Advertising and Marketing Today: How to Use Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Film

The way films are marketed today is so vastly different from 10 years ago that it is virtually unrecognisable. Advertising and marketing were limited to television, radio, billboards and magazines. If you were one of the bigger studios, you maybe would put something on the Internet. Today, while some money is still spent on traditional mediums, most of it is aimed toward the Internet and social media platforms.

The following are some effective ways to use social media to promote your film:

Create a Main Website

Crafting a website that is engaging and interesting to your followers is the first step to getting your film noticed. You need to make sure you have a centralised place for everyone to go. Think of social media as spokes on a wheel, all of which lead back to your main website. Links to these main pages should be included in the user profile or shared normally through the platform from time to time to keep it fresh in users' minds.

Involve Your Fans

Getting your fans involved in the social media process is a great way to get buzz for your projects. Hashtags are one of the best ways to both grow your brand and keep fans involved in the process. Having related hashtags in your posts lets your page grow by exposing “non fans” to relevant information.

You can also use these hashtags to aggregate content for contests. For example, you can create a contest that has your fans take selfies with your poster with their smartphone cameras. Have them use a specific hashtag so you can see all of the contestants and so you can promote them on social media. This also is a great way to show fans that there are others who are also enjoying your content, which helps spread the word of your project.

Set a Schedule for Growth

While you want to post enough content to engage your fans, you do not want to overwhelm them. Posting at regular intervals is going to make sure you get the most views possible by the most people possible. To do this effectively, you need to tailor your schedule to individual platforms rather than deciding that you're going to post once a day or week no matter what.

Twitter, for instance, is a ticker feed that constantly scrolls. If your fans aren’t looking at just the right time, they will probably miss your post, so you need to tweet more frequently. Facebook and Instagram, however, are slower for the average user, so you don’t need as many posts per day. Cross promotion is also invaluable because it makes sure all your platforms have growth.

Use Multiple Types of Media

One major advantage that today's social media users have is the ability to post any style of content on any platform. Every major platform can hold different types of media, ranging from photos to GIFs to videos. For example, Instagram just added the ability to post 60-second videos, which enables you to share short teaser material on the platform.

Photos have the advantage of letting you get around the character limits on platforms like Twitter. These photos give you a bit more room within the body of the tweet to include hashtags and mentions. As a bonus, your followers have some space to retweet and add information to your posts.