Of the media and marketing tools that drive awareness and impact consumer behaviors, straight-arrow social media is king. And Discovery Channel’s newest promotion for Shark Week gets it, with a user-generated advertising contest, a co-viewing app for the iPhone and iPad and plugs by Andy Samberg.

It also launched a campaign to get fans to create 30-second video commercials with sixteen of the top videos vieing to run throughout Shark Week.

But DC doesn’t stop just with social media… it doesn’t have to. It promotes all of its social media work with TV advertising across its programming.

This year’s plans build on last year’s contest on YouTube that asked fans to make videos promoting Shark Week.

According to DC, the channel is increasing its social media presence this year because last year “Shark Week” was frequently a trending topic on Twitter when it aired. Overall, there were 91,000 tweets related to Shark Week.