Publicity 101 - Internet Marketing

Don't sleep on the Internet. Peter Guber (President, Mandalay Pictures) contends that new technology must be exploited in new ways. Old paradigms don't always translate. In other countries like Japan where it's easier to implement a high-tech environment, consumers have been downloading entertainment straight to their high-definition TV sets for years.

But more importantly, the Internet is an awesome avenue for virtual free promotion. There are thousands of BBSs, blogs, and user groups to post what info you want to put out there about yourself. There are already over 500 links just to the phrase "Odom Entertainment" in Google and counting.

Although downloading movies is still not a proven model for a big corporation to turn a substantial profit, the Internet is still a tremendous marketing tool. I like to think of a website as billboard and electronic customer service center rather than use the website as the actually product. Anything that anyone may want to ask you should be answered on your website so that people can get information and get to you quickly. Hollywood is a very "now" environment and it's easier to call somebody else than it is to track you down or wait for you to return their call.

You don't have to even be an HTML designer to have a website. I used to design all my websites in Microsoft Word, because I'm familiar with it, and they open instantaneously. Now I use iWeb. You can buy a domain name these days for as low at $8.00 for the year and get free website space or even several gigs of space for under $20 per month. If you have a free website, you can use a free stealth redirection service like the one MyDomain.com offers, so that that long web addresses won't read out in the browser, but instead, the domain name you purchased will read out. Any time someone types in your domain name, it redirects the end user to the free site without the end user ever seeing that long free address.

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