What can be done to make the Oscar relevant again? A question wrestled every year by the motion picture academy is how to make a 3 hour event be the most talked about thing on Monday morning, drive millions upon millions of people to the TV for the night and make that translate into an increase of hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. The problem with the yearly solutions is that each one is an attempt at a band-aid fix. Yes, having Billy Crystal return for another hosting gig is very nice, but it’s a solution for 2012, not 2013, 2014, or 2015. The problem is that the Academy is and always has been completely out of tune with the American public. How else do you explain 1983’s Gandhi winning over ET or Slumdog Millionaire over the not even nominated Dark Knight.

Now, a lot is made over the fact that the average Oscar voter is a white male, 57 years old. In most polling figures I’ve seen, American aged 50 and over go to the movies more often than any other age group. I know, you always thought teenagers went the most times to the movies and in the summer, that’s true. Teens will go to the same movie over and over, so they spend more per capita than any other film goer. Hollywood sinks a ton of money into summer blockbuster films, films that most 50-somethings don’t care about, nor do most Academy voters, which brings us back to the main question of how to make the show, and the industry in general, more relevant.

Americans today are watching more movies in more ways than ever before. We, as a nation, are also more integrated with each other, more intimate since the emergence of social media platforms, especially Facebook, Netflix and Twitter. Wait, you say, Netflix is not a social media platform; it’s a movie streaming service. Well, you’re partly right. Very soon, constraints will be removed so that Netflix will be integrating with Facebook and all those movies you stream and comment on and rate will be shared with your Facebook friends. A word of mouth explosion is about to happen and Hollywood is not prepared in the least for it.

For the Oscars to become relevant in the 21st century, the motion picture academy must shrug off its antiquated, 20th century thinking. More people watch movies in their homes than in theaters. Box office as a percentage of the overall movie business continues to drop. It’s been less than 50% of total movie revenue since 1988. The summer movie season used to begin on Memorial Day and last through Labor Day. The first “summer blockbuster”, Jaws, opened in late June. Today, the summer season starts the first Friday in May. This year we get “The Avengers”, probably the biggest, most expensive movie of the year. The marketing, the merchandising are already in full gear with Avengers-themed Easter baskets on shelves at Target already. Why, I ask rhetorically, was there no new Avengers trailer shown on the Oscar broadcast? Oh, a new one is ready and I’ve seen ads that it will appear on ITunes on February 29th. But why, when most people who really care about movies are watching, does Paramount decide not to premiere its tentpole movie trailer? I’ll tell you why. It’s because the target audience for The Avengers, teens 12-19 are not watching the show. With an 8:30pm East Coast start on a school night, with the Best Picture award handed out at midnight, with a show geared towards an average viewer of 57 years old, kids don’t care.

OK, enough bitching. Here are my bullet points for Hollywood.

1. Open the nomination to balloting by moviegoers in the theater and on smartphones. Movie-goer votes count as 25% of an academy vote, so it’s not a mere popularity contest. One vote per device.
2. Voting for the actual awards also influenced by popular vote. In theater ballots as well as smartphone apps. One vote per person. Votes accrue importance over a 5 year period. 10% the first year, up to 25% of an academy member vote.
3. Block out time for each studio to premier new trailers. One trailer for each commercial break plus a compilation for 10 minutes at the very end of the show of the top 10 anticipated films according to IMDB’s ratings.
4. Hold special screenings at the major theater chains of all nominated films at least a few weeks before the show. The trouble with this year’s show was that the clear favorite and eventual winner wasn’t playing in many towns across the country.
5. Stop trying to be hip. Billy Crystal throwing out iPad references was sad. Go with the rule “If you have to try to be hip, you’re not” Hosts are less important than the overall celebration of the movies.
6. Give one lifetime achievement awards during the show and if no one is really worthy, then do a tribute to someone who is dead. You can always find a film or actor or director who is 100 years old or 50 or 75. This year is the 100th anniversary of MGM, great way to spend 8 minutes.
7. Relegate the short subject awards to the same show as the technical awards. Truly, no one cares. Same thing with Sound editing. No one understands it.

