Social media has not only provided TV shows with a venue for participating in the digital sphere, but it’s actually created an online environment in which, when properly executed, entertainment marketing initiatives for TV shows can actually thrive. Take “American Idol,” for example. To increase viewer conversation and buzz around the show as well as voter participation, “Idol” came out swinging with an integrated social strategy this season, resulting in more than 1 million social comments generated around the season finale alone, according to MediaPost. Over the course of the season, there were a total of 5.9 million social comments surrounding the show.

Through a comprehensive social strategy, entertainment marketing pros can take advantage of platforms like Facebook and Twitter to engage with a television audience in real time. Whether via desktop computers, smartphones or tablets, consumers are jumping on social platforms and creating conversations about their favorite TV shows as they’re watching them. From an entertainment marketing standpoint, this provides a huge opportunity to marketers to get consumers engaged with the TV show’s brand. Let’s take a look at how “American Idol” upped the social communication strategy ante, creating a Twitter frenzy surrounding the show’s season finale.

First, “Idol” created the Idol Nation Fan Hub, a site aggregating conversations from its social communities on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more. And just in time for the season finale, the Flock to Unlock campaign was revealed in which audience members could tweet to unlock sponsored content from brands associated with the show. Ryan Seacrest then mentioned the real-time social content live on the show, which (of course) sent the masses flocking to Twitter to join in on the conversation. Every time a fan tweeted about the show, it moved them all one step closer to unlocking the content for everyone.

Take a look at the numbers:

• At the show’s end, the buzz had hit 23,876 tweets per  minute
• Between the start and end of the show, there were a total of 599,174 tweets
• In the 10 minutes following the show, there were 9,500 tweets per minute
• In the hour following the show, there were still around 4,000 tweets per minute

Like any intelligent social strategy, “American Idol” went beyond basic social media monitoring and instead approached it through benchmarketing, measurement and data analysis. A few things they focused on included tweets about the competition, trending topics and keywords that relay emotion. They could even take it a step further, using insights from social research to improve next year’s show based on consumer conversation trends and sentiment.

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