Social Marketing in Social Media

It's rough out there. We all know that. Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. And yet, we're all still making film, right? So how do you stand out when you don't have any money left in your advertising budget?

Social Media.

Over the last few years social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube... maybe you've heard of a few of these? There are dozens more out there. Each with a particular audience or delivery method. They run the gamut from discussion to sharing to microblogging to life streaming. Did I lose you?

Good. If you said yes, then you've got a lot to learn, but I've got a lot to teach. If you said no, then you're helping me make my point.

Social Media is all about, you guessed it, being social. Communicating with other people. Passing on your ideas and collecting other people's.

You've already started if you are reading this. Blogging is a great place to start. With free blog sites available, what's stopping you? Check out WordPress or Blogger right now and get started.

But you need to do more than just type content into the great beyond, you need to engage your audience. Social Media is a two way street. So if you are tempted to turn off comments: don't. Allow people to express their viewpoints. And answer their questions. If you don't communicate with your audience then you've lost before you began.

That all said, blogs are just a small part of social media.

How about YouTube? The obvious solution here is, upload your trailer. But why wait until you have a trailer? Upload footage from your auditions (get those waivers), storyboards, interviews with the writer, director, leads? Take them on a scouting trip. Remember, its about community. You're building one that's going to follow you from the beginning.

Once production begins, take your audience along for the ride. I know, its hard to do anything during production besides be on set. So use Twitter.

When we started production of MATCH.DEAD we took our audience with us to the set. Throughout the day we would send text messages from the set to Twitter, and hence our followers, to keep them apprised of what was happening. Throw additional sites like twixtr and twiddeo into the mix and you can upload photos and cell phone videos as it happens. When we added twixtr to our feed, our Twitter friends really picked up. They were now able to watch us on the set.

What if your film is in the can? You've got a long lull as you sit in the editting room. Don't forget your fans during this dead time. The biggest problem is, editting isn't exciting. There isn't anything sexy about sitting in front of an editting bay for hours on end (sorry, all you cutters out there).

So how do you keep your audience engaged? Contests, photos, etc. You held stuff back I hope. Start engaging them with production photos, stories from the set, etc. This is where your social networking sites really come into play.

And don't forget to cross post.

Put up a blog entry and advertise it with a link to your Twitter fans.

Upload a photo on your social networking groups on Facebook and MySpace, then embed it into a blog entry with a link back.

Make it easy for your fans to move back and forth between all your different areas. DO NOT make them look for you.

Now the film is done. Its out to distributors or you've already sold it (big congratulations, BTW). What now? Well, you certainly aren't done. Tell everyone. Build hype. Remember, your fans will stick with you from project to project, so don't abandon them just because you've moved on to your next project. Keep building that fan base.

We recently ran a promotion on Twitter for our completed film MATCH.DEAD (BTW, any distributors out there, we're still shopping). We promised everyone that responded to us with a public request to view our movie that we would invite them to a special, limited, online screening. The key thing to this is the way that Twitter works. They had to make the request to us like so:

@match_dot_dead I want to see the free online screening of MATCH.DEAD. Sign me up!

By doing this they advertised our film to all of their friends as well as telling us they wanted to see the film. We doubled our fan base on Twitter in just a week with this promotion. That's called viral advertising. Additionally, they responded with glowing reviews in the same public forum. You can't beat that!

Be creative. That's the key. Chris Brogan points out 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing. Take from this list, but also come up with some fresh new ones.

You know your product. You know your audience. Now figure out a way to make it win-win for everyone.