Social media is here to stay, and as creatives, I feel we should make peace with that fact instead of going up the river trying to figure out “how to make it” without using these, very often, free tools that the Internet and social media offer. I know that for a lot of us in the arts it’s hard to find the time or open up to conversations and relationships online. Over the years I have e-met a lot of people I worked with that I never met in person. It’s doable, it’s workable, and it’s just like any other working relationship you may have with people offline.
I don’t believe that one can market and promote books or films successfully today without having a strong online following and strong presence. Look at ‘Deadpool’s campaign. The filmmakers had all the cards in their hands: a star attached to a project, a superhero movie, huge budget, but still, spend a lot of marketing money on social media and there was a good reason for that. They needed to make sure that people were going to go to the cinema and watch their movie and in order to reach their audience, they needed to be present on platforms where their target audience was hanging out.
If you are an indie author or a filmmaker, how else do you expect people to discover your work? I know there are festivals and awards, but there are also hundreds and thousands of other amazingly creative people aspiring for the same awards and submitting their works to the same festivals. What if your work is not picked up for screenings or prizes? Do you give up? How do you find an audience if traditional media don’t know about you?
For any creator having the significant following online or a substantial number of subscribers to their newsletter can mean attracting agents, managers and other decisions makers who can take their work to another level. Of course, there must be some effort put in to make this work visible. I know it’s not easy, but in a way, it’s also fun, and it’s creative and stretches your comfort zone and boundaries.
At the moment my challenge to myself is to write one blog a day for 30 days. I started on June 11., 2018 and I’m planning to write my last blog for this challenge on July 10., 2018. I have already scheduled for my next challenge that will start on July 11., 2018 and will last until the end of the summer. Both challenges are new to me; both mean that I have to go out of my comfort zone, both stretch my creativity but both will also help me to become better at my craft, and help me to polish my skills. So in my eyes, it is a win-win situation.
We are creative people and have multi-channel platforms at our disposal so let’s use those platforms in ways that could help us grow our exposure and enhance our creativity to make some impact.
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