Last night I had the honour of attending the Hills Season 6 premier and live taping of The Aftershow at MTV. The show was good but it was the way that MTV handles social media that really left a lasting impression on me.
The premier followed Kristin, Brody and the rest of the cast members partying in Miami for Superbowl weekend and lest we forget: the official Hills unveiling of the new and improved (?) Heidi Montag. Then Jesse and Dan discussed the show highlights and had a bit of naughty back and forth with the audience during The Aftershow.
What you won’t get from watching online is the atmosphere MTV creates during their live tapings. They created an intimate, communicative vibe for both in house guests, and the web audience.
MTV treated the bloggers with style and courtesy. They welcomed Social Media to the premises via a dedicated press entrance and seated us in the balcony, which were the best seats in the house. Everyone was invited by the hosts to tweet and blog away. MTV’s policies were clear: social media is welcome here, and so are your cameras, laptops and any other electronic gizmmo you can think of. They provided a fast wi-fi connection and encouraged everyone to take full advantage of it throughout the show. MTV is smart and they get it. They understand social media and the influence that bloggers hold in their target demographic, and did everything possible to ensure we had a good time...and could easily tell our online friends what was going on.
It was cool to see the barriers between “formal journalism” and social media fall away in this regard. So many publications make it crystal clear that these are two mutually exclusive arenas. We really appreciated that bloggers were treated as press, because we are. Viewers outside the studio were interacting with MTV via twitter, adding another layer of inclusivity to the event.
I really enjoyed myself last night and was impressed by the scope and spirit of the event. There were 90,000 viewers in North America alone and I can’t wait to see what MTV brings us in the months to come. I think a lot of this can be attributed to the influence of MTV’s new community manager Casie Stewart, and I’d like to extend a thank you to her for having The Blog Studio be part of the action.
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