How Not to Promote Your Movie

Number1s

Like any movie maker, it is important to me to have people see, and hopefully enjoy, my movies. How do I get people to watch my movies?

I find it very difficult to promote my movies. Partly it is because I don’t feel comfortable promoting myself, and partly that I just don’t know how. I’ve read many blogs and articles, but I still haven’t found something that works for me.

They say that the best way to promote your work is to produce high quality and unique movies. Even if you do, it is still hard to get people to watch. Another twist to keep in mind is that, no matter how good your work, not everyone will like your work, so you need to reach the people who will like your work.

There are many “tricks” that people use to attract interest, and it is easy to be tempted to use them.

Search Engine Optimization

It seems like you find people who push SEO everywhere. This can be done in a positive way, since there will always be people who want to find what you have on offer. All too often though, it can be just a bunch of tricks to get people to visit your site.

Time and again I’ve visited sites that seem to promise something that interests me, only to find it isn’t what I wanted. I get quite annoyed when that happens. I often see people in comment sections expressing their anger at this kind of thing. I must admit I used a similar approach with my movie Who Shot the President.

Another problem with this approach is that it is self-defeating in the long run. For long-term success as a movie maker you need to develop a fan base. When you turn people off you’ve lost them forever.

Get More Followers

Many people believe that you need to build up the number of people who follow you on Twitter and other websites. You can even buy followers. Even when they don’t buy followers,  some people resort to various tricks to get others to follow them. One that particularly annoys me who follow me, then when I follow back, they thank me and then un-follow me.

It was my practice to follow people who followed me, but I now doubt that this is a wise approach. I follow far too many people to really follow what they post, so why follow them. On the other side, what is the value of followers who never see your posts? When I checked this morning I had 1,543 followers on Twitter. I doubt that even a tenth of them have ever noticed any of my posts.

One good follower who supports you is better than a 100 that never even see your posts.

Face Book Pages

Face Book pages are supposed to be a good way to keep in touch with follows. With recent changes to Face Book, that has become more difficult. Even before the changes, if someone didn’t click on your posts on their feed, Face Book would not put them on their feed anymore.

Once you’re no longer on people’s feeds, it is very hard to get back on. Many people are angry at Face Book for this change. I wouldn’t say I was angry, but I am disappointed that people who said they want to know what I’m up to are cut off so easily. On the other hand, is there anything I can do to get people to interact with my page more, so they continue to get my posts?

Rules to Follow

I have started to adopt some rules that I think will work for me.

Don’t Annoy PeopleDo not do anything that would annoy me if someone did it to me.

Don’t Look for Followers, Look for A Follower – Build up your followers one at a time. It is the quality of follower that you need to focus on, not the quantity.

Don’t Lash Out at Criticism – A nasty response can drive people away. A more constructive response can draw people in. This has been a challenge for me.

I am sure that there are many more that will help me, and fit in with my approach to life.

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