So it’s official – we know which London 2012 football teams will be playing at Cardiff in their tournament’s group stages.

Yesterday’s competition draw gave the Millennium Stadium a prime PR opportunity which I’m confident the stadium will use well.

For the record, the first Olympics sport this summer will take place at the stadium on July 25. In a colourful double-header, Great Britain women play New Zealand then Cameroon women meet Brazil.

Return

The following day sees the Millennium host the men’s Brazil v Egypt game and on July 28 GB women return to face Cameroon after Brazil have played New Zealand.

Cardiff has two more group stage dates before hosting two quarter-final games and the men’s bronze-medal decider.

Already the London 2012 PR machine appears to be running smoothly as the organisers target maximum ticket sales.

Vital

It’s also vital that local businesses and tourism bosses focus on the wonderful publicity opportunities that these South Wales games will offer.

Which wise local local businesses, for instance, will be the first the tell the media that their staff canteen will be offering themed food reflecting the day’s visiting teams?

Soccer schedule here – click.

Photo: Soccer star Ronaldo before the London 2012 football tournament draw. Pic: http://www.london2012.com

So if you’re one of them you may feel outrage over proposals the UK government has to enable the security services to snoop around our social media accounts to see what we’re up to. But if you think that’s bad, how about this?

It was written by Reg Braithwaite and has been described as the world’s best resignation letter. He began “Dear Mr President, Thank you very much for honouring me with the position of Director of Software Development” before explaining why his conscience was forcing him to resign.

His problem appears to have been a change in the Whitehouse’s social media policy which meant employees had to allow designated managers to access their social media accounts to vet them and ‘shoulder surf’ job interviewees while they were on Facebook or even log in on their behalf to snoop around.

It’s caused ructions and red faces in the US, not in the least because the letter was a spoof – though it was reported as fact by numerous other “news” websites who fell for it.

But why shouldn’t they have fallen for it? Alright, apart from a few clues such as the heading “I hereby (fictionally) resign” (a pretty big clue really), Mr Braithwaite was making a serious point. He believes this is the shape of things to come – and soon.

His views are shaped by a few recent developments which have seen employers asking employees and prospective employees for access to their social media accounts, prompting Facebook, among others, to publish statements on the matter denouncing the practice.

But is this practice so surprising? Anyone considering you for a job may already check out your profile online to see what you were up to last night or assess the company you keep.

Employers have always performed such character checks but now that some people willingly broadcast their most intimate details online, it’s a lot easier for them to delve a lot deeper.

And it is worth noting Mr Braithwaite’s resignation spoof in the US was produced before the controversy blew up over the UK government’s social media / security services proposal.

So perhaps, in these times of high unemployment, the acid test is; would you allow a potential employer access to you social media accounts if it meant they could give you a clean bill of health and offer you a job? Sadly, the answer for some will be “yes”.

Of course, as Braithwaite’s spoof demonstrates, a flurry of litigation based on human rights, employment and discrimination law may await employers who choose to go down this route.

But laws do change. It’s another good reason for everyone to be careful what they post to their social networks – even in the darkest, most intimate recesses. It may come back to haunt them.

It’s always pleasant to greet a new publication to the local media scene.

And City-Of Swansea Magazine is now a pleasing secret that’s out of the bag.

Copies have been distributed around the city and were snapped up by visitors to Swansea Business Club today.

Different

It’s different and it certainly stands out in a marketplace that’s becoming increasingly well populated.

Why’s it different? Well, it thrives on a cutting edge design ethos, it has a well-judged eclectic mix of features and it isn’t frightened to take risks.

It’s a highly refreshing addition to the city’s media landscape.

Engaging

In its own words, it targets 27,500 readers with unique, engaging and inspirational content, and with beautiful design.

It’s proposition to advertisers?  A print run of 10,000, single page at £339 and double page at £679.

Its launch edition editorial features? They include looks at Swansea-based Hyde + Hyde Architects, artrist-led charity Locws, Swansea Council’s recycling operation and commercial photographer David Griffin.

Columnists

The mag’s columnists include travel writer Victoria Trott, Swans columnist Chris Carra and lawyer Paul Shuttleworth.

It’s only 32 pages just now, with an accent on stylish black and white and – daringly – it’s printed on heavy matt-finish paper.

A great start, City-Of! And a cheeky cover headline … “Hello, I’m new”

More

• www.city-of.co.uk
• Twitter @CityofSwansea
• Facebook /CityofSwansea

Good luck to hyperlocal news service Port Talbot Magnet which is publishing its first printed product.

One of a new breed of online native information resource, Magnet has so far made a real fist of supplying local news via the web.

But now its volunteers have worked hard to produce a souvenir magazine marking the first anniversary of Michael Sheen’s incredible Passion play in the steeltown last Easter.

Official

The Passion: Memory has been produced as the official guide to anniversary celebrations taking place this Easter. Go to their website by clicking here.

