As a blogger who also critiques movies and television shows, IMDB is an invaluable resource. I use IMDB to find out the names of actors I may know by looks, but not necessarily by name. I also know about actors that aren’t of my time. It can be hard to know everyone when there are millions of actors out there over several decades worth of filming. To say that I use IMDB with every review I write is an understatement.
Become an IMDB News Desk Publisher
What IMDB isn’t always good for is using it to promote yourself or your business. Unless you know how to promote yourself the right away. First, you have to make sure you’re not spamming IMDB. This is an important rule because you want IMDB to work for you, not against you. You also don’t want to get band, because then you can’t use IMDB at all!
Depending on your website, you may actually be featured on IMDB. If your website covers film news, reviews, and more, and it is consistently updated, IMDB may approve you to become part of their “news desk” team. If you write about a specific movie or actor, then everyone browsing IMDB will have access to your movie review on that movie or actor’s page.
You can sign up to become a news desk publisher by clicking here. You must be a registered user of IMDB before you can try and submit your information. This doesn’t have to be your only way of getting your website out there.
Using your IMDB Profile Signature
You can put your website in your profile/forum signature. I’ve had as many as three websites listed. I don’t recommend any more than that. Your actual signature can only hold one or two urls at the most (it has a character limit), but you can edit your signature on individual posts. I generally list li-reviews.com and li-kids.com. However, when I was posting on the Rory O’Shea was Here forum, a movie about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, I also included links to the page for the non-profit organization I’m trying to start, Muscular Dystrophy Patients United. If your website is relevant to the topic, I don’t see someone calling you out as a spammer for posting your URL.
Making your Link Relevant
When I do reviews of certain movies or television shows, I’ll sometimes post the link to my review on that particular movie’s forum. If there is a topic about a DVD coming out, especially ones that asks about the quality of the new DVD, if I’ve done a review of it I’ll say something to the effect of:
“I just reviewed this DVD at LI Reviews. You can see everything the DVD has to offer”.
Then I can post the link to my review.
Being a reviewer has a bigger advantage posting wise on IMDB. If I owned a Debt Reduction company, I couldn’t flaunt my link anywhere. I might put it in my signature, but it’d be something that I tried not to pay too much attention to when I was posting. I wouldn’t want people to think I was just there to promote my website. IMDB can be valuable, but it also can be abused, so try not to be the one abusing the service.
(more…)