When it comes to the social media campaign i had a few objectives for my campaign. One which i set myself which wasn’t too big of a target was to try and get 10 likes per post and i am more than glad to say i have successfully reached that. Nearly every post on my social medias has reach or just about reached 10 likes which is great to see! The second objective i set myself was get someone in the film or media industry in some form to follow my account. If i reached this i knew i was 100% reaching the right target demographic. Although i technically didn’t reach this, i was having a conversation with someone someone who works in the media industry for a company called Big Finish who i look up to in terms of where i want to be in terms of the media industry. I was talking to him about my film and what i have to do for it and he checked it out and liked a few posts so, i feel i can technically tick off the second objective as i feel i have achieved it in a sense.
The two social media platforms i used was Twitter and Instagram. I feel these are the best i could use to reach my target demographic. Instagram especially because when doing my research I knew certain things that my target demographic like to see that i could easily adapt and develop on my own social medias and Instagram was the best place for that i think. Twitter was the other easy choice for me after doing some research and finding out that it’s in the top 3 most used social media sites up there with Instagram and Snapchat. I decided you can’t exactly make a films social media account on Snapchat due to stories expiring in 24 hours, I wouldn’t have any posts available to be marked, so although I know for a fact I would be reaching my target demographic much easier I decided to go for Twitter as my other social media. I feel I definitely reached the right demographic due to the attention the accounts got. Everyone who liked any of the tweets or Instagram posts were that of my target demographic and I feel I definitely ended up reaching out to the right people by the types of posts that I posted to help get people excited for my film.
The strategies i used were all based on the official accounts of films and tv shows that are aimed for my target demographic. For example the Stranger Things account has wallpapers, memes, fan interactions and funny behind the scenes posts that everyone seems to like as well as sometimes running competitions. So I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me to try and reach the style and tactics used by accounts like these. I did manage to dip into all these kinds of posts though because from looking at the attention they were all getting i knew they would be a success with my demographic so i went in to try and replicate the success as much as possible. To start with i ran a competition, to celebrate my films release. The prize was an Instagram shoutout on the account which was won by fan interactions for the comment and whichever got the most likes won. To win, you had to leave a comment about the film and like someone else’s comment, so in a way the audience picks the winner which i thought was a neat way of audiences getting involved and feeling more like they were a part of it and not like they had entered a random competition. The winner was my friend James who had left a comment which had received the most likes from other commenters.
After letting the competition run its course of time it was clear that my friend James had won so I had to honour the prize and give him a “shout out” on my out of time social media’s. I made everyone aware of the winner by posting this picture on my story and sharing to my twitter account. The competition was to celebrate the release of the film, whilst trying to get a final push of views and hype for the film, and also boosting my range of social media posts as I have seen professional social media accounts for certain film and TV shows follow suit and run competitions of their own, although I cannot offer a prize as big as what these professional accounts do offer I believe a “shout out” would be suffice.
Another strategy was to post memes which I have seen both the Stranger Things and Doctor Who Instagram and Twitter accounts do. After a bit of research i found that the memes they have made had been shared everywhere and fans had taken advantage of these memes to try and recreate them or put their own spin on them which I thought was a great idea, so i decided to make some memes that are in line with current trends and post them to the account. these include the famous Mr. Bean waiting meme, the distracted boyfriend meme with the caption ‘You vs the trailer releasing on the same day she told you not to worry about’ and the Top Gear ‘So you…’ meme which are all quite popular.
Another popular thing to post is wallpapers. People like to use these to customize their phones and desktops. I decided to do the same thing as this stood out as something quite popular with my target demographic. I made a wallpaper to post and added it to my story highlights and posted it to my twitter. I used the poster I had made for the film. I also made a post for this poster showing it off which revealed the date for the film.
These strategies were quite successful getting a lot of views and likes so I knew I had manage to post the right thing that my target demographic likes to see. These all received around 10 likes so they were all very successful with my target audience.
