Strategic Social Media for Indie Films

Hey everyone, Alexi here from Exile Entertainment. In this video I'm going to tell you why building an audience for your indie film on social media is a mistake. Alright now before we dive in and get started with this video I want to let you know that spots are available for our Producing Accelerator program. that helps filmmakers finance, produce, distribute and even market their feature films. So if you want to learn more about that stick around until the end of this video and for the best filmmaking advice make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to be notified when we post a video. Okay now as with all things in life it is a bit more nuanced than I may have led on at the start of this video but I I truly believe that if you're focusing on building an audience from really early on in the production process, so from development or financing or even production, you've jumped the gun, you've started much too early because the reality is that you don't need social media to develop, to finance or to produce your film. Social media can become really useful to you during the marketing and release stage, but as I'm going to explain in this video, there's more than enough time for you to actually prepare your social media campaign, execute it, and start to build an audience. But even when you're building an audience on social media for your indie film, there are so many pitfalls that you need to be aware of. So I'm going to take you through those in this video. First thing that I want to discuss is I think that when social media kind of came out, which was, I can't believe that is part of our lifetime now. It's certainly part of mine. I know that there's a lot of people using social media that were probably born with it around, but there was a time when social media wasn't a thing. But as soon as I came into it, you know, a lot, of advice that you'd get from people was that you need to start building an audience for your film as soon as possible and the real issue with this is that there's no correlation between having your you know an audience for social media and financing and producing and developing a film and so what you need to think about at that early stage of the project is where are you best you know where should you best put your time put your limited time, your limited resources and limited energy, are you best off trying to build an audience for the film or are you best off trying to make the best film possible? So A, spending time on the screenplay, making sure that that's world class. B, actually spending time on financing the film. If you're not going out there, reaching out to investors, pitching to investors, trying to close investors, doesn't matter how many times you post on social media, you're not doing the things that are going to be moving the needle and it may even be a a kind of comfortable distraction for you during production i mean you don't need social media during production you don't need it during post-production so you really need to think about you know are you potentially engaging in an activity that's going to distract you from what's important and if you don't need social media to develop finance produce you high quality films and for those films to go on and have you know extreme success both critically and commercially then that should be all the information that you need that indicates to you that you don't need to be building an audience on social media during those particular stages of production. Another reason is that to build the type of audience that is actually going to give you leverage. In any of those areas, the developing stage or the financing stage or the production stage, to build that audience takes years. If you're going to do it organically, it's a really long period of time that you're going to need to spend doing that. And so if you're just starting that when you start developing or financing a film, you actually just haven't given yourself enough time to grow that audience into something meaningful. The. other way that you could build an audience is through paid traffic but of course that doesn't make any sense during that stage because you're not selling anything and so if you're not selling anything like a consumer product at that point then you can't justify spending the advertising money to build the audience so that's why you need to keep in mind that building an audience for an indie film you know at that stage if that's when you're starting is is really i think it's a distraction and it's something that's just not needed and you're far better off spending that time that energy on developing the film and actually getting it financed. Investors don't care if you have a social media page for the film. They don't care even if you have a website for the film. Those things aren't important. So you need to really know what's important to an investor when it comes to the financing stage and just focus on executing those activities. So the other thing to really keep in mind is, okay, well, what if you started developing or building your audience audience? Years before the financing stage, I think what you really want to do is if you do want to build an audience, which it's fine to build an audience, but you should be doing that for you as an individual, you as the filmmaker, or for your production company. The reason that you want to do that over building individual profiles for your page is because you have longevity. So you can keep feeding that audience new content, new material. Over time, you... get the benefits of the time horizon and the exponential results you know that compounding results that you get from building an audience that over time is a much better strategy than starting a page for a single film putting a lot of time and energy into that and then a year or two later of course you have to that that account is kind of no longer relevant because you're on to the next film and that film has kind of had its Not its lifespan, but it's really had that period of time where you need to be promoting it most intensely. So that's the other thing to keep in mind. It's that for a film, you don't get a lot of the benefits from social media. So you're much better off building your personal brand as a filmmaker or, of course, building your social accounts and building your audience for your production company. The other thing to keep in mind is that... You will only have a lot of the assets that