The royal wedding, social media and consumer behaviour

Even as huge crowds lined the streets of London to participate in last week's wedding of the decade, even larger crowds were airing their views minute by minute via social media. Social media sites absolutely buzzed with wedding news for days, a great example of how this technology is affecting consumer behaviour.

When Mashable tracked social-media mentions of the wedding, it found that tweeters, in particular, were posting many more comments than Facebook users and bloggers. This makes sense, given how short a tweet can be, and the fact that many people tweet on the go via mobile.

The Royal Wedding figured prominently on the royal family's Facebook page. The wedding had its own official Twitter hash tag (#rw2011) used by @ClarenceHouse, the official Twitter presence. And of course there's an official YouTube page for the royal wedding, complete with wedding book for online "guests" to sign.

Google celebrated with a special home-page doodle of a royal couple in horse-drawn carriage, acknowledging the world-wide interest in the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It added a wedding cake to its YouTube page, as well.

UK and US media contributed mightily to the social media buzz, with reporters live-blogging, tweeting and posting on Facebook journalism pages before, during and after the wedding. They invited members of the public to share their thoughts on media blogs/Facebook pages (as well as with their friends and others). Surprisingly, most of the wedding-related tweets were, in fact, from US commenters, although UK social media users were extremely active in sharing photos, memories and more.

Without a doubt, social media has emerged as a highly effective influence on the thoughts, feelings and actions of customers. Any marketer that doesn't engage brand fans through social media is missing an enormous opportunity.