Following incredible social media presence at London 2012, which resulted in #Paralympics becoming the top sporting trend of the year, the IPC is looking for further success in Sochi, as it urges athletes, supporters and officials to share their experiences with the world to further enhance the profile of the Paralympic Movement.

"Following the success of London 2012, where Paralympians took the social media world by storm, we now hope to transfer that success over to winter sports and make Sochi 2014 the most successful Winter Games ever on digital media," IPC communications and media director Craig Spence said.

"Many Paralympians are already very active across social media, and we'd like to encourage them to further embrace and build their networks so that they can become household athlete names and get the Movement trending worldwide once again.

"The guidelines at the same time as opening the Games to a far wider audience also aim to protect the integrity of the Paralympic Games and Movement, and anyone associated with them."

Throughout the London 2012 Games, the official IPC Facebook page received 82 million views, while 10 million videos were viewed on the ParalympicSportTV YouTube channel and the Paralympics were tweeted about 1.5 million times.

An innovative collaboration between the IPC, London 2012 and Samsung, Samsung Bloggers, also proved popular, with 47 athletes producing more than 600 behind the scenes video blogs at the Games that immediately received over 500,000 YouTube views.

The IPC social media guidelines for Sochi 2014 can be found here.

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