Finding your built in audience

Scott Kirsner has a piece that’s taken me a couple days to digest and think about, a piece that addresses the two questions a filmmaker has to ask.

The first question is about financing and, as Scott says, there’s nobody that’s not asking that question all the time.

But the second, the one that’s more interesting, is this:

What groups, online communities, blogs, Web sites, or non-profits do you think would be interested in this film?

Scott rightly says that these sites, groups and publications represent an existing audience that you can bring news about the movie *to* instead of trying to get them to come to a website or social network profile page through one-off outreach and pitching.

It’s one thing, though, for a filmmaker to get into the habit of asking that question, as Scott suggests, of everyone you know. Someone somewhere is going to have a contact at a relevant news site and get you some press or a mention that will begin to build an audience. But it’s another to have a strategy in place that will, to use a marketing industry term, result in conversions, by which I mean turning audience awareness into audience actions. Here are some tips on doing just that:

Build up and maintain your online presence – Have a blog/site, have a Facebook page, have a Twitter account. Do what feels natural and what seems to match with the audience for that film, but commit to maintaining it. No one likes to come to a dead site or a profile that hasn’t been updated in two months. It’s an immediate turn-off. I know you’re busy but that needs to be a routine.
Decide which site or URL is going to be your hub – Depending on what the strategy is there’s going to be one URL that you’re using that’s a hub for the rest of your online strategy. Whenever you’re talking to the press or to an interested organization do what you can to make sure that’s the one they link to. It’s your initial “handshake” with the audience and first impressions count.
Consider a site introduction – If you’re running a blog you know that the top of the front page is always the most recent post. That’s sometimes not indicative of the majority of your content and it’s not always the best introduction point. So consider reformatting – or having someone reformat – your blog with an introduction that acts as a “Welcome” mat to the rest of your stuff. WordPress blogs allow for “Sticky” posts that remain at the top and I think other platforms have similar functionality.
Do your research – If you meet someone at a festival that’s willing to introduce you to a friend that runs a message board covering the same topic as your film the first thing – first thing – you need to do when you get back to the hotel is search for the site, create a profile there and begin interacting with the community there, but in an organic and non-promotional way. Become part of the discussion and get to know the site *before* your friend gets around to introducing you to their contact there.
Don’t expect too much – Your goal is to drive traffic to your blog/site to raise awareness of your movie. The goals of the sites that you’re trying to reach are to drive visits and pageviews to, in all likelihood, raise ad revenue. So don’t think they’re going to turn their site over to you. So make sure you have a good story – not your movie, your media pitch – in place and your goals will run in parallel.
Thank them – If a publication site, advocacy message board or anyone else links to you make sure you link back, whether it’s to the board thread or the article or whatever. They helped you out and you’d like them to be an ally so it’s only polite, as well as strategically smart, to help them out in return.

Scott’s absolutely right that that tapping into existing communities not only gives you access to a relevant, engaged community but also is much more efficient in terms of time and energy. It’s important to ask people if they know anything about these sorts of communities and publications. Hopefully these simple tips can help filmmakers activate on those opportunities as they arise.