It’s no secret that social media has redefined many aspects of our lives. Everywhere you look you’ll see people with their heads down, eyes locked to their screens, endlessly scrolling. While there is an abundance of arguments on the pros and cons of social media, one clear benefit has been the connection between social media and social justice issues. With billions of people online, activists have been able to launch movements, often with a single post. You can harness that power to create and promote a documentary film.
Take the Black Lives Matter movement. The phrase came to life in a 2013 Facebook post by Alicia Garza called “a love letter to Black people”, which she posted after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors then took that phrase and created the hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter. In 2014, the hashtag – and the movement – exploded, following the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.
Hundreds of people who had never protested or participated in social activism before flooded the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the country. Following Ferguson, the official Black Lives Matter organization was born and the movement became a constant cry as social media contributed to the exposure of more and more deaths of Black people at the hands of police.
How to apply social media events to your documentary
“But I’m making a documentary, how does this apply to me?” you may ask. Let’s switch over to another example and pretend you’re filming a documentary on the current situation between Russia and Ukraine.
As you begin to research your project, you can jump onto nearly any social media platform and put in #Ukraine or #UkraineRussiaWar and be met with thousands of results:
- From there, you could begin gathering materials to use in your film.
- You could follow a conversation in real-time as people on the ground shared eyewitness accounts of what was happening.
- You could see TikToks of war footage that in the past would’ve been reserved only for certain news outlets.
- You could message soldiers, journalists, citizens of Ukraine, business owners, and anyone else from whom you wanted to hear firsthand about what was going on.
Social media has paved the way for you to potentially create an entire documentary without ever leaving the comfort of your own home and has created unprecedented access to moments in history that ordinarily would have been nearly impossible to capture.
Using social media to capture moments as they happen
You can also use social media to ensure you are in the right place at the right time. The hashtag March for Our Lives movement came into being following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The Facebook event pages were created, the hashtag became trending on social media, and millions of students from across the country walked out of their classrooms to demonstrate their support of gun control legislation.
As a filmmaker, following those trends online could have helped place you in Washington, D.C. during the main march or dispersed crew to capture footage during the 880 sibling events that took place on the same day.
Finding the right platform for your audience
Now let’s fast forward to the day you’ve completed your documentary film. You’ve finished your fine cut and are ready to share it with the world. The only question now is how can you make sure everyone sees it. You should make sure that you have a solid social media rollout incorporated into your distribution plan as you prepare for promoting your documentary film.
There are currently six major social media platforms that you should know about when it comes to film promotion and marketing strategies: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. The first thing you need to know about these platforms is their audiences are all different.
As you create your film, you’ll need to determine the type of audience you’re trying to reach. Is your film for teenagers and young adults? Baby boomers? Men? Women? Rural or urban residents? Upper or lower class? All of these demographics can determine which platforms will help spread your message and create awareness the best.
Let’s break each of these platforms down:
Despite what you may have seen in the press lately, Facebook remains the world’s largest social media platform, with 2.91 billion active users. The platform is most popular with 35 to 44-year-olds, though about 70 percent of U.S. adults are on the platform. It also remains a powerhouse in social media marketing.
YouTube
YouTube also spans a large demographic and has over 2 billion active users. If you’re looking for a great “catch-all” platform for video content, YouTube is going to be the place to go. They’ve successfully shifted popularity among younger users and continue to be the king of video content.
Instagram, another member of the Meta family of apps, also brings in about 2 billion users and has a solid hold on the 18-34 year old demographic. The platform is currently trying to incorporate more video content with additions like Reels and eCommerce abilities but is still a great place to reach the Gen Z and Millennial market.
Twitter has maintained steady usage and growth over the years and has done a good job at also securing the younger 18 to 29-year-old market. The platform has cemented itself as the go-to platform for breaking news and live events, making it the perfect place to gather content for your film and then share your film after it’s completed.
Snapchat
Snapchat caps out at 319 million users and is huge with the younger crowd, with 15 to 25-year-olds being the largest audience. Their super short, ephemeral videos and trendy filters have become coveted by other platforms over the years and they remain the place for trendspotting.
TikTok
Finally, we have TikTok. Although it’s the newest platform on the market, it’s the fastest-growing, with a whopping 1 billion active users gained in the last few years. They have stolen Snapchat’s crown as the leading platform for teenagers and they are the most used platform per day with users spending an average of 89 minutes on it.
