Staying relevant. It is a fear actors, directors, content creators, and to be honest, most human beings grapple with constantly. The more than half-century year-old Sunset Boulevard exemplified this fear in the delusional Gloria Swanson. And while I’m sure this obsession is a random extraneous facet of the greatly evolved human consciousness, it may be spin-off on our desire to survive.
This wasn’t part of Birdman. This was Emma Stone actually telling MK the truth.
I have accepted that cinema is an ever-evolving medium. But I never expected our heritage to be at stake. This post is not a podium for me to exclaim film is superior to digital, nor will I be stating the digital conversion (or DC) was a poor decision of the industry. As a society furthering itself in the Digital Revolution, the DC was the most obvious future for the way we exhibit motion pictures theatrically. But I never expected this:
“We have decided to suspend theater operations…”
By Annelise Larson
All hail the power of search! If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I hope I have made you a true believer and helped you understand why it is critical to be search friendly. Now here are 10 search engine optimization tips to help you walk the SEO walk:
#1 – Get problematic technology out of the way.
Technologies like Flash, JavaScript, splash pages, redirects and even too many images instead of text can cause HUGE problems for search friendliness. They can get in the way of the search engines understanding what your site is about, which still lies predominantly in the visible text on the page. Find a balance between the wow and the words.
#2 – Leverage tags.
Here are some of the places you can include keywords from your research:
HTML title tag (Appears in your page programming, the top of browsers and is the title seen in search results. Make it intriguing to human searchers but also include keywords reflective of the content on your page.)
Meta description tag (Appears in search engine listings as the description for your page. Allows you to control your branding, but doesn’t help improve search performance.)
Video & image titles (Visible titles for your video and image assets can include important keywords to help with findability in search, but they need to be relevant.)
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.
By Annelise Larson
If you are online and want yourself, your brand or your work to be found, then you need to worry about SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is a jargony, awkward term, but it is really just about making your online content and presence findable.
Search, Search, Everywhere Search
While there is much that has changed about the Internet over the years, one of the things that has remained consistent is that people search. It is how we deal with the information overload and find our way through the overwhelming amount of content online. The latest studies show that search remains the second most popular online activity. The 2012 PEW Internet Project Survey showed that “91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web, including 59% of those who do so on any given day.” And the great thing about search is that is crosses all demographics. Everyone searches.
It is also important to note that Google is not the only search engine in town; any site with a search box is a search engine, from Facebook to YouTube to blogs like this. Search really is everywhere and offers content creators like filmmakers an amazing opportunity.