Thousands of Port Talbot residents will get it free of charge. It’s an initiative which shows that local journalism is alive and kicking – and that it can be harnessed by others for great PR purposes.

Editor Rachel Howells said: “The programme is an official National Theatre Wales publication, it’s an essential companion to The Passion: Memory exhibition, the world premiere screenings of the film, The Gospel Of Us and the new publication of the novelised version written by Owen Sheers, also called The Gospel Of Us.

Photography

“It contains a personal letter from Sheen, a celebration of photography and art by local people inspired by The Passion and a unique record of last year’s production produced by professional photographers.”

The programme will be available for free at Port Talbot’s Aberafan Shopping Centre from April 3-8 while stocks last.

Orders: Click

Check out this revealing video of Rio Ferdinand extolling the virtues of media training and social media. Click

It shows how a man at the top of his profession sees both as an essential part of everyday life.

Business take note.

Awards

Ferdinand, like fellow Premier League stars such as Joey Barton, has taken to web format Twitter like Lionel Messi has to picking up World Footballer of the Year awards.

Yes, they use it for what you’d normally term as self-promotion – but more interestingly they also use it as a way of communicating as directly as possible with fans.

Ferdinand tells this BBC clip that the media is such an important element of football now that it’s important for young players to have an understanding of platforms such as Twitter.

Character

He says it’s a way of letting supporters see the real you rather than a character drawn by a journalist who may be chained to a desk.

He says that streams of post-match interviews can be easily bypassed by players wishing to tell their story of the game; they simply use their smartphone and its social media facilities.

However, the traditional media can’t be ignored and Ferdinand says he wishes he’d had suitable training to deal with that from his early days as a pro.

Help

He says: “When I was 18 and 19 years old I looked at the media as the Devil but it’s good to have strong relationships with people there because you might need to lean on someone in the  media to get help in certain situations.”

He said that young players needed to be “like sponges” when being offered good advice on new and traditional media – it would help them in the long term make the best of both worlds.

Photo: www.manutd.com

For someone with a 360 degree view of the web, Andrew Bruce Smith (pictured) shows no sign of becoming blinkered by new developments.

Indeed, the social media PR specialist seems to have the capacity to embrace new web tools just as Bob the Builder would make use of a trip to B&Q.

That meant good news for the delegates on the latest CIPR course in Cardiff.

Pivotal

Smith’s key message was that the fast-evolving pivotal issue for PR practitioners is how we become robust in the evaluation of social media use for our own businesses and for our clients.

A PR firm which doesn’t understand how to navigate social media, analyse and measure it is missing a crucial trick or two, he said.

Andrew’s hot tips included his preference for Google Analytics as a number-cruncher for social media metrics.

Better

Moreover, it’s getting better; it’s expected that soon Google Analytics will be applying economic values to social media activity.

And the key messages we should be getting over to clients or PR doubters?

Well, they include the fact that social media links are increasingly influential on Google rankings; they help get your website noticed.

Forever

Online PR lasts forever as search engines will pick up key words year after a post has first appeared, and both B2B and B2C businesses are increasingly understanding that digital marketing can generate leads and sales.

Andrew gave delgates a long list of online resources which can be used to plan and evaluate social media activity. I can’t wait to start using them.

His knowledge was impressive. If you get a chance to hear him speak, pop along.

More info

• CIPR Wales
• Andrew Bruce Smith’s blog

As millions of web addicts move from PC to smartphone, it’s encouraging that a Welsh newspaper is taking a lead on apps.

The phone-friendly platforms are an essential tool in marketing through mobiles so the South Wales Evening Post innovation is to be cheered.

In a nutshell, the app allows subscribers to access the Post’s latest edition – and archived copies – from 6am every day. Fee: around £70 a year which markedly undercuts the print edition.

Bold

It’s a bold move and a step in the right direction as the traditional media continues to continue its efforts to catch up with technology.

The Post’s app is now on a free 14-day trial and I encourage you to check it out. Just go to the iPhone App Store and search for South Wales Evening Post.

Reading isn’t the only thing you can do via the phone or tablet; editions can be emailed on or linked to social media platforms.

Filed

Pages or individual stories can then be electronically cut out and filed away.

A search facility allows easy navigation to subjects of interest.

Yes, it has its early glitches, but this wise move by the Post – marketed as Wales’ biggest selling paper – works well on a few levels and is great PR, singling out the paper as something of a standard bearer.

More info

• In Publishing
• Journalism UK
• Hold the Front Page

It’s important, having spent a lot of money building them, to fine tune websites so they work well for you. And it is the art of search engine optimisation, or SEO, helps websites get picked up by Google through which 90% of the online searches are performed in the UK.

There are plenty of good things you can do to help your site in this way but one fundamental rule is not to try and fool Google. Many have tried in order to make their website more prominent in Google search results but few such tricks work for long.