Creating the right content for the right platform
Now that you’ve figured out who your target audience is and where to reach them, you need to ensure that you’re posting the right type of content. Even though all these platforms support video, that doesn’t mean you can copy and paste the same movie trailer onto each one and expect your content to go viral.
For example, Twitter thrives on short, sweet text. They limit you to 280 characters for a reason. So yes, you may still upload a trailer of your documentary, but the text that goes with it should be simple and to the point. Facebook has no character limits, but the content should be engaging to get folks to stop scrolling and watch. Then you have to keep in mind their algorithm.
Social media algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a user’s feed based on relevancy instead of publish time. Social networks prioritize which content a user sees in their feed first by the likelihood that they’ll want to see it. What does that mean? For Facebook, that means if Jimmy watches videos 80 percent of the time he’s on Facebook, Facebook will largely populate his newsfeed with videos, whether it’s videos posted by friends, advertisements containing videos, or videos posted on pages he follows.
So if you want to promote your indie film on a Facebook page, you have to be sure to diversify the content you post, otherwise, you could be alienating entire audiences. If you post links 80 percent of the time on your page, Jimmy will likely never see your content even if he follows your page.
So how do you get around that? Just because you’re making a film doesn’t mean you need to just post trailers for it on social media:
- You can post a link to the film’s website.
- You could post behind-the-scenes photos from the film or promotional posters.
- You can also just post text talking about the film and its release date.
- And finally, you could go live on Facebook and do a question and answer session with fans or interview other people involved in making your film.
This ensures that your entire audience is reached.
Instagram is largely photo-centric and they’re trying to incorporate short, vertical videos. This is a great place to post behind-the-scenes photos; maybe protestors marching, your interview set up, or the red carpet on premiere day.
Snapchat and TikTok both rely on extremely short content. You’ll want to rework your trailer to have quick cuts and highlight the best parts of the film upfront to catch attention.
TikTok users have also become very creative with their videos and often use trends to get more views. Instead of directly advertising your film, you could use a relevant challenge and promote the film that way.
For example, let’s throw it back to the Ice Bucket Challenge. If you were doing a film on living with A-L-S, you could use the challenge to promote your film and also help raise money for your cause at the same time. And that brings us to our final point, taking advantage of the moment.
Nailing the perfect timing
If you’ve been incorporating social media into your documentary film from the beginning, then you’ll know how important it is to be timely with your content. For example, if you made a documentary on climate change, it would be wise to release the film around Earth Day when people are going to be online already talking about your subject matter.
You’ll also want to develop a hashtag for your film. It should be something unique that will be easily shareable and identifiable if it starts trending online. An easy way to help your film start trending is by using a tweetstorm. A tweetstorm is when you organize groups or individuals to tweet about a particular topic online during a set time frame. This tricks Twitter’s algorithm into thinking people are talking about something and will boost you in the trending topics.
As a documentary filmmaker, your best resources for doing this are going to be associated groups that are actively supporting or working on the cause you documented. For instance, if you were doing a documentary on mass shootings and gun violence prevention, you could look into pairing up with nonprofit organizations like March For Our Lives, Giffords, or the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. This is also the time to bring up that list of contacts gathered from social media who are also activists in the space you’re talking about.
You can also do premieres on social media platforms for your film if you’re distributing it yourself and aren’t doing a big theatrical release.
Both Facebook and YouTube allow you to schedule video premieres, which lets your followers know that your film will be available to watch at a certain time and date. You can then organize watch parties in the app, host a live-streamed discussion as the independent film premieres, take questions from the audience, and comment as you’re watching it live.
Wrapping it all up
Social media can be an incredible asset to your documentary and can be utilized in multiple ways.
- You can use social media to influence the story of your documentary by crafting the subject around a social media movement like #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo.
- You can use footage, images, and posts from social media to supplement your documentary interviews.
- You can promote a documentary film to your exact target audience by posting on the right social media platforms.
- And you can time your documentary’s release to align with conversations on social media to ensure that your film reaches the largest audience possible and potentially even goes viral.
Social media can end up being a critical factor in your documentary’s success, you just have to know how to use it. Here at San Francisco Film School, we’re here to help you on your filmmaking journey. Let’s talk.