The Oscars should be both a celebration of the prior year in film as well as the medium in general. It should show what we all want to see, a healthy and exciting preview of coming attractions while reminding us of those carefree days spend in a darkened palace sharing a communal laugh, scream or cry with 500 strangers. Movies are magic which entwines our lives. The Academy Awards and the show should reflect that. THAT is how you fix the Oscars. Hollywood, call me.

A website is not going to look the same on a Blackberry or IPhone as it does on your home monitor. You need to have your site designed to accommodate the different places where your users may look for you. One key element you need to avoid is the sideways scroll. Scrolling down is one thing, but have you ever come across a site where you have to scroll both ways on your mobile device in order to see everything or even to navigate the site? It’s a pain in the *** and will lose you visitors and business.

There are several ways to address this, from a dedicated mobile site to some simple code to reformat your existing website. Which way you go is based on your budget, your company’s technical capabilities and your target audience. The best way to go is having 3 dedicated sites. The most robust one for your PC and laptop visitors, a more stripped down tablet (IPad) version and finally a phone version. Your phone versions should be heavy on text and very light on big graphics. Load time is critical, most people will leave if it takes your site more than 2 seconds to load. Yup, 2 seconds. That’s where our society has gotten in terms of patience and you need to react to that. People browsing mobilly are on the move and time is one of the most important things. Don’t be fancy. Get to the point and get to it quickly. Have a very clear navigation structure.

A tablet site should be stripped of any extraneous images and animations, remember, IPad does not support Flash, so those pretty animations you paid a fortune for are not going to run and will make your site look horrid. Again, no scrolling back and forth and try to keep all your important information “above the fold”, up front without need of a scroll down.

While I’m at it, if your site has a fancy animation on it’s home page that you have to either watch or click through to get to your first information page, you are going to seriously allienate users who can’t run it. An example of this is from the website of one of my favorite restaurants, Serendipity 3 in New York. I was running around the city the other day and wanted to call ahead so my daughter wouldn’t have as long a wait. I pulled the website up on my BlackBerry and ……nothing. The home page animation would not run, so all I got was a blank page. Some businesses can withstand this, most can’t (We still went and waited an hour for a table, but had an terrific dinner and humungous sundae for dessert).

The bottom line is that surfing the web on devices other than PC’s or laptops is gaining traction and you need to be sure your website can adjust to these changes without losing business.

• What do you expect to accomplish with your web site?
• Who is your target audience? Businesses? Consumers?
• What capabilities (online ordering, live chat, message boards, databases, audio, video, etc.) will you need?
• Will you have an online catalog?
• Where will the photography and copy come from?
• How often will you have to update the web site?
• Who will design the web site?
• Who will do the updates?
• What will it cost to design the web site?
• What will it cost to host the site (store the files and make them available on the Internet)?
• How will you advertise and promote the site to get people to use it?
• Who will do the marketing?
• What it will cost to advertise and promote the web site?
• How many sales or leads will you need to break even on costs?
• What sales volume do you expect to achieve on the web?

Not so simple.
Consult with an expert at Marcus Interactive from the start and you’ll maximize your chances for success.

This is a sign of how critical having a presence is on Facebook. Now, I think this amount is insane and is the product of some creative government account, probably covering up either a new military operation or a government minister’s mistress, but the fact that this news is no big deal simply shows that people understand that to do business in the world today, you need a presence on the dominant social media network.

So, you look at your business and you wonder, “How can I get more business from Facebook?”. The first step is to embrace it. Look at the sheer numbers for a moment. Not that 500 million user number. Let’s get real. 500 million people do not log into their accounts regularly, so what is the actual number. More like 260 million. That’s actually an incredible number. More than 50% of all Facebook accounts are logged into at least once a month. No other social media outlet, ever, can claim those kind of numbers. Because of this, Facebook has become the 3rd largest search engine in the world.

The key for an organization that wants to tap into this huge marketplace is an optimized Fan Page. Fan pages are simple to build, but like websites, there are critical elements that you should be paying particular care to. Every company wants you to LIKE them on Facebook. You want that too, but you need to give people a reason. Be it exclusive content, coupons, support, something must entice the public to want to be a part of your community. And the best way to start that off is to have a custom entrance page for those who have not yet integrated into your community. With Facebook’s new way of creating Fan Page landing pages, your creative options have literally exploded. Still, you do have to work within some constraints, but an engaging fan page is possible for any organization.

