Royal wedding lights up U.S social networks

Nearly two-thirds of the volume of social media traffic pertaining to Britain's royal wedding has originated in the U.S., according to a Webtrends survey, while Britain is generating only 20%. And in total, the event is generating more social buzz than either the Japanese earthquake/nuclear disaster or the Egyptian uprising, a fact that U.S. TV networks are exploiting by interweaving their coverage with online and social elements.

Rumors that Americans don't care about the royal wedding are highly overrated.

And social media numbers tell the story.

Analysis of tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts by Webtrends, which gathers data on social media, shows that 65% of all social media related to the royal wedding has come from the U.S. in the past month. The U.K. has been responsible for just 20%.

PHOTOS: The royal wedding in pictures

BLOG: Minute-to-minute updates

THE DRESS: The gown is out of the garment bag

Need more proof of how important a part social media is playing? Royal wedding social-network chatter has surpassed that for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and the people's uprising in Egypt.

Also from Webtrends: 911,000 wedding-related tweets were tracked in the past 30 days. That's about 30,000 per day and accounts for 71% of all social media tracked by the Web analytics company.

And the TV networks are taking advantage of the fact that social-media-loving Americans are all over the Internet.

They're using social media to engage readers and share minute-by-minute news, giving wedding followers countless social-media-drenched outlets to choose from, including the BBC's royal wedding Facebook page, CNN's Twitter posts from celebrities, the Today show's Facebook page and NBC's Twitter account @royalwedding.

And wedding watchers are responding in droves: ABCNews.com in a partnership with Twitter reported on its website that Twitter had counted 1.7 million total tweets by the time Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, had been pronounced husband and wife. That's about 13,000 tweets per minute.

USA TODAY reporters are sending Twitter updates on @lifelinelive, with highlights on @usatodaylife and @usatoday.

And a team of USA TODAY readers are tweeting from London using the hashtag #usatrw.

USA TODAY is also posting updates on two Facebook pages: USA TODAY and USA TODAY Life.

Red Carpet Digital Treatment For The Royal Wedding

Although every imaginable digital platform will be deployed for Britain's royal wedding, the actual ceremony in Westminster Abbey will include a cell signal blackout, police confirmed. Nonetheless, Web, social and mobile sites will be out in full force, with no lack of access for royal fans in any medium or device.

The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton is the latest big global event which media companies are falling over themselves to cover with new digital products.

All manner of service providers has, for weeks, been peppering our inboxes with announcements of features they hope will help them monetise, broadcast and otherwise draw audience from the biggest royal occasion in decades.

But when the main event—the actual wedding itself—actually takes place, don’t expect a blow-by-blow account: cell signals are getting blocked during the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. (Update: According to CBS (NYSE: CBS), Scotland Yard is refuting the blocked call report.)

Police confirmed to Yahoo's Wedding Bloggers that cell signals will be blocked in Westminster Abbey from early Friday morning and will continue to be blocked for the duration of the ceremony. That will mean no rings while the rings get exchanged—but it will also mean to live tweets from any of the more social media-minded attendees. We’ll see if someone manages to crack through that barricade tomorrow. Twitter has been one of the most-used mediums for chatter about the wedding up to now:

Web

•A video opportunity? Every major network will be providing streaming of the event, and the portals might also come into their own here, too. But, as the happy day is a UK public holiday, most viewers will likely be in front of a TV, not a PC.

•Skateboarding Corgies? YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), in its latest big live stream, gets an official nod from Buckingham Palace for its broadcast, through the official Royal Channel on the site.

•Does one ‘Yahoo’? The search portal has put in place its own Royal Channel, aggregating not only a live feed of its own, but also photos, articles, games, chat boards, localised content, and whatever else it will think might be relevant that will drive more users to the site.

•Traffic surge contingency? Finding a site on which to watch the royal wedding won’t be hard—more difficult might be trying to avoid it—but what might prove a challenge is finding a portal that isn’t over-congested.

•Same goes for mobile networks. Operators are already looking to boost capacity at pressure areas in the UK (such as the village where Kate Middleton’s family lives in Berkshire, which has become something of a pilgrimage ground for royal fans) where mobile networks are expected to see heavy use

Mobile

•Apps are popular. Thirty-four percent of people have downloaded royal wedding apps, according to a MyVoucherCodes survey of 1,700 UK adults - average number of apps: two. Eighty-three percent of those apps are free, average price of the paid apps is at the low end of the range: £0.79 ($1.30). The breakdown of users: 39 percent on iPhone; 32 percent on Android; 21 percent on Blackberry; six percent on Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and two percent ‘other.’

•The mappy couple. Some apps are informative, if a bit stalkerish (“track the happy couple on your Android phone”, and yourself if you’re hanging out near them, using “exquisite” hand-drawn maps, promises iDo).

•Play along. (“celebrate the royal wedding by spotting the 50 romantic comedies hidden in our canvas!” says Say What You See; or, Blabber, the word-prediction game app for those watching TV (guessing what pundits will say).

