Friday, January 31, 2014

Twitter and film promotion



               Twitter is used these days for tons of different promotions. Actors, singers, athletes, and different public figures use their Twitter accounts to connect with their audience and fans. One thing I’ve noticed Twitter has been used for in a successful way would be the use of advertising for entertainment purposes, my favorite being for film or television.

               There’s tons of different ways to use Twitter for promotion or advertising. Brands and companies have someone on their Twitter account all day waiting for a clever tweet to come to mind to grab the spotlight. Until recently, I thought it was just a means of people expressing their feelings in a limited amount of space. This past summer my mind was changed when I saw a retweet regarding one of my favorite film franchises releasing their new trailer online. “EXCLUSIVE: Catching Fire trailer” is all I read before jumping up and down for joy as I waited for the link to take me to the exciting new trailer of a film I had been all too excited for. As I continued to read I realized they had released the trailer on Twitter instead of premiering it at an awards show like most films do.

photo courtesy of @hungergamesnet


               Above is a recent tweet from after the film had been released to promote a new trailer. I’ve come to notice that a lot of free publicity has come for film franchises and television shows via Twitter. And what better way to gain publicity other than for free?

               Another example of this is a fairly new web series called “The Walking Tedd” which I heard about through Twitter and Facebook. Word of mouth came in handy when my cousin was tweeting about this new show needing a certain amount of donations to get the ball rolling on production. Of course I retweeted to help the cause. Now, the web show is up and running with followers and fans.



Photo courtesy of @IamWalkingTedd

               Pretty neat. Not only was this show needing money just for production, they had no means of advertising to say the least. Yet here they are with fans telling their followers to check it out.

I also found this article recently about how to promote your film before you go to a film festival. It’s all about using social media and word of mouth through bloggers and Twitter. The use of this microblog has surely changed the face of promotion and advertising for a lot of industries. We can expect a lot out of this little app we carry in our phones in the next few years.

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