I had a comment which I’m not sure is genuine telling me about a film festival. The comment didn’t make too much sense but what i gathered was they were saying i can submit my film to the ‘AndroMeda Film Festival.’ Although i haven’t done this, i did some research and there are some student films that get submitted into this film festival so i am glad that i did receive the comment because it means i’m reaching the right target demographic.
I did some interactions with my audience too asking them what their thoughts are on the logo reveal and a few other things i announced as well. The response was quite positive on the logo reveal with 92% of the people who interacted with the story loved it while the 8% thought it could be better.
In terms of the three most popular posts on my social media accounts I noticed a pattern with them all and amongst all the posts that could have been the most liked these three are all behind the scenes / updates on the film.
The above three posts are all behind the scenes update that received around twelve to fourteen likes. One of these is a cast announcement which received thirteen likes. I believe the popularity of these tweets is down to how important these updates are, they are not memes or wallpapers that I have also posted they are related directly to the film themselves which I think is the reason why they have been so popular. They help generate hype for the films release by giving exclusive looks and updates that viewers are eager to see. Each post increases the popularity of forthcoming updates on the film and its release. The techniques used for these posts to generate likes and publicity is to advertise that these posts will be coming for example sharing posts on my story and twitters beforehand saying these updates will be coming at certain times and to keep an eye out. Another technique I used was to post when my target demographic is likely to be on social media. After extensive research I came to the conclusion that my target demographics used social media from 7pm onwards. This means I have the best chance of reaching my target demographic by posting these important updates when I believe they will get the most exposure which I am glad to say works.
When talking of the three posts that did not go so well the three I linked above did not receive as many likes or hype as I had anticipated. This can be down to many reasons but the main reason I believe is that I posted them at the wrong time of day when not many people in my target demographic will be online. It surprised me that the second post linked above did not do as well as I thought due to the fact it did very well on my instagram and made it to the top three of my most liked posts. A pattern I have noticed with these most disliked posts is that the most liked posts all come from my Instagram where as the most disliked come from my twitter. I believe the reason for this pattern is as I mentioned before Instagram is more regularly used by my target demographic compared to twitter which is not as popular with my target audience. What my audience could have expected is more updates on the production of the film itself rather than behind the scenes looks and release countdowns and competitions which part of my audience and social media following may not be interested in entirely. When I come to doing a social media campaign next time I will not have as many “filler” posts to fill out the amount of posts and I will make sure every post will go up when my target audience is guaranteed to be online meaning my post have a better chance at not only being seen but having more interactions.
The three things I have learnt which will help me in the future are :
- More thought into the type of posts I put out and try and get as many to be film production updates as possible. I will do this because I believe the most likes and interactions I have received have been for posts that are directly related to the film. As above the ideal time to post going forward is between 7pm and 9pm for my target group to get the best reaction.
- Due to the success of my competition I want to do more of them in the future and make sure that I do them before the film is released as well to help generate as much hype as possible. That is the only regret in terms of the type of post I did make.
- The final thing is try and achieve all the goals i set out to achieve beforehand. Although i feel i partially achieved the goal of getting someone who works in the media industry to check out my page, i would like to fully achieve it by getting someone to follow the account who works in the media industry. I did end up getting new followers on the Instagram and Twitter pages who do make short films but it is not exactly the goal i intended to reach so that is what i would like to change.
I have had good feedback on this social media campaign from a couple of my friends who have told me how they think it is a good idea to try and not only get more posts on my social media but to get involved more with the audience.
After asking for some feedback on my overall social medias from some friends / followers the feedback i have recieved was quite good…
“I love the videos you’ve posted, the teasers are really good and unique they are nothing like what i’ve seen before and look quite professional too.” – This was from my friend Fraser
“The artworks all have a theme and i like the crack that appears in all the text” – This was from my friend James
“I actually cannot tell a difference from this and a real social media account for a film. You’ve obviously taken a lot of time and thought into making it what it is” – That was from my friend Liz.
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