you're going to need to actually promote the film and start building an audience after the film's done. Now it's not to say that you can't have some assets along the way, but all the stills that you get, any BTS footage, any teasers that you cut, trailers, all those assets are actually created during production or during post-production. So it's very hard to sustain. the level of content that you need to be posting during those early stages of production and it's very hard to to actually have those assets stretch over a long period of time so another reason why you want to delay you know setting up your accounts and actually posting on them is that if you do that once you have all those assets then you can actually be posting on a really regular and consistent basis and build the audience quicker rather than over that prolonged period of time when you have much less content to actually put out. Okay, so that all leads me to the question of, well, when should you start promoting your film? When should you actually start creating social media accounts? So really the stage that you want to do that, if you're going to do it, I'm going to take you through some of the pros and cons of doing it, is really when you're in that post-production period and you start to have... a lot of those assets that you're going to need to promote the film and so that's a good time to start doing it because even from the time that you're in post-production if you're going to take the film through the festival circuit you know that's a six sometimes even 12 month period if you're in post-production then there's a period of time to actually deliver the film and then if the film gets picked up at a film festival there's going to be three to six months before it even gets released So even from that post-production period, you could be at least 12 months out from your commercial release. So that still gives you a lot of time to start building an audience for that specific film. Now, the pros of that are, of course, that you start to build an audience for the film that you can leverage during the film's release. The cons are, again, as an independent filmmaker, and if you don't have an already established audience, it's still going to be difficult for you to build up a level of audience that's really going to be meaningful even once the film's released. And so it could end up being that you do spend... a lot of time again on social media that may not be the best use of your time you know at that point you may be better off either moving on to your next project and developing that and trying to get that into production or you may be better off you know also just focusing on finishing the film and getting the film out through more established distributors and that takes me to the point that you know really the ultimate aim for an independent film is to attach a high quality distributor to the film so if you are in the u.s i'm thinking of distributors like a24 and neon right those are absolutely the high watermark well if you can attach one of those distributors to your project they are going to take over the marketing and promotion of the film they already have a huge built-in audience they have the capital as well as the human capital, the human resources to get behind the film and to promote and market the film in a really meaningful way and build an audience in a short period of time because they're able to accelerate that through paid promotion as well. So that's why the downside of doing it yourself is that it can be, A, again, it can be a distraction. B, you're likely not going to be able to build up a... big enough audience for it to really make a difference during the release and c is that really your ultimate aim should be to attach a bigger distributor anyway that can then take on the marketing and promotion of the film so you know a lot of that time that you put into social media could end up being i don't want to call it dead time because there will be some um you know there will be some benefit even if a distributor does come on to having spent time building those accounts but From the moment they come on, they can really accelerate that growth quite quickly. So those are the things that you need to keep in mind even once the film's in post-production. And it's important to think about it at that time. And again, you have to measure that against whether you're better off, again, spending more time just continuing to build your own personal brand, your production company brand, and leverage that audience for the film's release. Okay, so the counter argument to all of this is that if you already have a built-in audience, whether it's through your personal brand or your production company, then that may warrant actually setting up social accounts for your film, for your indie film early on in the process and taking your audience through the journey of that film coming to life. Yeah. Of course, there's no reason why you can't simply do that through your personal accounts. But if you want a really targeted audience for that specific film and you have a built-in audience yourself, then that may actually justify starting those accounts early and building up an audience that's specific to that film and really targeted to that film. So that's definitely one exception to the rule. Okay, so that's it for this video. If you liked the video, hit the like button, subscribe to this channel, jump into the comments and let me know if there's any points that you didn't agree with. Maybe you didn't agree with the whole video. So I'd love to hear about your take on the importance of building an audience for the release of your indie film. Now, if you're interested in learning more about working with us through the Producing Accelerator, then I encourage you. to check out the link in the description below where you can find out more information about that program so what that program does is it teaches and shows filmmakers through a roadmap that we've created how to consistently finance produce distribute and even market your films so like i said if you want to learn more about that if you're interested in working with me or a member of my team then Check out the link in the description. You'll be able to set up a time to speak with us. We'll go through your project in more detail, find out where you're at, where you need to get to, and of course, if we can help. And don't forget to check out these videos next on how to up your filmmaking game.

