15 Feb Consumer Insights Blog 2: Online Social Media Behavior

The social media space is a space that I am fascinated with because of the power it gives to independent filmmakers wanting to self-promote their own material. Before social media, we relied purely on screenings and film festivals, in order to gain an audience. Now, anyone can post a YouTube video and it has the possibility of going viral, accessing millions of users locally and around the world.

Unfortunately, because it is so easy to post material on YouTube and Facebook, it is also easy for your material to become lost amongst the millions of other user content. After reading a few articles about how to effectively use social media for film promotion, I came upon a few tips that I found useful.

Post often and post consistently. By posting often and making sure you tag keywords relevant to your content, I find that my content becomes more searchable. I suppose the official terminology is, “improving your SEO”. Search engine optimization.

By posting consistently, you give your audience a reason to return regularly to your site. I liken this to a TV show. People know to come back and watch on Tuesdays because they know that on Tuesday there will be new material.

On Facebook itself and my website, I rely on Google Analytics to tell me how much traffic comes to my site. I can also delve deeper to see which articles on my site and what sources drove them to the site. On my site for example, about 60% of the people come from links on Facebook. This tells me that my Facebook promotional initiatives are working, more or less. Unfortunately, how to convert these users to potential customers has been something I am still experimenting with.

Some questions I would like to know:

1. Which channel is most effective in getting loyal fans? I classify loyal fans as people who regularly check the Moth to Flame site or social media channels without being prompted to.
2. What time of day do people usually use their social media channels to get media content? I have been slowly experimenting with this by posting material at different times of the day. I discovered that around lunch time is when the number of people who watch my videos significantly increase.I use YouTube’s built in analytics to get this information. In addition, I also found that even with a new link, people do not tend to go on social media sites on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This makes sense if we take into account that these are the days people spend time away from their computers.
3. What do people looking for a videographer search for? I use ad words to help me with this information. I look for what people who go on moth to flame search for before they land on my page. I try to include these key words into tags on my blogs and videos, in hopes that this will help increase my SEO.
4. What kind of content interests people? This is a conundrum. What people find is funny or interesting or are willing to pass around seems to be pretty sporadic. Sometimes I produce content that I think will be a huge hit, but it gets less hits than something else that I did in 1 hour without much thought involved. I am talking specifically about my two videos: “Gettin’ My MBA” and “Teach Magee How to Dougie”. Though “Teach Magee How to Dougie” was something I put together within a few hours for fun, it got the most positive responses from the audience.

Social media is especially effective for those who combine it with videos. I noticed that a lot of small businesses have turned to short videos to post on their websites. The biggest reason why videos are effective is because people like content that requires as little brain processing as possible. Reading content for example can be more difficult to engage with. Video content, if done properly, can be very engaging and stimulating.

People want an experience. Video does a more effective job accomplishing this. Videos can appeal to both visual and audio sensory, which is different from any other form of medium. Videos also give the general audience a chance to see the person talking to them. I find that candid videos where people talk to their audience about something they use or want to promote are extremely effective.

Below are some videos I do that I classify as  “social media” videos:

Here are some other good articles that are useful.

http://mashable.com/2010/11/09/become-youtube-sensation/
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http://www.b2bbloggers.com/blog/seven-characteristics-of-companies-effectively-using-social-media/