Notes for Cinema Enthusiasts

Key Trends Of The Decade
This is the official Raindance list of trends we watch here in the office.

Top Web Trends To Watch in 2010
We really liked this article. It’s by Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media.

Top Trends  For Independent Filmmakers 2009
Punch drunk yet? Here is what Raindance thinks were the top trends of 2009 for independent filmmakers.

7 Things Filmmakers Can Learn from Perez Hilton
After James the Intern wrote this article, Perez Hilton himself put it on his website. Over 6,000 people visit the page in a single day.

100 Trends To watch in 2010
Published by the advertising and marketing agency, JWT, this list is now considered one of the most influential trend spotting lists.

Digital Dive is a one-day immersion program to help filmmakers wrap their heads around the world of digital media content creation. Experts will present case studies, product demos, and practical information about how to get your feet wet with website, mobile phone, social media, and cross-platform production. A collaboration between Sundance Film Festival and Jigsaw Global, the workshop will be held at New Frontier on Main, and it is perfect for filmmakers and film industry professionals with minimal, hands-on digital media production experience.

This time last year, I wrote about the 10 ways social media will change 2009, and while all predictions have materialized or are on their way, it has only become clear in recent months how significant <br /> tweetmeme_url = ‘http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_social_media_will_change_in_2010.php’;<br /> tweetmeme_source = ‘rww’;<br /> of a change we’ve seen this year. 2009 will go down as the year in which the shroud of uncertainty was lifted off of social media and mainstream adoption began at the speed of light. Barack Obama’s campaign proved that social media can mobilize millions into action, and Iran’s election protests demonstrated its importance to the freedom of speech.

Template Files Contents * Web Project Templates * Digital Marketing Templates * Request For Proposals (RFPs) * Business Cases Overview

We’re building a library of template files to help you with your web and digital marketing projects. You can see the range of files below that we’ve already put together with more to come. These files come from a range of leading practitioners to show you how they are doing things and to give you templates that you can edit, modify and build upon. If there’s a particular template file you’d like, that we don’t already have, then do contact us and we can see if we can track it down.

Social media measurement is something that I think should be undertaken with a sense of perspective, by standing back and looking at the big picture.

A widescreen approach to social media measurement ultimately looks at the things that really matter: sales, profits, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, honing in on the detail might not be the best use of your time, given the obvious difficulties that arise, particularly with attribution.

But standing back and looking at the bigger picture is not going to be enough for your data-mad boss, is it? It’s a bit too soft focus, right? He or she is going to want to see proof that all this social optimisation is actually working.

If that’s the case, then don’t worry: there are lots of things you can measure…

It’s all about engagement

When we talk about social optimisation (a term I prefer to ‘social media’) we’re really talking about driving engagement and interaction. The goal of any social optimisation strategy is to provide the right tools so that people can engage with your brand / people / products / services onsite and offsite.

Here’s what you want to happen:

• You want people to make a noise.
• You want people to store and share things.
• You want people to love your website.
• You want people to visit more frequently
• You want people to refer your company to their friends.
• You want people to buy into your brand.
• You want people to buy your products.

Engaged customers and prospects are far more likely to do some or all of the above. So how can you boost customer engagement?

Give people the right tools

The tools and onsite functionality you need is going to depend on your business, your strategy and your goals. What you’re ultimately looking for is a wide range of tools to help people interact. It doesn’t matter whether this interaction happens onsite or offsite, but only that it happens. You can measure it either way.

This list of KPIs / metrics should help you figure out what can be measured (at a nano level) and also what kind of tools / functionality you may want to introduce. I still think it’s best to measure from a distance but if your boss wants the detail then this list should help you work out what to look at. In doing so you’ll able to determine the relative success and adoption of new features. You may also unearth trends and spot opportunities or issues.

In any event, taking a top-down look at interaction - and monitoring how customer engagement changes over time - can really help you position your company as a community-centric organisation, by proving that an investment into customer engagement is a wise one. Your boss should be happy if all goes to plan.

Making interaction a game

This list has been largely informed by a new social commerce startup that I’m working on. It’s essentially a marketplace that connects buyers with sellers. I created a ‘kudos’ algorithm that helps us curate the website. Items that are highly rated and that attract lots of comments / bookmarks / followers will gain kudos points. We apply different weightings to different interactions (for example, a ‘love this’ rating is worth less than a ‘follow item’). Editors / curators can then spot the buzz and act accordingly (better promotion, interviews, videos, etc).

