4. Social Networking.

Create a Facebook fan page and Twitter feed.  Encourage your friends, family, and new fans / followers to share it.  Sending out milestone cheers like “We’re at 186 fans, help us get to 200!” encourages more active sharing.

The point of Social Networking is creating this open online discussion.  A great way of interacting with your network is by holding contests. Connecting it to be relevant to your film is even better. Have a deadline.  Have a fair process of picking a winner- either based on awesomeness of their answer or by random (pieces of paper in a hat). Of course, there needs to be a prize.  Maybe, a signed poster from the cast or anything else. You’ve got the idea. The best marketing connects the audience with the material.  Think of it as a Story.

Say positive or stay silent. If people attack you, ignore them. If they attack you twice, block them from seeing your posts. And don’t look back. A social media voice should primarily be a positive one, I believe. I don’t mean that you can’t be critical, or express disapproval.

Do you want to decrease press interest and the size of your audience? Then include, but fail to utilize, your social links, let your blog or Facebook page lie dormant.

Don’t take your followers for granted. If you do venture into the realm of social media marketing, understand that your relationship with your followers goes both ways. That means you need to respond to their questions and acknowledge their feedback, even if it’s just in the form of a “like” or a “favorite.”  

5. Create your own video space.

Whether you use YouTube or Vimeo or both, this is a great way to have your audience come face to face with movie magic makers.  Have cast and/or crew do vlogs about production, keep these short, though.  The average attention span of an online viewer is less than 2 minutes.  Not only do people tend to avoid reading more than 500 word articles but also any videos longer than 2 minutes.  If you want your audience to invest in watching anything longer, be sure that it is worth their time to watch. Other things that you can put on your new channel are sneak peeks at scenes, proper interviews with your cast and/or crew.

The greatest mistake is to fail to create a social media policy for cast and crew. This is a delicate problem. Still, a film set is a closed workplace, and a production office is the hub for private communication. Encourage cast and crew to be respectful of their colleagues by not leaking private information and production news on their personal social feeds. Casually leaked info can complicate deal closings, create negative impressions, or simply cause you to lose control of the narrative of your film.

6. Create a head scratching teaser.

Essentially you want this reaction from the viewer:  “What is this movie about?!  I MUST KNOW!” Obviously, they will sign up for updates because they are so bewildered and intrigued.  This means that you better have your website clearly posted at the end of your teaser so your potential fan knows where to go for more information.