Let’s think outside of digital parameters to define the term. Take a 14 year old girl. Her father asks her to take out the garbage every Thursday night. She moans and groans, even though she knows it’s coming every week, and she is absolutely aggravated that she has to leave her favorite TV episode or halt her texting to take out the trash.

Sure, Why Not Press The Button?
You’re an avid user of Twitter and you’re pushing 2,000 friends on Facebook. You check the box and watch while the application computes your social status. It comes back with a score of 35 out of 100 and offers $5 off your purchase if you share your new buy with friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Decisions, decisions. Do you share your purchase with everyone you know? That’s pretty annoying. If you only share it with your “shopping circle” on Google+, you get $1.50 off. Is it even worth it?

You press the button. The price for the garment drops $1.50 and your transaction is complete. You casually show your on-screen receipt as you pass by the employee at the door. He offers you a bag, and you accept. The clothing brand just paid $1.50 to blast your inner circle with some free marketing. Well, not free, but for a lot less than it would cost to reach the same amount of people with an ad in a magazine or an online ad campaign, and hopefully with more credibility.

It’s Already Begun…
For those of you tech types and marketers who are aggressively driving the engine into this future of purchasing, good for you. Klout, for example is making noise with their social status ranking, the Klout Score. If you go to Klout.com and connect your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, they’ll give you a score and attempt to tell you what topics you’re considered “influential” in. On top of that, they’re already working with businesses to identify top influencers to offer them perks. An interesting example is the promotion of Stephen King’s new book Mile 81, where based on your Klout score, readers receive a free e-book download in exchange for Tweeting out the promotion and the book.

Take this a step further in the future. Imagine every product, every restaurant and every event you’re interested in calculates your social score as you walk through the door. If you want to get in, you better tell your friends you’re at the club. If you want to get in without a door charge, you better have a high social status.

There Are Some Concerns…
There are a few major problems with the future of shopping, as it pertains to social status and buying, and why it may run into some serious push-back. Giving discounts as an incentive to share a purchase on Facebook promotes biased brand advertising (what many would consider social media garbage) jamming up your feed. If your Facebook feed is full of “I bought this and that”, you’re going to stop trusting your friends.

Another problem is the rich and influential get the price breaks while the poor and tech-illiterate don’t get the deal. It accentuates the disparity between the social class that buys every new iteration of the iPhone and the everyday cell phone user that has never heard of a data plan or downloaded a mobile app. But do these people shop at Banana Republic or Victoria Secret anyhow, and do they even exist in 2015? Sure they do. Only 27% of US mobile phones are currently smartphones (according to comScore’s 2010 Mobile Year In Review report). Globally, only 1 of 5 people own smartphones. But, what will that number look like in 2015 and what percentage of people will use their smartphones to browse and buy on a daily basis? Assuming smartphone growth continues at it’s current rapid pace, by 2015 there will be a new value put on each customer, and these brands (the smart ones, anyway) will achieve as much social publicity as they can get from their socially-savvy consumers.

The Truth Is…
If you aren’t carrying an expensive smart phone and aren’t spending time on the social web, people still care about you. You will simply become less and less valuable in the eyes of your favorite brands and will be penalized, paying top dollar for their products. It’s high school all over again. Lady Gaga gets paid thousands for an endorsed tweet. You get nothing…unless you’re one of the cool kids (based on your calculated online social ranking) of course.

This article was originally published in Philly Ad News

Turntable.fm originally started as Stickybits, a QR code scanning, geotagging, hodgepodge of a tech start up. They raised $2 million in initial funding. When Stickybits didn’t take off, they pivoted their business and transformed into Turntable.fm, using their remaining money and resources to launch the product into its current state.

How does it work?
Users can create or join rooms. In each room, there are five DJs at any one time and up to two hundred other users who sit and listen.  DJs can then search for songs through the Turntable system or upload their own. The rooms then cycle through the DJs one song at a time while the rest of the crowd listens and “awesomes” or “lames” the song. If a song gets enough “lames,” it gets skipped. The DJs have incentive to play popular songs in order to collect “awesomes,” which unlock bigger and better avatars. This gamification makes Turntable “fun and engaging” for users and gives it a leg up on the competition.

