How social media can help when the audience does research
Monica at Cinematical is talking out loud about the research she does before she goes to see a movie, especially when the movie is historical in nature.
While it’s certainly a good question when it comes to movies like that I think it gets even more interesting when you think about researching movies in general. I’m talking about the kind of research that an increasing number of people do when they see a trailer or commercial and decide to hit Google to see what they can find out about the flick.
Social media sites, especially blogs, are going to play a big part in this. That’s why it’s so important for companies – be they movie studios or anything else – to know what’s being said online. Remember that Google loves a handful of things:
- Incoming links
- Frequency of updates
- Page slugs (the URLs)
So when people are doing research the odds grow every day that they will find a social media site like a blog post in their travels.
But studios can do a lot to combat this. Actually it comes down to one thing and the rest is just gravy: DROP FLASH AS AN AUTHORING TOOL.
Seriously, give people something to link to. If you drop Flash and start building sites in a way that people can link back to the site more frequently and specifically the official site will get a lot more incoming links. Then people are more likely to link back to the site and then, when searchers come across those posts, they’ll be pointed there as well.
Making your site social media friendly involves a major shift in mindsets among corporate types because it means dropping what Geoff Livingston calls the brochure sensibility. That’s tough but I swear to you if you try it you’ll find it pays long-lasting dividends. The audience is not coming to your website because they can’t remember it when they saw it on the billboard they drove past at 65 miles-per-hour. That’s why they’re going to search engines to find it. But you need to let them.
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“DROP FLASH AS AN AUTHORING TOOL.”
hmmmm …. like that will ever happen , and to suggest otherwise is misguided. The official (or underground) site(s) that studios commission need to provide a rich experience to the user, HTML simply doesn’t provide this.
“Seriously, give people something to link to. If you drop Flash and start building sites in a way that people can link back to the site more frequently and specifically the official site will get a lot more incoming links.”
It IS possible to provide deep linking in sites developed in Flash using SWFAddress (http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/). granted not many sites are using it yet, but you of all people should appreciate that including such functionality/featurte set in a site increases production and development time and therefore budget. Not all digital campaigns will stretch to adding functionality like this, especially
Its not as simple as just not using Flash. The promotional and traffic driving activity towards a site is significantly more complicated than simply making it more attractive to Google. Many theatrical release titles simply don’t have the time to allow for the Page-Rank algorithms to kick in for a site and increase natural search. A Site can and should be supported by Ad Words and paid search campaigns. Blogs and fan sites linking to content (deep or other wise) is important but this alone will not increase the success of a site
You have to consider that these sites only have a finite life span and forgoing the rich and engaging experience that can be delivered with the use of Flash, simply to make it more attractive to Google will likely reduce an users impression of the film. HTML sites have their place in this world, but as the primary face of a movie – which is ultimately a multi-media experience – I have to think that they would do little more than leave a poor impression of a title to movie goers.
ps. That Indiana Jones Widget has sound on by Default (big NO-NO) please switch it off !!!!!