Promoting Your Film - Forget MySpace and Facebook

Lots of indie filmmakers, not to mention the big studios, are trying to figure out how to get an audience for their work. Many people went the Myspace/Facebook route that worked so well for the music business. But music and film are two different beasts, and while music can be used to fill your regular life with a soundtrack that adds to the richness of your experience, movies ask you to leave your life and enter someone else's for a while. A musician rides shotgun for your mood. A filmmaker takes over and manipulates your mood.

Nevertheless, a lot of press has been given lately to the idea that you have to go 100% web 2.0 where a page on one of these sights is an ablsolute must-have. The mantra was picked up by many of the most dedicated women promoting their films I know. Me, I couldn't see the point to MySpace or Facebook even if I had a million so-called friends. After you're a celebrity, okay maybe. But as a business model, I couldn't see how it would do me, my films or my festival any material good, so I avoided it and felt guilty.

So imagine my relief when I went to BlogHer 08 in San Francisco last weekend and heard one after another woman with a successful web presence (successful meaning money-making) dismiss these tools that I had been feeling guilty about not using. Setting up and maintaining these social networking pages takes a lot of time and does nothing to build an audience. It can be used to keep an audience loyal, but many of the women I know are looking to build their numbers. These sites are not the place to do that.

Only one tool that I did not understand turned out to be a winner, and that was Twitter. I got some good advice and workable examples of how to use it effectively in conjunction with blogging. Not only that, it turns out to be a streamlined and often fun connector of people with like passions. I see how it would work to build a following. But more on that another time. For now, I'm just happy to let go of the guilt.