MTV’s U.S. Facebook page, combined with the Facebook pages for MTV’s U.S. shows, recently topped 100 million ‘likes’ in total. With nearly 90 million at the beginning of 2012, MTV has gained over 10 million ‘likes’ in just a four-month period. What factors helped to fuel this rapid increase in the cable network’s popularity on Facebook?
Based on analysis by social media monitoring firm Trendrr, the most popular MTV pages on Facebook are:
- MTV’s main network page, with over 33 million likes
- the “Jersey Shore” Facebook page, with over 16.5 million likes
- the “Teen Mom” Facebook page, with over 6.5 million likes
However, the list was completely different when measured in terms of engagement. Measured over a 6-week average, the “Pauly D Project” Facebook page had the highest engagement by far, with 45%. The Facebook page for “Caged” came in a distant second with 14%, followed by “I Just Want My Pants Back” at 13% engagement.
An examination of the MTV Network’s combined total Twitter activity reveals that the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (in August 2011) received the greatest amount of tweets. The second highest spike in Twitter activity accompanied the season 5 premiere of “Jersey Shore” on January 5, 2012.
General sentiment on social media about MTV and and its shows was positive (59%), with 22% negative sentiment, and 11% neutral. Advertising Age speculates that the negative sentiment may stem from viewers that “love to hate reality TV” (but still watch it.)
Users were almost evenly split between accessing MTV and its shows via social networks on mobile (48%) or on the web (52%).
Out of the television networks, MTV is “one of the most obsessed” with social TV, according to AdAge. “As programmers to the first generation of digital natives, MTV has been hyper focused on growing our social ecosystem and putting cross-platform storytelling at the core of what we do,” says MTV President Stephen Friedman.
Looks like that focus on social platforms is paying off. And like Hersheys, MTV has found a way to successfully establish multiple brand identities – each with their own voice – on social media.