We created ‘kudos’ for a few reasons. Firstly, we want to learn from the crowd. Secondly, we want the website to be highly interactive. Thirdly, we want it to feel like a game for the sellers, just like Digg is for the article submitters.

So tracking and making sense of interaction is a fundamental part of our web venture. Many of these metrics are factored into our algorithm, and in the same way you can score different interactions to create some kind of interaction index. It might help you condense all of this data noise into a more digestible format.

Caveats!

Before we jump into the list there are a few caveats…

• Not all websites are equal. Not all of these will be relevant to all sites (e.g. ‘Posts’ won’t be any good for sites without blogs and contributors)
• Not all interactions are equal. ‘Print page’ as an engagement measure is barely worth looking at… or is it? In any case, some of these things are more important than others (hence my scoring / ‘kudos’ algorithm).
• There is some crossover. For example ‘bookmarks’ and ‘wishlists’ may be the same thing on your site (although they’re not on mine).
• Some metrics will have sub-metrics.
• Avoid curve balls. If the widget sucks then it doesn’t matter that 10,000 people installed it last week. It will still suck and they’ll hate it.
• Human power is needed to really understand the detail behind the numbers, and to act on that knowledge. Interpretation is key.
• It’s about quality not quantity. Don’t go counting those spam comments!
• This is a bit of a braindump and I’ll certainly have missed out various things, so please leave your pointers and suggestions in the comments section below. What are you measuring?

A list of social interaction metrics / KPIs

1. Alerts (register and response rates / by channel / CTR / post click activity)
2. Bookmarks (onsite, offsite)
3. Comments
4. Downloads
5. Email subscriptions
6. Fans (become a fan of something / someone)
7. Favourites (add an item to favourites)
8. Feedback (via the site)
9. Followers (follow something / someone)
10. Forward to a friend
11. Groups (create / join / total number of groups / group activity)
12. Install widget (on a blog page, Facebook, etc)
13. Invite / Refer (a friend)
14. Key page activity (post-activity)
15. Love / Like this (a simpler form of rating something)
16. Messaging (onsite)
17. Personalisation (pages, display, theme)
18. Posts
19. Profile (e.g. update avatar, bio, links, email, customisation, etc)
20. Print page
21. Ratings
22. Registered users (new / total / active / dormant / churn)
23. Report spam / abuse
24. Reviews
25. Settings
26. Social media sharing / participation (activity on key social media sites, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc)
27. Tagging (user-generated metadata)
28. Testimonials
29. Time spent on key pages
30. Time spent on site (by source / by entry page)
31. Total contributors (and % active contributors)
32. Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links, images, videos)
33. Views (videos, ads, rich images)
34. Widgets (number of new widgets users / embedded widgets)
35. Wishlists (save an item to wishlist)

Any good? Rubbish? Let me know what you think, and what I missed…

Time and time again, I get the impression that the “Film Industry” generally does not value producers. I suppose I shouldn’t deduce that The Studios’ abandonment of Producer Overhead First Look Deals means that the business doesn’t value Producers, and just that The Studios need to control costs or that they have other ways of accessing content, but…

Well, it’s hard not to feel that it’s just that Producers aren’t respected. I suppose that financiers willingness to under pay Producers should not lead me to think that they don’t know how much a Producer does. Maybe they are just trying to get a good deal. I suppose that I could take it as flattering that experienced folks in the business, assume that my overhead is covered, that my assistant’s salary is taken care of.
So what is it that Producers do for the Film Industry at large?

1. Producers bring new investors into the business, both in terms of sourcing them, and structuring deals that make sense from an investors’ perspective
2. Producers look out for investors’ needs (substantially more than distributors do), as Producers think long term and need private equity to stay in the game.
3. Producers provide development supervision to get the scripts right — and they usually get a lot more writing done without additional costs — because the authors know they are doing it to get the best movie made, and not just to justify their jobs.
4. Producers inspire talent to embrace work for affordable yet just rates — because everyone knows that the producer is doing also for the love but for a whole lot longer.
5. Producers counter-balance industry pressure to increase costs and keep movies’ budgets at levels that make sense — which is good for the industry.
6. Producers innovate — be it in the search to deliver a better film or to control costs, innovation is in their blood.
7. Producers develop talent and take the chances on emerging artists.
8. Producers keep in touch with the audience, weighing where their tastes and habits are.
9. Producers bring content, talent, technology, audiences, investors together.
10. Producers help show the business and the culture where they might aspire to be going.