below the image.

3. Does Sports Need Social Media? – Lewis Howes

Yes! Without going over old ground too much, it is no secret that we think there is a huge amount Sports teams aren’t doing with social media and a huge amount that their fans wish they were. Lewis Howes looks at what is going on Stateside…and there is even less going on in the UK with a few notable exceptions. A big growth area for 2010 we think.

4. How Will The End of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers? – The Onion

We aren’t on a crusade against print media this week, but thought the below video was too funny to not make the cut. Enjoy!

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

5. VIDEO GETS SOCIAL ON FACEBOOK – Murray Newlands

Spotted this one on Murray Newlands’ blog about Vypype, who are launching social video in Facebook. This is different and arguably better than the current video experiences, YouTube or streaming. This lets individuals or fan page owners create private video chat with their friends and fans on their terms, whenever they want. There are too many brand applications for this to talk about here but expect to see this type of technology play a bigger and bigger role in customer engagement programs.

6. How To Use Video SEO To Jump To The Top Of Google Search Results – Benjamin Wayne

Its getting harder and harder to get onto page 1 of Google’s search results. Google are (apparently) tweaking their algorithm to reward social interaction and ‘blended’ search results which include images…and video. This post looks at how by creating videos and uploading them to YouTube (who Google own) will help your SEO, and has some useful pointers.

Right, that’s it for another week. Whatever you do over the weekend…do it safely!

Entertainment, news and education. Yes, it has some of the capabilities of a laptop and a giant iPhone… and there may be some that want to use it like that but what it is absolutely going to dominate at, is watching movies, sports games, music events and providing a new, rich reading experience.

Erik Qualman writes an excellent post here about the possibilities for enhanced knowledge transfer for educational books through the iPad. Imagine no more scribbling in text books or getting a second hand Economics book with the notes of a D- student masquerading as useful insights (I am still bitter about that one!). Instead, you will get the best notes from the smartest brains, even the authors themselves and be able to search for complimentary information all in the same place – very cool.

The latest industries to be disrupted by emerging technology, music and print, can start to tip toe their way back in by utilizing these platforms. Will people (micro) pay to have their chosen sections of the Times, Sun, NYT, FT downloaded to their tablet each day so they can read it on the train without attacking the person sitting next to them with a load of paper – yeah I reckon they might. How about the latest blockbuster while they are on a 4 hour train or plane journey? Definitely. The highlights from their team’s win in the Cup the day before as they lie in bed on Sunday morning…yes please!

Don’t expect it to do something that already exists. If Apple are good at one thing then its leading innovation and I think the entertainment industry as a whole is the most obvious application for the ipad and it should present a wealth of opportunities for the producers and gatekeepers of the content.

The iPhone or HTC (in my case) are too small to watch anything longer than 15-20mins worth of footage and people don’t want to hump their heavy laptops around everywhere they go. The iPad (I should point out that I am yet to touch one!) looks the perfect size to consume entertainment and that means new business models can start to appear – micro payments, freemium, sponsorship, content marketing etc.

What say you?

I am fan of Social Signal’s blog, so when this little gem showed up in google reader, I thought it was worth sharing. With Valentines Day this Sunday (no one needed reminding did they?!), the Social Signal team have come up with a short video showing how you can use social media to find love and keep it. Have a watch and let us know of any other ways you can use social media to improve your love life…but keep it clean!

OK – Instead of writing a post myself on how to donate to the  Haiti earthquake appeal, I am going to list some of the ones which are already around the blogosphere. I would suggest, quickly having a look at these photos photos from Anderson Cooper’s blog …they will make you add a few more £ or $ to your donation.

Unicef – Donate to UNICEF’s Haiti Earthquake Children’s Appeal

Good one from Google – Support Disaster Relief in Haiti

Times Online – How to donate to Haiti earthquake victims

Red Cross – Links off the homepage

Beliefnet  – How to Donate to Haiti Relief Organisations

stltoday.com – How to donate to Haiti earthquake relief

Pick any one you want  and Give Generously.