The importance of having a blog (part 1)

Some people think that blogs are dead since the rise of community websites like facebook and twitter. Indeed, many filmmakers turn to use Social Networking platforms and Microblogging services to promote their projects, often used complementary. Nevertheless, running a blog (and/or a website) should always be the main anchor for all your online activities.Some people think that blogs are dead due to the rise of community websites like facebook and twitter. Indeed, many filmmakers turn to use Social Networking platforms and Microblogging services to promote their projects, often used complementary. Nevertheless, running a blog (and/or a website) should always be the main anchor for all your online activities.

Why should I start a movie-blog?

You want to know why you should start blogging? Because people want know more about your work and identify with your project.

Brant J. Smith, producer of the underground indie film hit Quality of Life, explains the power of blogs in his article Top 7 fool-proof indie film marketing tactics:

The blog is a great way to capture the moment-to-moment bluster of filmmaking, while also providing an outlet for random related thoughts and links to related sites.

Another article, posted on Greenlight 360 mentions that LinkedIn, Twitter and Blogs are budget friendly ways to drive viewers to your online television, films or videos. The article also includes a statement of David Burch (TubeMogul) from July 2009, in which he says

“Blogs are the biggest referrer of video views.. 45% of video views come from specific searches for a video. Of the the 55% remaining, 81% are found through blogs.”

Of course, blogging can be a time-consuming job, but it is a key way of building your reputation and getting your stories out there. While most blogs don't create the amount of focus generated by traditional media, the blogosphere represents a vast number of small, passionate and engaged audiences. Your blog offers you a chance to build up trust with potential fans and future audience members by providing an insight into your work. So, if you haven't done so already, go get yourself a blog (using a blog CMS like wordpress, blogger or serendipity) as soon as possible and start blogging about your work.

How to start a movie-blog

Actually you can write about anything you'd like to write, just be a creator!

Use your blog as a production diary, post your thoughts about scriptwriting, financing your movie, write about the production itself, introduce your cast, your plans for distribution, maybe some problems you might be experiencing with funding, post 'behind the scenes' clips, upload set-pics, etc! You can even blog about how hard it is to keep on blogging during production. Anything will do, as long as it reflects your work and your attitudes. Be creative!

Another approach is to focus on the issues of your movie and give your potential audience insights in related topics, post links to similar projects, start conversations on your own blog and invite people to get in touch with you and other bloggers.

And of course you could follow the most artistic and fun approach and bring your characters or your story to the web, transfer it to your blog. People will get curious about your film and you can build tension that ends with a big bang on the screen.

My blog isn’t special and I have no readers - what can I do?

This question was once asked by Maggie Fox on Social Media Today and in fact it is the most asked when it comes to encourage filmmakers to start blogging. We recommend that you begin to engage with your potential fans by providing relevant and interesting comments on related blogs. Linking your comments back to your blog will grow your audience amongst people who are already interested in the topic, genre or issues dealt with in your film.

It's really important to find key protagonists, opinion leaders or evangelists and try to get them commenting and reblogging you or simply linking to your weblog. That's what Maggie's conclusion was: prioritise who you connect with!

Of course there's Twitter and Facebook and other platforms. Our advice: use them! Once you posted a new blog, spread it all over your online outlets and link it back to your blog. Draw attention on Facebook, let people know what you are up to and gather them all on your blog (or website). And be sure you linked your blog up to your Social Network profiles and website too, because search engines love links and they love blogs too.

What's next?

Once you've started to write about your daily challenge in filmmaking, you can go further and try to involve your fans more and more. Ask them to give you feedback on your project, discuss your problems with them, maybe even consider a crowdfunding campaign. Again, be creative and authentic!

The goal is to get a highly targeted readership that identifies with your project and your needs. To learn about your fans and followers you should definitly monitor your community. But that's another blog post, coming up soon :-)

If you still don't want to start blogging, read about 6 other ways to spread the word on the Internet.

And if you want to dive deeper into what matters in the blogosphere, learn more about the ethics of blogging or various posting formats and educate yourself on blogs like Mashable and other web resources.