Facebook for Filmmakers

After years of getting politely pressured by friends, I finally joined Facebook. (I wanted to get in on the username "landgrab" but unfortunately your account had to have been started before they announced they would be giving away usernames. Oh well, facebook.com/johnott was already taken.)

There are already plenty people with a head start on me with using Facebook for promoting films. I just came across this article by James Latham:

One successful indie filmmaker I know has two Facebook pages: a personal profile and another for his production company; each page connects to the pages of about 1,000 other people and numerous groups on the site. On his personal profile page he often posts comments and other material (like photos), and dialogues with people on various topics usually related to his work. His company page has descriptive info about the company and his films including photos, trailers, links to publicity articles, TV and festival screening info, and a list of awards he has won. From the company page, he sends invitations for screenings and other events to people who are on his page (these messages automatically go to both their pages and email accounts), and encourages them to invite their friends.

Since I joined, I started playing with 'Pages.' (Here's a link to create a facebook page.)

My Three Pages

I have a Page for me personally, for Making the Movie and for Tastes Funny. (Feel free, dear readers, to become a fan.)

I've decided for making an individual page for each film for a number of reasons. First, I'd rather build fans of me and my individual websites than a particular film, so the momentum can carry long after I'm done with a film. Also, if you're a fan of a particular film, you're automatically a fan of the filmmaker, so it seems redundant.

The argument against this is that, in the facebook system, you can recommend to people that they become a fan of a particular thing (as represented by a Page). So if someone wants to recommend your film, in particular, to their friend, without a page, they can't. I don't imagine there's a one-size-fits-all answer.

Feeding from Other Sites

After some noodling, I managed to get the posts here from Making the Movie posting to the Making the Movie Facebook Page (hint: use 'Notes') and my personal Twitter stream posting to the John Ott page (hint: use Friendfeed's RSS of your Twitter if you're already using the Twitter app on your private page). Many sites like Twitter, Flickr and others offer pre-made apps (or 'applications' - installable facebook-modifying widgets) that make it very easy to add a stream of your information from that site. Notes will let you take an RSS feed and embed it in a facebook Page. Go to Applications > Notes and look for a little link on the righthand sidebar that says 'Import a blog >>'. If pasting the URL doesn't work, then determine the exact feed address or use Feedburner to create (or 'burn') a feed and then paste that feed address into where it says 'Web URL'.

Types of Message

I have yet to play around with video, but from what I've been reading, video is among the most popular of all Facebook messages. (There is a dizzying typology of Facebook messages: status, notes, links, comments...) As I do post videos, I'll come back here and let you know if it's worth going through Facebook, or if you're better off linking to a YouTube clip (or Vimeo or Blip.tv etc.).

The key thing for a filmmaker is the metrics (who is watching, where are they watching and how often are they watching) and the ability to insert ads -- sites that are built exclusively for video will always have an advantage in these areas over facebook, unless facebook buys one of them.

To MySpace or not to MySpace?

While MySpace is in decline, it still skews younger and more music-oriented than facebook. If your movie is in that demographic, you'd be a fool to ignore it.

OTHER FILMMAKERS TALK ABOUT USING FACEBOOK:
lmcnelly on using Facebook to promote his #2wkfilm Blanc de Blanc
Brian Spaeth on using facebook and MySpace to promote his film Who Shot Mamba?