Social media has had a huge impact on our lives, the way we communicate and express ourselves. It has basically revolutionised our lives. The major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are used by pretty much everyone these days. Social media is a huge part of my life too. Especially in my field, i.e. media, you need to have an online presence and have as much exposure as possible. Social media is the next big thing whether you’re marketing your product through it or just telling a story through it.
Anyone with a smartphone capture a video and get many hits on YouTube. Social media has opened up communication, allowing rich media to be distributed across multiple global networks and connect millions with similar interests. Before the advent of social media, word of mouth was the only true method of marketing your product, especially films or any other forms of art. This changed after the arrival of social media. Whether you’re a business, a film production company or just a student, marketing your work had not been so easy and had such a huge reach around the world before, with almost no costs. We all have seen people becoming huge stars from nobodies with the Justin Bieber being the most recognisable example. He first came into the limelight through his YouTube videos. Universal pictures in particular, created an interactive campaign around their Minion characters for the promotion of their movie Despicable Me 2, which tapped into fans via mobile. panning five European countries are mobile-controlled digital ads with personalised skits from the Minions themselves. Fans are then encouraged to share their personalised video clip across their own social profiles. So in other words, it is basically the fans who did the marketing for them. Using social media management tools for active listening is essential to maintain a film’s longevity – especially for sagas like Twilight or Harry Potter. Films can use social media to listen to what their loyal fans want, and hopefully find a creative way to do just that.
I have been quite active on social media lately and using it to market my films and digital narratives, especially my web documentary. This again has been for a number of reasons:
- No cost.
- Easily accessible for everyone and has a wide reach.
- Especially good for someone like me who is starting out in the industry.
- The option to get instant reactions by people through platforms like Facebook.
- Ask for their suggestions, comments, whether they liked my narrative, what can be made better.
- Give the option to people of easily contacting me for anything, in this case, for donation and to get the contact details of the homeless.
- I’m making a documentary web series for my digital narrative, which will be completely posted online with an episode posted every week. People in this fast paced world do not have the patience or time to watch 1 or 2 hour long documentaries especially on topics like homeless people. That is why I have divided mine into 5 episodes of 10 minutes each.
- Will have another season based on people’s comments and the overall response.
Talking further about web docs, Philipp Barth says: “Basically, web documentaries are stories of documentary character published on the Internet. They can be put together in different ways, use different interfaces and have different approaches to their subject matter, but they have several features in common.”
He further discusses that mosst web docus have some kind of viewer participation of atleast joining in discussions, polls, voting or even voicing their opinion. Which is exactly the case in my web doc. That is one of the main reasons I incorporated social media in to it.
References:
Growth Gurus. 2016. Why you need to understand the importance of social media. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.growthgurus.com/business-brand-need-understand-importance-social-media/.
Kirby, D. M. (2016, June 21). The role of social media in film marketing. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-m-kirby/the-role-of-social-media-_b_10571026.html
Milbrath, S., & Hootsuite (2013, July 18). The film industry and social media Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/film-industry-social-media/
Journalism, D. (2012, December 19). Web documentaries … what are they? – digital journalism – English – DW.COM. Retrieved September 26, 2016, from http://onmedia.dw-akademie.com/english/?p=6567
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