Out of all available marketing tools, one holds a major advantage over all the others, because it’s completely free. It won’t take one cent from your pocket, and nowadays you can’t say the same about a lot of things. And something free surely sounds attractive after you just spent your last savings on the film project you just completed. Yup, you guessed it, it’s social media! It puts your product out there, people can react to it and share it with other like-minded individuals. Your film can get from being singularly stored on your PC’s HDD to millions of audience members out there, all over the world, in the blink of an eye. If you make right use of the channels at your disposal, of course. Here are a few tips:
Have a plan
Everything that you do in life, you do for a reason. You decide beforehand what it is that you wish to accomplish, select the means which would most likely bring success, and undertake the necessary actions. The same goes for social media marketing. If you’re merely creating a Facebook page or YouTube channel for your movie project for the sake of it, you’re doing it wrong. You first have to sit and think about your goals – what you hope to achieve with a social media presence, both in short and long term. Then, for each of the channels that you’re considering, see how their purpose can help you with your goal. If there’s no fit, no problem – select a different channel which you see as more suitable.
Tone of voice matters
The key to selling any kind of product or service, or at least to get people interested in it, is to speak their language. Be sure to create a narrative style that first and foremost captures the essence of the project, while also achieving a nice fit with the target audience is terms of language, level of complexity or degree of seriousness. A good fit is important, since it can make or break everything – so take your time and come up with a well-documented idea.
Consistency is the key to success
Once you have a style guide describing how you’re gonna go about with content creation, be sure to keep it consistent across all channels. This doesn’t necessarily imply that you’re not supposed to improve it when you have the chance, but it means that you have to stay away from major discrepancies both on a timeline and across channels. You shouldn’t market your film by appealing to your audience’s in-depth knowledge of the subject on Facebook, only to use a playful, pun-centred approach on Twitter.
Content is king, always
Variety is always welcome, and maintains interest levels high for considerably prolonged periods than a never-ending stream of all too similar posts. Alternate between information about the film, its release or potential awards with frame grabs, interviews, deleted scenes, trailers, information about the team, candid videos and why not, even a meme or two, if appropriate under the specific context. Spice things up from time to time with things that people would’t expect, and you’ll keep everyone entertained and eager to constantly find out more.
Keep active at all times
A Facebook product/service page can often act as an alternative to having a website for the project in question. As it usually comes very high up in web searches, this might be the first point of contact of many individuals with your project. It might also be the very last one, in case it has major misgivings. The lack of activity does not send the right signals: a page that last posted something many months ago will most likely be instantly closed by anyone browsing through. Pages which don’t establish a two-way communication line with their audience are also missing a vital point: they’re there to inform people, get them excited about something, and make them as likely as possible to spread the message. Therefore, if they don’t reply to comments or questions (or take ages to do it), they signal a lack of interest and commitment. You definitely don’t want to fall into this pitfall!
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