Why is Turntable special?
Because people are far better curators than any algorithm. This is social music. People love music and they love sharing it. There are still some major hurdles for them to overcome, but Turntable has that “it” factor that Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare all respectively have shared since their launch into the world of social media.

Record labels and their attitudes on copyright laws present the last major hurdle for Turntable. Currently, all of their music is licensed through Medianet, a digital content provider, employing the protection of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Turntable, just like Pandora, claims to be a “non-interactive radio service,” which allows it to work under the DMCA. They pay a flat fee to the music owners for each song played. But there are several grey areas within the DMCA that need to get ironed out before Turntable can fixate itself within the social media landscape.

Where is Turntable going?
In the Brolik office, Turntable.fm has replaced iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Hypem and the other numerous music services we previously used. Although Turntable is still rather young, it has some serious potential. We’ve set up a Brolik Turntable room for the office, and anyone can come in and play a song for themselves and our office via our wireless speakers (fair warning, we’re not always in there).

Once you start thinking about other businesses that can employ it, some real possibilities emerge. Imagine if you could go to your local bar and DJ with other regulars (and a few staff members to keep it organized). Or before you head off to the gym, you jump into your gym’s Turntable room and line up a playlist for the next hour. A few artists such as Ra Ra Riot and Talib Kweli have even started using Turntable.fm to showcase new songs and connect with fans first hand.

Turntable.fm is special. No other site has brought together social networking and music in such a successful blend. Let’s hope that the record companies see it as a beneficial tool that they can use and don’t thwart it before it can grow and evolve. At this point, all that we can do is sit back and watch this small start up begin to address the hurdles that still remain. But for now, we sit, wait, and keep listening.

Of all the reasons to pay for a degree in graphic design, I consider typesetting the most important. I’ve seen plenty of “amateur” designers who master Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, but fall short of creating professional layouts because the nuances of type are insanely difficult to just pick up.

On the web, huge numbers of “amateur” designers take that difficult task and make it more difficult by appealing to a fleeting, click-happy audience. The web reader is much more finicky and typically holds the attention span of a gnat. (Plus they’re tweeting on their phone while reading your website.) Without proper typesetting, you’re going to lose potential audience, readership or business.

So here are some factors to consider when typesetting for print or the web. I’ll start with some traditional rules that are overarching type rules, no matter where your type appears, then I’ll get into web-specific rules.

• Watch the Line Length
  Believe it or not, there is an optimal amount of characters per line where a reader’s brain stays interested, and their eyes don’t get fatigued. The perfect balance of reading and breaking (“breaking” being the mental pause you get as you go from the end of one line to the beginning of the next) will make your text easy to read, and a shorter line length will make your text initially feel accessible instead of overwhelming.

  How long is too long? The entire width of a webpage is ridiculously too long. Think of books and newspapers and how they break large blocks of text into columns. The typical, optimal line length is somewhere around 70-80 characters (including spaces), but really it’s a judgement call based on actually reading the text and seeing how easy or hard it is to read and digest.

• Pay Attention to Space (Between the Letters, the Words, and the Lines)
  Graphic designers pay attention to every detail about their typography. By controlling the space between each letter overall (called “tracking”), we can make text more digestible and easier to skim. By adjusting the space between each line of text (called “leading”), we can help the reader move quickly up and down long blocks of text. Even manually adjusting each letter’s relationship to the letters around it (called “kerning”), can create a surprisingly more solid message.

• Create Hierarchy
  Probably the most important factor when initially setting type is to create hierarchy. A designer needs his or her reader to know in less than one second what’s important to read first, where to look next, where to look after that, etc. Or maybe the reader knows what she’s looking for and needs to quickly find only that. Changing sizes, weights, placement, white space, line rules and color are just a few ways to start distinguishing one piece of content from another and controlling how your reader sees your information.

• Be Generous with White Space
  The final traditional typesetting “tip” I’ll go over is white space. White space is the space around blocks of text, images or any object on your page. It’s very important to frame your content with white space so that it feels easy to dive into and doesn’t overwhelm your reader.

Now let’s get into a few web-specific typesetting rules. This is the “new breed” of typography, and once you start looking around the Internet with this stuff in mind, you’ll see that not many web designers are doing this right.

• Plan for Skimmers
  On the web, a typical reader has a much shorter attention span than someone reading print material. Usually people are trying to quickly find the information they want amongst the sea of junk that is the Internet. So they skim.