that helps filmmakers finance, produce, distribute and even market their feature films. So if you want to learn more about that stick around until the end of this video and for the best filmmaking advice make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to be notified when we post a video. Okay now as with all things in life it is a bit more nuanced than I may have led on at the start of this video but I I truly believe that if you're focusing on building an audience from really early on in the production process, so from development or financing or even production, you've jumped the gun, you've started much too early because the reality is that you don't need social media to develop, to finance or to produce your film. Social media can become really useful to you during the marketing and release stage, but as I'm going to explain in this video, there's more than enough time for you to actually prepare your social media campaign, execute it, and start to build an audience.

But even when you're building an audience on social media for your indie film, there are so many pitfalls that you need to be aware of. So I'm going to take you through those in this video. First thing that I want to discuss is I think that when social media kind of came out, which was, I can't believe that is part of our lifetime now. It's certainly part of mine.

I know that there's a lot of people using social media that were probably born with it around, but there was a time when social media wasn't a thing. But as soon as I came into it, you know, a lot, of advice that you'd get from people was that you need to start building an audience for your film as soon as possible and the real issue with this is that there's no correlation between having your you know an audience for social media and financing and producing and developing a film and so what you need to think about at that early stage of the project is where are you best you know where should you best put your time put your limited time, your limited resources and limited energy, are you best off trying to build an audience for the film or are you best off trying to make the best film possible? So A, spending time on the screenplay, making sure that that's world class. B, actually spending time on financing the film.

If you're not going out there, reaching out to investors, pitching to investors, trying to close investors, doesn't matter how many times you post on social media, you're not doing the things that are going to be moving the needle and it may even be a a kind of comfortable distraction for you during production i mean you don't need social media during production you don't need it during post-production so you really need to think about you know are you potentially engaging in an activity that's going to distract you from what's important and if you don't need social media to develop finance produce you high quality films and for those films to go on and have you know extreme success both critically and commercially then that should be all the information that you need that indicates to you that you don't need to be building an audience on social media during those particular stages of production. Another reason is that to build the type of audience that is actually going to give you leverage. In any of those areas, the developing stage or the financing stage or the production stage, to build that audience takes years.

If you're going to do it organically, it's a really long period of time that you're going to need to spend doing that. And so if you're just starting that when you start developing or financing a film, you actually just haven't given yourself enough time to grow that audience into something meaningful. The.

other way that you could build an audience is through paid traffic but of course that doesn't make any sense during that stage because you're not selling anything and so if you're not selling anything like a consumer product at that point then you can't justify spending the advertising money to build the audience so that's why you need to keep in mind that building an audience for an indie film you know at that stage if that's when you're starting is is really i think it's a distraction and it's something that's just not needed and you're far better off spending that time that energy on developing the film and actually getting it financed. Investors don't care if you have a social media page for the film. They don't care even if you have a website for the film. Those things aren't important.

So you need to really know what's important to an investor when it comes to the financing stage and just focus on executing those activities. So the other thing to really keep in mind is, okay, well, what if you started developing or building your audience audience? Years before the financing stage, I think what you really want to do is if you do want to build an audience, which it's fine to build an audience, but you should be doing that for you as an individual, you as the filmmaker, or for your production company.

The reason that you want to do that over building individual profiles for your page is because you have longevity. So you can keep feeding that audience new content, new material. Over time, you... get the benefits of the time horizon and the exponential results you know that compounding results that you get from building an audience that over time is a much better strategy than starting a page for a single film putting a lot of time and energy into that and then a year or two later of course you have to that that account is kind of no longer relevant because you're on to the next film and that film has kind of had its Not its lifespan, but it's really had that period of time where you need to be promoting it most intensely. So that's the other thing to keep in mind.

It's that for a film, you don't get a lot of the benefits from social media. So you're much better off building your personal brand as a filmmaker or, of course, building your social accounts and building your audience for your production company. The other thing to keep in mind is that... You will only have a lot of the assets that you're going to need to actually promote the film and start building an audience after the film's done.

