Audience engagement is key
Why wouldn't you build and engage with your audience? It's crucial to getting traction for people to actually want to watch your film (regardless if via theaters/fests, DVD, on-demand, or even just online for free), but having a large following of engaged fans demonstrates to a wide array of potential distribution and marketing partners that you have a hot property on your hands. Little else will move the needle, in fact (a great film that nobody wants to watch is just a film that no one has seen).
Audience engagement was on everyone's lips this year at Sundance, from the Distribution panel at the NY Lounge to Peter Broderick's presentation at the start of IndieGoGo's party.
If you're wooing sales agents, distributors, co-production partners, investors, high profile PR agents, or other potential distrib/marketing partners such as Netflix, nothing works better than a ton of rabid fans wanting to see the film already.
Measuring audience engagement
How do you prove you have an audience ready to see the film? The stats are on your film's Facebook page, Twitter feed and YouTube trailer. These are the numbers that matter. For a small no-budget indie, you should aim for 5,000 Facebook friends, 10,000 Twitter followers and at least 50,000 YouTube views.
You got that covered? Is your audience locked in yet?
Actually, these numbers are completely bogus -- I just made them up. But they're definitely in the ballpark for films that deserve a closer look. Showing off your couple hundred Facebook friends or trailer views on YouTube might be worse than not being there at all since it only proves you've failed to reach beyond the inner circle of people you know.
Work that social network
Your Facebook fans and friends are more than just a number; the true power of Facebook is expressed when a social network is galvanized toward a common goal. There are countless examples of this, from the revolution in Egypt to the Double Rainbow guy to the sold-out NYC screenings of our film New York City (back in the MySpace days).
The holy grail of social marketing is going viral: where each person passes something on a crowd of other people and they do the same and so on until seemingly everyone has seen it. Going viral is awesome, but you can't plan for it -- it's almost solely about the content rather than a particular viral strategy (I doubt the Double Rainbow guy had a social media marketing plan).
So while you can't dictate what will go viral, you can create the conditions and get the ball rolling. Or, to keep the virus analogy going: you can't guarantee an epidemic, but you can sneeze a lot in public and stop washing your hands.
On Facebook that's as simple as asking people to view your trailer and post it in their status updates and via Twitter. Or asking them to go to IMDB and rate your film a perfect ten. Or asking all your Facebook fans and friends to put your film into their Netfix queue so Netflix buys more DVDs and pays a higher licensing fee. And then rating the film highly on Netflix too.
Buy ads to build up your Facebook friends
Here's a crazy idea from a guy who hates spending money (since I have so little): buy ads! That's right, Facebook's ad program actually has an amazing microtargeting capability and if it puts your ad in front of people likely to like your film, it's money well spent.
One panelist, Paola Freccero of Crowdstarter, said that for $50/day, a filmmaker could use Facebook's amazing super-targeted ads to get 30-70 new "Likes" each day. Using that calculus, each "Like" will cost you about $1.
Is it worth $3000 to get 3000 new Facebook "Likes" for your film? It's a no-brainer in my view. Those 3000 followers may turn into an additional 300 units sold to Netflix (even at only $10 each, you've basically made your money back), or may be the tipping point that convinces a cable VOD provider to carry your film, or may get you a foreign sales agent to take our movie to Cannes. Or it may convince an investor to take a chance and invest in your distribution strategy.
Yes it means you need to put out some cash. I'm a notorious cheap-skate as a filmmaker. I LOATHE to part with money in making movies. But I learned this the hard way: while it's sexy to say you are doing it all with no budget, you're just holding yourself back.
It's like saying you're going to run the Boston Marathon on your knees. It's certainly possible you could cross the finish line, but it's not very likely and damn will it hurt (and it's also certainly possible you'll never walk again).
Another way to say it: It takes an investment to get a return.
Best way to start is to start small with the low hanging fruit. Should be cheaper too. As I wrote in last year's post about distribution best-practices from Sundance:
Buy ads that target ONLY friends of people that are already fans of your film (via the fan page you can create on Facebook). The ads show up to these friends-of-fans indicating that the friend is a fan already, hugely increasing click-throughs.
We're going to buy Facebook ads for In-World War as an experiment once we have more material to show off (stills and perhaps a trailer). We'll keep you posted. Supposedly, it's pretty damn affordable. Don't believe it? It's the reason why Facebook is worth tens of billions of dollars. A lot of very smart, very rich people are throwing money at Facebook right now, with the success of this advertising approach the key to their massive valuation.
Bribe your friends
Even if you're highly allergic to paid advertising, there's a lot that can be done to grow your Facebook fans. Consider bribing people to recommend your film's Facebook page.
Okay, technically Facebook doesn't like this, so you have to be somewhat sly about it. One panelist at the NY panel at Sundance suggested you reward people for helping spread the word. Example: get 10 friends to Like the film in Facebook and get a free DVD. Reward them for the behavior you want -- and make it fun.
Your turn now
In the comments, please share the best-practices and clever ideas you've seen (or done) to build up an army of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube fans.
This is part of a special report series from DIY Filmmaking Sucks: DIY Secrets of Sundance. The series covers lessons learned at this year's Sundance Film Festival from an assortment of indie distribution and funding panels, in addition to conversations with filmmakers.
Next Monday -- Week 4: The secret of indie film release strategy
you don't bribe your friends enough.
Posted by: matthew bell | March 07, 2011 at 08:44 AM
When the time is right -- just wait until we have a trailer.
Posted by: Bad Vegan | March 07, 2011 at 09:11 AM
Excellent advice about Facebook ads. A very useful tool to feed the pipeline and create momentum on your page.
Posted by: Dennis Peters | May 26, 2011 at 01:54 PM
The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang the art. My mom was a volunteer for years at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and there's no doubt at all that we gave more money to the museum than we would have if they'd sent us a flyer once a month."
Posted by: Precise Irrigation Tips | December 12, 2012 at 07:18 AM