By Annelise Larson
In Part 1 of this series, I looked at how search offers an amazing opportunity to find and connect with your audience. I also mentioned keyword research, which is the first and most fundamental step in search engine optimization, and how it provides information about the words and phrases people are typing into the search engines. If done well, this important SEO step can be used in many ways to help your film. Here are just five of them:
#1 – Inspiration
Looking for the next great idea? Stuck on several and can’t figure out which one to choose? The data from keyword research can provide you with the spark of an idea that suggests a direction and gets your creative juices flowing. It also allows you to test and compare which ones have the most interest and potential audience. It shouldn’t be the ultimate deciding factor but it can help you be more strategic in your creative choices right from the beginning of a project. Or it can suggest a direction to get your creative juices flowing.
#2 – Prove Market Viability
This research includes hard data on how many searches for a particular phrase; in other words its “search market.” It can give you an idea of how big the established audience is for your lead actor, the enthusiasm for the title of the work you are adapting, the current level of interest in the specific topic of your project and other salient facts.
So there I was. I had totally given up on my film career in LA, and gone to live in Berkeley, CA. In trying to put together a fiction film, I had met Robert Reich and become friends with him. Reich and I had started making short videos together, they were successful, and I had begun thinking about how to make a film about what had happened to the American economy and the Middle class. But I had no idea where to start.