The very clever people at Google soon see through them and change their search parameters to stop that particular trick dead in its tracks. And they may even penalise your site and others who try and play the same trick on it.

In the past, Google’s view of what makes a website a bad one has led it to penalise sites with too much similar content (a common but clumsy trick) and sites with too many ads which simply get in the way of useful content.

From Google’s point of view, when users search for a key term they want the results to be as useful as possible.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Google is now about to penalise sites which have too much SEO going on. After all, a site with super SEO may not have really useful content or even be totally brilliantly structured. But it could be returned in Google search results higher than one with great, original and easily found content.

When the changes are made in a few weeks’ time there will still plenty of room for search engine optimisation which will remain as it ever has been. But genuinely useful and original content will be even more important than ever.

There are few clues yet as to what will count as “over-optimisation”. The first tip, however, comes after a hint from a senior Google executive and is for anyone producing content for their website; don’t add too many keywords or Google may penalise you. As a rule of thumb, I’ll probably use three or four in an article of this length.

We’ll keep you abreast of other guidelines as they become apparent.

At 2.45pm on Saturday there was no guarantee that the rugby players of Wales would celebrate an RBS 6 Nations Grand Slam that afternoon.

Yet two hours later that’s precisely what they were doing after Millennium Stadium victory over France, allowing the Cardiff PR machine to ratchet up the intensity.

Victory was followed by a rapid stream of upbeat press releases which revealed that much optimistic planning had taken place in the days leading up to kick-off. Communication skills and public relations suddenly looked very valuable indeed.

Missive

Just before 5.30pm, possibly before the players were out of their ice baths, a WRU media missive was pinged around the rugby world.

Headline: Welsh Government to honour the Grand Slam winning squad.

Even in in our wildest dreams, the wheel of devolution wouldn’t turn with sufficient pace to produce such grand plans in an hour.

Celebration

The release announced this evening’s public celebration at The Senedd – and what a wonderful party that will be from 6pm in Cardiff Bay.

The release was preceded by news from the WRU media team that the  Cardiff city centre head office of shirt sponsors Admiral would be illuminated that evening with a giant rugby-themed image.

Very nice it was too, showing Sam Warburton, pictured, clutching the 6 Nations trophy, probably a shot from the pre-tournament publicity archive.

Success

And even though we know that Admiral and their staff are capable of great things, this was obviously another success of forward thinking.

Before 9pm, there was the hat-trick release issued from delighted Welsh rugby bosses.

This time it came from Regional Rugby Wales, the lobbying arm of the Blues-Dragons-Ospreys-Scarlets collective.

Preview

It flagged up a press conference being held tomorrow to preview the remainder of the domestic and European season.

There are key issues to be resolved, of course, such as three trophies and 2012-13 Heineken Cup qualification.

And the regions will hope that a joint marketing effort at a time of national celebration can boost crowd figures in the coming weeks.

Credit

The flurry of the media releases and the careful preparation that had taken place were a credit to all.

Gone, it seems, are the days of being under-prepared.

The Wales team proved that – as did the Wales PR professionals.

Pic: Sam Warburton. Source: WRU

We already have a few ideas and I’m sure we’ll leverage what we can from this major event, just as we always do. But my answer to the most ambitious enquiries has been that sponsorship opportunities at the Olympic Games are way beyond the marketing budget of most businesses.

Think of your marketing budget and put a whole load of zeroes on the end of it. More than 100 years after they were first conceived, those five Olympic rings have become quite appropriate.

So far, I understand Seb Coe & Co have raised £670 million in sponsorship. But with such sums involved they are understandably concerned about “ambush marketing” ie non-sponsors latching on to the event as a marketing platform without paying the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) a penny.

But there are still plenty of ways in to the Olympics for businesses which are perfectly legal and above board, especially through social media, though not as many as there were thanks to Locog’s attempts to close some of the doors.

Interestingly, a recent survey found the brand most associated with the Olympics is Nike, which deserves an extra pat on the back as they are not actually an official sponsor. Addidas, however, are. And guess how they feel about that, having paid a significant proportion of that overall sponsorship figure themselves.

And it’s these little local difficulties that Locog isworking hard to try and resolve.

So far it is reported to have come to agreement with social media platform Foursquare to stop non-sponsors from creating check-ins around the Olympic Park and now Twitter has agreed not to let non-sponsors buy promoted Twitter ads with games-related tags such as #London2012. They’ve also set strict rules for their army of volunteers in a bid to stop them circulating behind-the-scenes comments and pics on their own social networks.

However, they can do little to stop individuals or organisations tweeting as they please. And visitors to Olympic venues will inevitably send countless millions of pictures and posts with whatever content they wish to.

Ultimately, the best unofficial ideas and opportunities will doubtless result in some highly visible marketing and more than a little angst from the official sponsors. The rest will bob around in a vast social media sea of … well, Olympian proportions. But that won’t stop anyone enjoying the event.