  If we read every word of text as we search for the information we wanted, we’d never find anything. Therefore, when typesetting for the web, keep an F-shaped reading pattern in mind. Users read left to right and top to bottom (at least in the US). This means that skimmers will read the first couple words of a paragraph, and if it doesn’t look like it’s going to have the info they want, they’ll skip right down to the first couple words of the next paragraph.

  Keep your text short and broken up. I like to follow two simple guidelines. No more than two or three sentences per paragraph, and every paragraph gets a title. Of course, I can’t always stick to that exactly, but I certainly try.

• Typeset for Interaction
  Web readers know that the information they need isn’t necessarily on the page they’re currently looking at. Moving page to page in a non-linear fashion is one of the hugest advantages of the Internet in general. So readers are not only skimming your actual content, they’re skimming your links, too, in case there’s a better place for them to land.

  Make your hyperlinks stand out well, and make the copy count. Web readers skim by reading the first 11 characters of headlines and hyperlinks.

Next time you’re reading something online and it’s subconsciously slowing you down or tiring you out, think about factors like letter spacing, line spacing, and line length. When you look at your own website’s content and wonder who’s actually reading it, consider how easy it is to scan the information so your reader knows exactly what she’s going to read before she reads it.

Graphic designers train in typography for years, but most web designers don’t. I don’t think we need to get too snobby or artsy with our type on the web, because after all, it’s ever-changing, dynamically generated, and largely utilitarian. But, what good is your website if no one wants to read it? You might as well put your logo and a picture of your product over a couple paragraphs of Mandarin Chinese.

1. Create a memorable brand identity and a strong voice to go with it (sorry all you product-centric folks out there, you’re generic without it).

2. Create a Facebook fan page and experiment with Facebook ad campaigns. You might be surprised at how quickly your following will grow. Just make sure you’re staying active with quality content, offers, and conversations. Each Facebook fan is valuable.

3. Get your product in the hands of people who want you to succeed and will talk to everyone they know, even if they don’t pay you a cent.

4. Find someone willing to write about you, then give them a reason to. Warby Parker got their start this way.

5. Make product returns as easy for your customers as possible to eliminate risk for the customer. Piperlime does this really well, and so does Gilt.

6. Go beyond the “browse and buy” mentality and integrate social tools to allow your customers to ask their friends’ opinions, share their purchases, and “like” your brand. Reward them for doing it, too.

7. Keep your website and customer experience slick, simple and extremely usable.

8. Pay attention to analytics. Focus on improving every page/click and converting every visitor.

9. Focus on CRM integration as early on as possible to organize customer accounts, email subscribers, purchase history and analytics from one central location. A few years from now you’ll be very happy you did.

Do you have other tips to contribute? Comment…

Still, there is hesitation and sometimes denial from C-level executives concerning the value of social media marketing, especially within small businesses. Even with convincing arguments from marketing directors, you have to wonder why CFOs and CEOs are sitting and waiting for more financial proof before they carve out a line for social media in their budgets, as if ROI (a very specific financial measurement) is the only metric to quantify the value of social media spend. What about brand saturation, engagement, loyalty and reputation with consumers?

Even if your company doesn’t sell products online and a conversion is hard to define, there are interaction metrics such as “likes”, comments and increased web traffic. These metrics are still too vague, intangible and unsubstantial for some decision-makers who pull table scraps from other lines of an already tight marketing budget to get started with social media.

Let’s step back and talk about some of the benefits and capabilities of social media marketing:

• Social media provides a 24/7 customer service and risk management platform for brands to stay current on all compliments, complaints and more serious issues like product malfunctions
• Social media is an immediate and intimate platform to communicate with fans and customers
• Social media adds revenue through ecommerce applications such as a Facebook storefront
• Social media provides a great channel to test ideas, campaigns and applications and get feedback from loyal followers
• Social media increases brand buzz from advocates engaging with the brand and sharing their experiences
• Social media is no longer in an experimental phase and oozes potential for marketers to immediately connect (and stay connected) to their fans and consumers

Ford took an innovative approach to unveiling the much anticipated 2011 Ford Explorer on Facebook, breaking from the traditional car show premier. Ford’s sales are up almost 22% this year (Reuters) and whether or not you want to attribute some of the growth and success to social media initiatives, the numbers are impressive.

