While most people get excited for the new year because it means a clean slate or a chance to go for those resolutions again, I get excited because it means the Hollywood award season is here. After living in tinsel town for a short while and interning with the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2010, I became even more fascinated with the whole production onscreen and off. But what I noticed most from my behind the scenes look into this world was how social media was slowly transforming the way the public not only saw the show, but got to interact with it.

At the SAG Awards in 2010, Facebook and Twitter were of course the reining champs of the social media world and it was so cool to see media, fans and stars alike sharing snapshots from the red carpet, posting their commentary about who won or should have won, and ultimately giving outsiders a peek into their lives for a night. Fast-forward to 2012 and now 2013, we can see an explosion of social media activity around events like this, both from the public and media.

This past Sunday the 70^th Annual Golden Globes aired on NBC and sure enough the Twitterverse was going crazy and Instagram was flooded with photos by stars and media at the show. In response to the surge in conversation about everything from who wore what and the acceptance speeches, to commentary on the winners, social media monitoring services Radian6 and Sysomos compiled and shared their stats from Sunday evening. Sysomos claimed, “[there was] an astounding 2.4 million mentions of The Golden Globes. There were 17,270 blog posts, 24,712 online news articles, 8,238 forum postings and a whopping 2,351,722 tweets.” Radian6 showed that despite having competition from the NFL Playoff games happening that same day, the Golden Globes doubled their social media mentions from 2012.

Other sites like Backstage and Hollywood.com also recapped the night’s social media activity by best celeb Tweets, pics and a (fairly comical) GIF of Glenn Close.

Now, while I do love this kind of social media activity for the inherent entertainment and new set of conversation starters, I also think there are some key takeaways that can be applied to the work we do here at Curator. Sure it might be easier to have organic conversation around a big event like this, especially when big stars are involved, but these cultural events can be a great platform for leveraging a brand or product. For instance, one of the main advertisers during the telecast, L’Oreal, took advantage of their airtime and simultaneously tweeted about how to get specific celebs’ look from the Red Carpet. In doing so, they broke the trending list and sparked a lot of excitement and attention from fans and makeup artists. For more on how advertisers shared the social spotlight, check out this great article by Blufin Labs.

Like any major cultural event, whether it be sports championships, political elections, award shows or big news, looking at how and what people were talking about (especially when compared to past years) is a great benchmark for where social media is headed and how the different channels are evolving. So, the next time a big award show is on (Screen Actors Guild Awards January 27^th or Oscars Awards February 24^th), take a minute to watch what’s happening across social media and see how your observations stack up against the next day reports.