In closing, many people have come to me confused about whether to open a Fan Page or a Group. Groups are exclusive, you need to JOIN. Fan Pages are inclusive, you simply have to LIKE them. So to capture a broad audience, go with a Fan Page. And make sure to fill out ALL the information requested. Or get a professional social media expert to help.

The value of these links cannot be overstated. Now, it may seem like a pretty overwhelming chore and you may want to off-load it to soem intern or even hire a firm to do this for you. I would ask you to think twice about doign this. Yes, it’s labor intensive, but 20 minutes a day can make such a huge difference to your business, this is one thing you do want to take on yourself, or at least a senior member of your management team. i use a simple spreadsheet to keep the forums in order and simply put a date in to show when I commented in that forum. Now, the one aspect of this you can off load is finding all the forums that are appropriate. You could use a firm like mine or an intern to do the initial legwork.

In closing, please take this above all away from this blog. Bad linkage can hurt your page ranking more than good linkage can help. Relevance is the key, but while you’re at it, show off your knowledge and make your postings the go-to ones for good information.

  

Maybe I can put the debate to bed finally. SEO is all about getting your site prepared to not only be the best,most informative website, made up of unique content to inform the visitor, keep them coming back and entice them to purchase your product or service. It looks underneath the covers of the browser and is designed to prepare the website for the search engine bots that scour the internet.  Pay Per Click advertising is all about targeting those users who are lookig for your product or service. You can increase overall traffic with PPC, but if you cast your net too wide, sales will suffer.

The best way to maximize both your sales and your website traffic is to firs tdeal with the SEO. Get a pro to evaluate your site and give you a roadmap. DO NOT USE A COMPANY THAT OFF-SHORES. It’s critical that your SEO company be in the country that your audience is in. Nuances of the language are critical. Remember, you want to gear your text and tags to what THEY are searching for, not what YOU WANT.

  

#20 Arby’s: 306,466 likes

#19 Jack in The Box: 378,098 likes

#18 Five Guys: 464,876 likes

#17 Sonic Drive-In: 570,533 likes

#16 Carl’s Jr.: 673,803 likes

#15 Wendy’s: 822,356 likes

#14 Burger King: 1,028,243 likes

#13 Chipotle: 1,288,150 likes

#12 Panda Express: 1,181,285 likes

#11 Papa John’s: 1,603,001

#10 In-N-Out Burger: 1,721,818 likes

#9 Domino’s Pizza: 2,402,240 likes

#8 Dairy Queen: 2,919,113 likes

#7 KFC: 2,975,804 likes

#6 Pizza Hut: 3,231,540 likes

#5 Chick-fil-A: 3,931,888

#4 Subway: 4,059,970 likes

#3 Buffalo Wild Wings: 4,542,508 likes

#2 Taco Bell: 6,170,475 likes

And at number 1, by a huge margin:

#1 McDonald’s: 7,813,854 likes

Data provided by The Daily Meal

  

I recommend to all my clients to simply allow links to build organically. Post in places that are relevant and create natural links to your website. Steer clear of any companies that offer to build links for you, most are not legitimate.You are the expert on your business’ subject matter. Displaying that expertise is what it’s all about.

  

Many businesses have created Facebook pages as if they are a person, this is a mistake on two levels. First of all, it’s against Facebook’s rules. Secondly, as an individual, you have to accept friends and be accepted by friends. As a business with a fan page, you have a LIKE button, which then opens up all possibilities. Also, you can add a custom page that can be used as a landing page, instead of the default WALL that everyone has. You can add promotional pages specific to your followers and even target certain parts of your website within your Fan pages.

Start a page for your business, let all your personal “friends” know about it and then get about optimizing things. Your page needs to give people a reason to LIKE it. You need to provide something for nothing. Connect with your clients and perspective clients. Remember, this is not a static medium to throw out your message and then hope you get a decent ROI.

Social media is SOCIAL. It takes an investment in time. In energy. In personal investment. Create an engaging page and then post on it consitently, at LEAST once a day, if not more.