Now it's not to say that you can't have some assets along the way, but all the stills that you get, any BTS footage, any teasers that you cut, trailers, all those assets are actually created during production or during post-production. So it's very hard to sustain. the level of content that you need to be posting during those early stages of production and it's very hard to to actually have those assets stretch over a long period of time so another reason why you want to delay you know setting up your accounts and actually posting on them is that if you do that once you have all those assets then you can actually be posting on a really regular and consistent basis and build the audience quicker rather than over that prolonged period of time when you have much less content to actually put out. Okay, so that all leads me to the question of, well, when should you start promoting your film?

When should you actually start creating social media accounts? So really the stage that you want to do that, if you're going to do it, I'm going to take you through some of the pros and cons of doing it, is really when you're in that post-production period and you start to have... a lot of those assets that you're going to need to promote the film and so that's a good time to start doing it because even from the time that you're in post-production if you're going to take the film through the festival circuit you know that's a six sometimes even 12 month period if you're in post-production then there's a period of time to actually deliver the film and then if the film gets picked up at a film festival there's going to be three to six months before it even gets released So even from that post-production period, you could be at least 12 months out from your commercial release.

So that still gives you a lot of time to start building an audience for that specific film. Now, the pros of that are, of course, that you start to build an audience for the film that you can leverage during the film's release. The cons are, again, as an independent filmmaker, and if you don't have an already established audience, it's still going to be difficult for you to build up a level of audience that's really going to be meaningful even once the film's released. And so it could end up being that you do spend...

a lot of time again on social media that may not be the best use of your time you know at that point you may be better off either moving on to your next project and developing that and trying to get that into production or you may be better off you know also just focusing on finishing the film and getting the film out through more established distributors and that takes me to the point that you know really the ultimate aim for an independent film is to attach a high quality distributor to the film so if you are in the u.s i'm thinking of distributors like a24 and neon right those are absolutely the high watermark well if you can attach one of those distributors to your project they are going to take over the marketing and promotion of the film they already have a huge built-in audience they have the capital as well as the human capital, the human resources to get behind the film and to promote and market the film in a really meaningful way and build an audience in a short period of time because they're able to accelerate that through paid promotion as well. So that's why the downside of doing it yourself is that it can be, A, again, it can be a distraction. B, you're likely not going to be able to build up a... big enough audience for it to really make a difference during the release and c is that really your ultimate aim should be to attach a bigger distributor anyway that can then take on the marketing and promotion of the film so you know a lot of that time that you put into social media could end up being i don't want to call it dead time because there will be some um you know there will be some benefit even if a distributor does come on to having spent time building those accounts but From the moment they come on, they can really accelerate that growth quite quickly.

So those are the things that you need to keep in mind even once the film's in post-production. And it's important to think about it at that time. And again, you have to measure that against whether you're better off, again, spending more time just continuing to build your own personal brand, your production company brand, and leverage that audience for the film's release.

Okay, so the counter argument to all of this is that if you already have a built-in audience, whether it's through your personal brand or your production company, then that may warrant actually setting up social accounts for your film, for your indie film early on in the process and taking your audience through the journey of that film coming to life. Yeah. Of course, there's no reason why you can't simply do that through your personal accounts.

But if you want a really targeted audience for that specific film and you have a built-in audience yourself, then that may actually justify starting those accounts early and building up an audience that's specific to that film and really targeted to that film. So that's definitely one exception to the rule. Okay, so that's it for this video. If you liked the video, hit the like button, subscribe to this channel, jump into the comments and let me know if there's any points that you didn't agree with. Maybe you didn't agree with the whole video.

So I'd love to hear about your take on the importance of building an audience for the release of your indie film. Now, if you're interested in learning more about working with us through the Producing Accelerator, then I encourage you. to check out the link in the description below where you can find out more information about that program so what that program does is it teaches and shows filmmakers through a roadmap that we've created how to consistently finance produce distribute and even market your films so like i said if you want to learn more about that if you're interested in working with me or a member of my team then Check out the link in the description.

You'll be able to set up a time to speak with us. We'll go through your project in more detail, find out where you're at, where you need to get to, and of course, if we can help. And don't forget to check out these videos next on how to up your filmmaking game.

Transcript for:Strategic Social Media for Indie Films

Transcript for:
Strategic Social Media for Indie Films