Later you will want to contact these organizations, blogs, and magazines. You need a way to keep track of every contact. You can very quickly run into hundreds of contacts, and thousands of emails and phone calls.
There are three popular options for keeping track of contacts: Highrise, Microsoft Office Outlook and ACT by Sage. Highrise is an online program, while Office Outlook and ACT live on your computer. If you choose Outlook or ACT, make sure you back up all your data with something like the file backup program SugarSync. Your contact information is critical. Do not lose it.
When I looked for effective micro-budget ways to promote your film online, four things kept coming up.
- Start a blog.
- Make 3-minute YouTube videos.
- Get a Facebook page.
- Give away an eBook.
Start blogging as early as possible. Begin your movie blog as soon as you even start thinking about the movie. At a minimum, start six months or a year before you finish the film. (It will take that long for the blog to gain traction.)
Write regular, useful posts about the film and the subject of your film. Most of your posts should be between 130 to 180 words. You may have an occasional post that is longer, but generally keep them short.
Post frequently and regularly, and have a publishing schedule. You might publish 7 days a week, but at the absolute minimum publish two times a week. Whatever schedule you have, stick to it.
Sticking to your schedule is so important that you might want to draft 3 months of posts, and have them in reserve before you start publishing the blog—just so you don’t miss a post. Then you can update them and add news and current thoughts as you go, so the posts become a mix of reflections, insights, and useful information.
Optimize the blog for Google search, as described in the book Inbound Marketing, pages 35-50. Use your goal statement and your audience list to generate “keywords” that you will use in all your blog posts.
Put a link in your blog where people can buy a DVD of your film.
Shoot and post informal 3-minute videos about the subject of your film.
Three-minute YouTube videos are cheap and easy to make. They can also be a surprisingly effective way to promote your film. If the video goes “viral” millions of people might watch it.
The videos do not have to be very fancy, and they do not have to be examples of your filmmaking ‘chops’. In fact, you might keep them as informal as possible so no one confuses them with your ‘real’ filmmaking.
Good topics for YouTube videos include expert interviews, how-to videos and slice of life stories. With Matt’s film in mind, let’s look at a few possible three-minute YouTube videos.
- Expert interviews: Matt might have experts talk about hiking different sections of the Adirondack Trail, or about efforts to preserve the trails. (Matt can probably list a dozen experts right off the top of his head.)
- How to videos: Treating blisters, choosing boots, bathing in streams, treating Lyme disease, treating broken bones, dealing with discouragement, staying dry during rainstorms…
- Slice of life: Matt, or other hikers talking about relationships on the trail, dealing with people who harass hikers, dealing with people who open their homes to hikers…
The trailer for the film should go on YouTube.
In addition, of course, Matt should put the URL of his blog at the bottom of every YouTube clip, and include it in the description of the clip.
The possibilities for inexpensive, effective promotion using YouTube are literally endless.
