Thursday, January 8, 2009

Marketing Midnyte: Facebook

As much as I am concerned about getting all the scripts finished, finding a cast, shooting, post production and delivery, there is an equal piece that I can't ignore: promotion. I don't care how "small" your movie is, no one makes movies not to be seen. It's the old tree falling in the forest adage: If filmmaker X makes a great film that no one knows about, will anyone care? Nope.

YouTube has definitely become the great distribution equalizer for short-form content, but there is a glut of material on that site. If you are not already a hot property (featured, lots of views, many ratings and comments) how to you get people to sit up and take notice? It's tough, especially if you are starting from the bottom, as we are.

Much has been said of social networking and I belive in this. Sites such as MySpace and Facebook have lots of potential of spreading the word about your project, which is why I got involved in Facebook awhile ago. I knew that when a project came along, I wanted to have lots of Facebook friends to tell about it. The time has come, and when I created the Midnyte group, I invited all my friends and so did my wife.

The nice thing about Facebook groups is now you have a list of contacts that are interested in your movie that can invite their friends into the group. Your potential list of fans could be huge. You can also send a message to all of these "followers". There is a forum, and people can upload pictures and videos. The down side is that any activity that happens in your group is not reported to everyone in it. You have to send them all a message. My plan is to only report big events (new trailer, casting info) so I don't come off as Spammer Scott.

Facebook will also accept HD uploads, so we can put the best quality stuff up as possible. YouTube will as well, but it's nice that more sites are accepting this higher quailty format.

Facebook is proving to be a great tool for promotion, but you have to keep at it and use your friend list wisely. I think I'll go add something right now...

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