Understand How to Self Promote the Right Way for Your Film

Self Promotion the Right Away

Have you been in any of the below situations with your content you share online?

People like the trailer you posted but you are surprised by how few people actually clicked Like or even watched it. 

People like the behind the scenes director chair you posted but no one outside of your friends and family left a comment. 

People liked the red carpet photo of an event most people have never heard of, but you’re surprised it wasn’t so celebrated. 

You know why?

People don’t care.

That sounds harsh, but it's not because they just don’t care about your life and accomplishments and all the things you are proud of.

It’s because you have not given them a reason to care.

• It’s because you haven't included enough content to make your trailer feel genuine and informative, rather than just promotional and spammy.

• It’s because you haven’t posted enough so that your red carpet or film festival picture doesn't feel braggy. 

• It’s because you haven’t posted enough so that you don’t seem egotistic with your director's chair. 

Self promotion should not be seen as promoting the stuff you have achieved, it is promoting the hard work you put in daily towards your achievements. So that when you do post about your achievements we all celebrate because we know how hard you worked to get there and we know it was all well earned. 

Best of all, we want to share in your success. 

So How Do You Self Promote?

The best way to look at this is like an “influencer”, but don’t worry, I am not suggesting you should become an influencer. What do influencers do? They post daily, or at least consistently. If this seems overwhelming to you or you don’t know where to start, this is how I would look at it.

First, choose a platform. At the moment my favorite platform is LinkedIn, because it is the platform of professionals and it is well suited for sharing short form & long form written content, as well as for sharing photos and videos. Some of the best audiences for your film or show are the people already working in your field. 

Who do you think watches the most TV shows and movies? The people making tv shows and movies. 

Who do you think shares the most about tv shows and movies they are watching? The people making tv shows and movies.

So if you are working on getting a show or film together, and then you spend lots of time talking about the process and building your audience through self promotion, that audience is very likely to be the one to share it the most amongst their network. 

If I were starting out right now, I would use LinkedIn and I would post five days a week(but choose a schedule that you can stick with). I would also give myself a framework to start with, until I could figure out the things that are most interesting to me to talk about. For now, let's look at the example I made. 

The Monday to Friday posting framework: 

• Share what you are working on

• Share what you are learning

• Share what is working

• Share what is failing

• Share collaborating

How would that look practically? 

• I am currently working on writing my next feature film. (Workin on)

• I've noticed that Gen Z is shifting away from traditional viewing habits such as streaming. I'm now considering how my next film, aimed at this demographic, can effectively engage with their evolving preferences. (Something I have learned)

• When I share snippets of my short film as Shorts in YouTube it gets a lot of traction and drives people to my YouTube channel to watch the film. (An idea that is working)

• I am failing to find enough financing from investors because I want to go straight to AVOD and the financiers I am speaking with are having trouble understanding how that could bring an ROI. (Something I am failing at.)

• Last week I had a meeting with an owner of a bar and she offered to let me film my movie in it without even asking for money. So now I'm looking to collaborate with more small business owners. (Collaborating)

The above not only shares your process, but people can connect to it emotionally and they can learn from it. The best about all of it, you have been self promoting without anyone feeling like you are promoting yourself. 

If you do that every week then you will build an authentic audience that will be thrilled to watch the trailer of your film when you release it and will share it. 

They will celebrate when you go to a film festival with your film. 

They will congratulate you when you show that behind the scenes photo of the directors chair because you worked hard to get there. We SAW you work hard to get there. 

What Happens When You Self Promote?

You build an audience.

Many people don't realize that that is what they are doing. You are building an audience. From the outside point of view it may look like you are just growing followers, but instead think of it as your audience.

So how does your self promotion also help them? What do audiences want? They want to feel emotions and they want to learn. So you need to make sure your self promotion provides a universal emotion. 

You have a photo of your computer screen that says ACT 1 but no other text because you have hit a writer's block before even starting. 

I know that emotion, I have been there too!

Oh, you have a few steps of how to overcome writer's block before even beginning. 

This is so useful, I am in that situation now and this will help me get out of it. 

The simplest way to build this audience is by posting about your journey. I know it feels like people won’t care, and at first they may not. I know at first you may feel like you are stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what to post about. Soon you will find your footing and those fears of worry will go away.

I did this as a test myself. I started posting daily on LinkedIn in October 2023. During the first month I was gaining on average 1-2 new followers a day. Pretty much nothing for writing EVERY single day for a month. November was a little better but slow, and December the same thing. By January, after 90 days is when I felt like it may not be worth the stumbling. 90 days writing every day and maybe gaining a total of 300 followers feels like the amount of effort put in his not worth the payoff. Then it starts to tip and change. 

2024

October: Avg. 1-2 new followers a day

November: Avg. 4 new followers a day

December: Avg. 5 new followers a day

2025

January: Avg. 10 new followers a day

February: Avg. 22 new followers a day

March: Avg. 35 new followers a day

April: Avg. 47 new followers a day

In the course of a year I will go from 1,065 followers when I started to at least 10,000 followers. If I were to release a movie trailer of a film I had been working on and talking about during that time, I would have a pretty solid audience to look at it.

If I do that for two years what happens? Does it double? Maybe even triple.

What about three years?

That is your growing audience that will view it on YouTube and earn you ad sharing revenue, or will watch it on some other AVOD or SVOD service. This helps you earn a revenue and eventually a living income off of your work.

You are in this filmmaking journey for the long haul. There is no greater way to get a studio or producer or financiers attention than by getting a bunch of other people's attention online first.

Instead of knocking on doors, for producers, productions companies, or financiers. Share your journey, create your content, and build your audience - those same people behind those doors will come knocking at your door instead.

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