•News and information. Rough Guides’ Royal walking tour for iPhones, numerous apps from broadcasters aggregating video and other coverage (such as this one, for Android and iOS, from UK news agency ITN).

•Papers have jumped aboard. The Times and the Mirror) have special apps for the event. These are effectively extensions of the kinds of magazine supplements the newspapers love to publish around special events.

•The official app. The Royal Family itself is also getting in on the act, with 3D apps of Westminster Abbey and an app using archives from the Royal Collection showcasing royal weddings past.

•Scan your TV: CNN will direct its mobile-touting TV viewers to its mobile website using on-air barcodes, which it hopes viewers will scan with their handset.


Social media

Some crossover here, with traditional outlets looking for some social media mojo, and those in social media looking for an anchor for their efforts. Photo social network Color (ah, remember them?) have done a deal with the UK newspaper The Telegraph to collect and post photos from people at the event and other points of physical convergence. These will come up as a continuous stream via the Telegraph, and on Color’s site, with the best of the lot to be published by the newspaper after the event.

•The Twoyal Twedding: “In case you haven’t seen it, the official hashtag for the Royal Wedding is #rw2011,” says @ClarenceHouse, one of the monarchy’s royal homes.

•Across the pond: Americans are tweeting more (40 percent) about the event than Brits (31 percent), says Trendrr (via CNN) - with traffic spanning from New Haven, CT, to Tusla, OK, and beyond.

•Royal gush: 46 percent of tweets are positive, 43 percent neutral, 12 percent negative, Trendrr says (via CNN) - there were 5,000 per hour last week in total.

•Broadcasters’ love affair with social sites continues: CNN is encouraging viewers to collect virtual stickers by “checking in”, via GetGlue, to its coverage, over which CNN will lay tweets and comments solicited via its #CNNtv hashtag, handpicked from celebrities and via Facebook Status Update. It’s also soliciting multi-media material via iReport.

Secrets to Lanching Your First Social Media Campaign Revealed

Sure, more small companies are turning to Facebook, LinkedIn and the like to boost business. In fact, 31 percent of small firms use social media, up from 24 percent in 2009, according to recent research by Network Solutions.


Still, that means the majority of small businesses aren’t tapping social media at all. And, while a lack of time and resources plays a big role in that reluctance, in many cases, there’s another reason as well: uncertainty over how to get started.


With that in mind, here’s advice from three experts about what that crucial first step should be.


1. Rhea Drysdale, CEO, Outspoken Media

"The first step, really, is creating a plan—a road map to follow. But, that involves a number of smaller actions. For example, you need to observe the different social media channels to see what kind of conversations about your company are going on. If nothing is being said, that could be a warning or it could be an opportunity. And it can tell you which channels you might want to be more active on. You can also see what your competitors are doing and how you might differentiate yourself.

We had a small business client interested in getting involved in social media. But when we investigated the conversations going on online, we found that few of its customers were on social networks. The better opportunity was for the company to become more of an authority in its space by producing high-quality content on a blog.
I’m a big believer in measuring everything. Part of this initial process also should involve getting a baseline, so when you do get involved you can see how many mentions per month are made over time and how much it’s increasing.


For a smaller business, this can be a little intimidating. Bigger businesses are all about crunching the numbers before they get started on anything. But it’s important for figuring out if social media is worth your time and energy."

2. Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank Marketing

"Small companies often will start out by thinking tactically. They want a Facebook fan page or a blog. Or they see that everyone else in the industry is doing it and feel they should, too.


My first question always is to ask, why? Why do they want to do this? Because you need to have a goal. What will participation in the social Web do for the business? Will it help you increase leads, boost word of mouth, provide better service, give you media attention? With that answer, you can then develop a hypothesis for how to accomplish that goal.


Your efforts may amount to a huge waste of time if you don’t answer that question.


There are other consequences from not knowing the "why." For example, you might have employees from two different departments engaging with people on, say, Twitter. If they lack a common understanding of the goal, they can actually confuse customers. Knowing the "why" will allow you to have a cohesive concept of how employees should behave online as they represent the brand.


Keep in mind, however, that the strategy you use to accomplish those goals should be adaptive. There simply are too many variables at play and the dynamics of the social Web change so quickly. The reality is, after six months, your hypothesis may need to shift."


3. Wendy King, President, 23 Kazoos

"Before you do anything, you need to understand the kind of media that’s best suited to your target market. You need to be sure you’re aligning the media choice to your audience.


Only about 8 percent of the total U.S. population is on Twitter. And the demographics of those users is mostly people under the age of 45, younger professionals who are tech oriented. If you’re using Twitter as a marketing platform, then it makes sense if that’s your target market. But, if your market is baby boomers, Twitter isn’t the best choice. The better option might be Facebook. About 50 percent of the U.S. population uses it and the fastest-growing user demographic is those 55 and up.


All this assumes you know who your target market is. And many small business owners don’t really understand that. A dentist, say, may simply regard his market as people with teeth. But, in reality, we know patients only travel a certain number of miles to see a general dentist. So the target market, really, is people who live within a specified area."


The bottom line is, you need to do research on who your customer is and understand that clearly.