Sheri Candler wrote a post aptly titled, “Are you brave enough to shun social media?” It is a must read for any filmmaker.
Sheri develops and executes effective marketing campaigns for movies and works to help film artists gather their audiences. And that is not an easy job, as many filmmakers resist changing the way they market (or more properly have others market) their movies. As she says,
“Most artists do not have a commitment to building up strong ties with an audience, they do not use social tools for “listening” and researching what audiences respond to…”
She then reprints a cartoon that elegantly lists “5 types of social media strategies”-see it below.
It elegantly captures the problem many filmmakers have with social media. (Though there are a few that are good at it.) Most believe that their “social media” job is simply to talk about their movie, and yes, themselves. This is a mistaken belief and shows that they deeply misunderstand the nature of social media.
They need to focus on the panel in the lower right hand corner of the cartoon.
“How can we help you be more awesome?”
This line captures perfectly how every artist should engage with their audience. Nothing in the traditional idea of how a filmmaker markets her movie prepares one to do this. In fact, everything in the traditional model conspires against it. So one has to abandon that mode of thinking in order to successfully use social media. So my suggestion to any filmmaker is the following.
Memorize it, understand it and execute it.
When filmmakers do, individually and collectively, they will start to build a real audience for their work.
Find other insightful cartoons by Tom Fishburne at marketoonist.