Beauty Pageant Joins Social Media Craze

The 2009 Search for Miss Teen Canada - World

The Search for Miss Teen Canada-World (MTC-W) is more than a beauty pageant; it's a quest for celebrity, a job hunt for someone special to represent our nation at the Miss Teen World competition in Houston Texas in August 2009. It extracts the best qualities in young women, celebrates individual achievement, and crowns a role model.

This summer, 56 teen girls will arrive in Toronto for the preliminaries, and on July 25th at Toronto Metro Convention Centre the top twenty finalists will model evening gowns, practice public speaking and demonstrate physical fitness in their bid to become the 2010 Miss Teen Canada - World.

This year each contestant will do something they've never done in competition before - they'll blog about it. For the first time in pageant history, Miss Teen Canada - World will be judged in part on the quality of her personal blog. Social networking has put the oxygen back into this business model, and now the prettiest, smartest, and most congenial girl must also be a web savvy computer geek capable of recording and managing her experience at the center of a powerful MTC-W social net. A contestant 'blog squad' features the work of over 50 well-educated teenagers all vying to be number 1. These digital divas blog about their daily rituals in preparation for the July 25th event in Toronto.

MTC-W offers sponsors high value incoming links under their most coveted keywords and guarantees a wide readership as people of all ages are naturally curious about Canada's youngest celebrity. Organizers amplify the magnetism by creating YouTube videos and articles on related subjects like fashion, cosmetics, shopping, pets, soft drinks. Facebook and Twitter are the finishing nails of the MTC-W social media construct and allow the contestant blog squad to update their followers on what's new, and what they're doing to prepare for, and promote their candidacy. The monthly newsletter is a mash-up of the most interesting media produced by all participants, spiked with original stories and photos, and distributed by email in the months leading up to and and after the pageant event.

Layering New Social Media Principles into the Old Business Model has Changed the Landscape in Three Different Ways

1. The pageant now advertises itself. The Contestant blog squad, which grows over time, engages many tribes at once, and grows more powerful, and more connected in the weeks leading up to the event.
2. Contestant connectivity introduces new incentives for sponsors' websites. Multi-platform brand conversations occur as teenagers record their experiences on four different fronts: OnSugar blogs, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Companies that donate product to the contestant gift bag reap potent experiential storytelling and mass link love.
3. The quality of the experience is improved, and better shared. Blogging, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook provides a new conduit for these young people to 'be their own kind of beautiful' as they record the most poignant moments of their journey to share them with followers.

With the infusion of social media to the event, there's a real sense of involvement and excitement that brings a newness to the classic beauty pageant.