How social media can help when the audience does research?

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.

Complied By Chaitanya Patel Sr. SEO Marketing Specialist at SEO Services Company.