360DigitalInfluence

Okay okay, you may be “William & Cate” ‘d out…but I can’t resist! I, like many many (2 billion to be more accurate) others was quite affixed with the Royal Wedding this morning on NBC and living streaming on CNN.com, this afternoon through word of mouth with co-workers and clients, and tonight ending with Katie Couric’s wrap of the day on ABC. That’s what being a part of the 6th biggest Web event is all about…

We’ve all seen the stats on social media usage around the Royal Wedding (links to stats below if you’re interested*), but let’s look at what’s being done well by those behind the official royal channels.

5 Social Media “I Do”s from the Royal Family

1. Livestreaming

TheRoyalChannel on YouTube streamed the BBC live coverage of the Royal Wedding within the wedding-branded experience on the YouTube page - making it the 23rd most-visited channel of the day,  according to BBC News.

Channel Views: 5,121,034
Total Upload Views: 12,291,037
Subscribers: 108,968

The channel also gets kudos for the design and structure, social media integration and  overall user-experience.

2. User Generated Content –Virtual Wedding Book

Not only did TheRoyalChannel feature livestreamed coverage, highlights and behind the scenes footage it also included a call for user-generated content - encouraging spectators and supporters to share their well-wishes to the newly weds in a virtual Wedding Book (over 200 consumer videos are currently featured in the Wedding Book).

3. Charitable Giving – Royal Wedding Charitable Gift Fund

Instead of gifts, William & Cate chose to use their wedding as a way to encourage charitable giving of their guests and supporters. With “giving” a top 2011 consumer trend, this is a great way to get their audience involved.

The fund will focus on assisting charities which support the five causes chosen by the couple. These causes are close to their hearts and reflect the experiences, passions and values of their lives so far. Having been touched by the goodwill shown to them since their engagement, they have asked that anyone wishing to send them a wedding gift consider doing so in the form of a donation to the fund.

The fund’s Web site has received 4,000 Facebook likes and over 840 Tweets - using online word of mouth to build awareness and encourage charitable giving.

4. Social Media Integration & Cross-Pollination across Channels

This may be the best “I Do” yet. More and more, we are seeing a complete social experience happening in each channel - so that YouTube viewers can see the livestreaming Twitter conversation within the YouTube setting - or YouTube highlights on the Facebook page. And of course, there’s the need to integrate social channels into the main Web destinations.

All these are covered in the Royal channels - YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and blog.

Lovely!

5. Conversation Management

And finally, nothing is more important than the content and conversation management of these channels. Obviously, content from the Royal Wedding is going to be remarkable - so that’s in the bag. But palace representatives/community managers have done a good job in keeping content fresh and engaging - providing both event updates/coverage and the opportunity for viewers to participate in the conversation.

Facebook posts by the British Monarchy were posted at least 1x/hour on April 29th, garnering nearly 44,000 Likes and 7,000 comments in the last 24 hours. Tweets from @clarencehouse were made multiple times an hour, totaling at least 80 Tweets  reaching its 81,600 followers today.

All in all - I think the Royal Wedding made a pretty big splash today both through owned and earned social media conversation. Best Wishes to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!

*Additional Stats:

Conversation around the Royal Wedding generated 911,000 tweets in the last 30 days,  more than 30,000 tweets per day, which accounts for 71% of the buzz Webtrends tracked. There had been approximately 217,000 Facebook status updates and 145,000 blog posts pre-wedding. 65% of posts coming from the U.S., 20% from the UK, 2.6% from Canada. Royal wedding social-network chatter has surpassed that for the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and the people’s uprising in Egypt. (Mashable/WebTrends)

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. (Twitter)

The Royal Wedding was mentioned 67 times/ second on Twitter, 74 times/second on Facebook, 1 million in the UK and 2 million in the US posted status updates as the wedding began. (Telegraph)