Seeing as it's awards season, it would be only right to use our client Meltwater's social media monitoring tool, Meltwater Buzz, for some good old cheeky fun to test the online waters and look at who is generating the most buzz around the Brit Awards. It's always interesting to see what the public are thinking and how this compares to the judges and the award results.

With such great UK talent, we've seen people grow into incredible artists. So who deserved an award? Well, we all have our own opinion on who we think should have won an award, but we thought we'd dig a little deeper and look at which nominated artists generated the most buzz online and see if the Brit Award judges were in tune with the public's perception.

Using Meltwater Buzz, we looked at the top four categories of the Brit Awards to determine who, according to social media conversations, had the biggest online share of voice in terms of volume. We monitored online conversations, through various channels, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc. and we measured what was being said the week in the run up to the awards (8th Feb - 15th Feb).

Of course these results should not be seen in any way as predictions (hey, they're not fortune tellers), but merely as what the public think and discuss in the online world and how it compared to the actual winners of the night.

The below shows the percentage of online conversations for the most talked about artists in each of the four categories.

- British Male Solo Artist - Tinie Tempah at 37%

- British Female Solo Artist - Cheryl Cole at 55%

- British Group - Take That at 33%

- British Breakthrough Act - Mumford & Sons at 60%

Ok, so if we now look at who actually took home an award last night - were we all in tune? Not quite. Apart from Take That, of course. But realistically, who else could or even should win British Group?!

Justin Bieber took home the International Breakthrough Act Award and rightly so after a unanimous decision from both the public and the Brit Award judges - pretty much all of us have Bieber Fever, considering he takes 88% of online share of voice when compared to other nominated artists.

One artist we definitely shouldn't forget to mention is Jessie J. This is someone who has used social media, in particular, Youtube, to get people listening, engage with her fans and make herself who she is today.  Jessie J took home the Critics Choice Award, which is a category judged by journalists, music, TV and radio bosses, who all nominate the act that they think will be big in 2011. This reflected well online, as Jessie J dominated online buzz, generating even more heat than Cheryl Cole, at 61% compared to Cheryl at 39%.

I guess the bottom line is that we all have our own opinion on who is the best and who deserves an award. We all like different artists, styles and music… isn't that why they created genres? So even if you're favourite artist didn't end up bagging an award, you're still creating a lot of noise online, and looking at the success of Jessie J, it counts.

Jen