Social Media Promotes Award Shows Like VMAs to Trending Topic Success

With the TV industry struggling to retain audiences, networks and award shows specifically are incorporating social media technology into their broadcasts, in an attempt to boost ratings by creating a more interactive program. This weekend, social media analysts will be watching carefully to see how well this year’s MTV Video Music Awards will continue the trend. “[Award shows are] absolutely capitalizing off of social media,” says Stephanie Humphrey, Technology Correspondent for YourBlackWorld.com. “You’re getting more eyes on your programming if [a Twitter user] uses #ChrisBrown and their friends see it and retweet it, or remember to themselves, ‘Oh, the BET Awards are on tonight; let me go turn on the TV!’ It keeps people connected. People aren’t always at their couch. I can be at the library or work and check in and see who just won ‘Best Artist’ through Twitter.”

“The BET Awards this year was the most impressive with its social network tie-ins,” Humphrey continues. “Ford hosted the social media lounge at the show, and there was a contest for Twitter users who used the given hash tag–the winner won a new Ford Focus!”

BET and Ford both garnered publicity and viewers, not to mention amassed more Twitter followers for subsequent marketing schemes. A winning situation for all involved. So it should come as no surprise that award shows, corporations, and networks alike are integrating social media to the extent that they are. This past year, MTV even went as far as to hire Gabi Gregg as its first “TJ” (Twitter Jockey) to capitalize on the medium’s reach.

“TV is in the business of attention,” says James Andrews, a digital communications/content strategist, who directed the social media strategy for the Grammy Awards. With Andrews’ help, the show garnered their best ratings in over a decade–over the course of three hours, a staggering 90% of Twitter conversations mentioned the Grammy Awards. “TV is about how many eyeballs you can steal; how much

attention can you provide and produce to take those eyeballs away from somewhere else and have them focus on whatever it is you’re doing,” he says. “MTV does it well; BET has been integrating more recently, but The Grammy’s ability to think of communication as a story arch is really what sets them apart.”

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For this past year’s Grammy Awards, one unique approach used was the creation of a community blogger forum. For each musical genre there was a blogger on the floor giving a virtual play-by-play so that fans for each respective group (hip-hop, jazz, classical, pop, etc.) could experience the show through the unique perspective of that particular music culture. It created a niche that filtered through all of the information that’s important to the specific portion of the audience. “They understand that a tweet can start off small then snowball in to a massive trending topic,” says Andrews, “And they’ve built a way to support that arch and move with it.”

While Andrews can’t provide specific trade-secret details of how the Grammy Awards so successfully utilized the ‘story-arch’ strategy, he did have one useful hint: “Social media is a culture,” he affirms. “It’s not just about individuals. And you can feel the difference of when an organization is embedded in the culture of social media versus when they’re just trying to capitalize without really knowing what they’re dealing with. In the future, I can see new careers in social media for people to act as intermediaries between the viewer and the show–maybe when a viewer sees someone on an awards show or a TV show with a pair of shoes they like, they can tweet to the intermediary and get an immediate response about what brand of shoes they’re wearing. It would be like customer service for television. I think Twitter works well today, but it’s important to note that it’s the behavior that creates a movement, not the tool.”

That’s not to say that there are no potential concerns to be raised from this new marketing tool and the behavior it supports. Several industry insiders have raised questions about the ethical implications of “sponsored tweets”, which is when a company pays to have a celebrity casually mention their product on Twitter. Reality star Kim Kardashian allegedly rakes in $10k per tweet from some sponsors.

This practice raises concerns about the genuineness of the medium as users may soon be unclear about which tweets are true and which are just for a quick buck or other corporately driven motives. “We live in a capitalistic society,” Humphrey cautions. “The money is fast and free, but you have to be honest in your marketing… There are a couple of Websites that, depending on your Internet profile and visibility, even if you aren’t a celebrity you can still name your price for tweeting about a product. It’s buyer beware.”