Are You Still Doubtful?
Burger King might have been doubtful, too, when they launched the “Sacrifice Ten Friends” Facebook campaign, which attracted 20,000 new users and resulted in 200,000 sacrificed friends. Read more about the campaign and other big brands using social media here.

You get the point, let’s move on.

Start With A Plan
Before calculating a value for your social media marketing, or even deciding what initiatives make sense, objectives must be clearly defined. What are you looking to accomplish with social media? Eli Gassert of the social engagement platform, Yunno, stresses, “To be successful with our applications and contests, we need a strong understanding of the client’s goals, expectations and current following. We need to know what would be a measure of success that would make them happy. 100 new fans? 1,000? 10,000? Or is it a different goal altogether?”

Be Patient, You Won’t Be An Overnight Success
There’s more you should know. Social media can forge long-term connections and loyalty with less up-front expense than traditional advertising, but it takes time, a lot of teamwork and intelligent creative content. It can take six months to a year to establish a presence and even longer to build an engaged, receptive following. As Megan Smith of Brownstone PR describes, “[brands] don’t understand that there needs to be a plan in place. It’s not as simple as just posting promotional items every once in a while. Brands that still question whether they should fully embrace social media as part of their marketing strategy don’t understand the value and how Twitter and Facebook really work.”

If you’re still on the fence, give it some time and thought, and maybe you’ll find your footing in social media when it makes sense. It’s fine to experiment at first to help you test content and messaging. When you’re ready to hit the ground running, start with clear objectives and a solid plan.

More reading:
Conversation Agent tells us about the social media learning curve
The 5 components of a complete social media program from iMediaConnection

Social Discounting
What if the more users “talk” about a product, the more the price drops? It’s happening… Uniqlo’s recent Twitter campaign is offering up to 60% off popular products before they’re released. The price drops in small increments as potential shoppers tweet about it. What’s next? Imagine online brand advocates paying for a product based on a scale of how much they “talk” about a product and how big their following is. In this case, the brand is paying for word-of-mouth from the happy consumer who will tell all of her friends.

Group and Location Buying
You’ve probably heard of Groupon, if only in the last few months. It’s because the system is taking online shoppers and coupon lovers by storm. Groupon sends daily coupons that offer enormous savings, but you’re limited to a single offer per day. The catch- the coupon only works if a certain buyer minimum is reached. Location-based group buying is also becoming popular. Check out GroupTabs, where bars and restaurants offer deals to customers if a certain number of Foursquare check-ins are reached. Bring your friends and save money (but only if you bring enough friends!)

Community Impact
Why not make a difference and increase your brand awareness and credibility at the same time? Many brands are connecting with charities and causes, even teaming up with multiple brands for more impact. Pepsi is making waves with their new campaign, Pepsi Refresh Project. American Express and Fox’s Glee are taking it a step further with their new Members Project campaign, where they go as far as to challenge viewers to make a difference in the community, starting with a social impact personality test. These brands are using a pull rather than push approach with their marketing that puts community first and brand marketing second.

There are fresh examples of these new-age consumer-driven campaigns and applications launching every day. Giving up control and risk taking is really a calculated strategy to spread awareness for brands and products.

We get calls about it all the time – a potential customer asks if we can land them on the first page of Google, perhaps thinking we can control the whims of Google’s search engine with a few lines of code or an incantation over a black cauldron. Invariably, they grow confused and indignant when asked what keywords they want to show up on the first page for, resisting recommendations that include visible changes to their website. They especially aren’t interested in adding pages full of keyword heavy content to the site; who has time to write that stuff anyway? What they really want is to get more website traffic. My best advice to these proactive entrepreneurs is to start a blog. Here’s why:

1) SEO – Nothing is better for a website’s SEO than adding lots of informative content that is industry or service related. Writing a short blog entry that explains some of your business’ finer points is a great way to attract those interested in your products or services. It’s amazing how effectively an article full of blog tips can attract people who search for “how to write a blog.” Similarly, a blog or website that becomes a wealth of information on Internet marketing techniques and practices will tend to attract people searching for a marketing expert. Why swim against the current of Google’s search algorithm when you can just play to its intent of providing users exactly what they’re looking for?

2) Let’s give ‘em something to talk about – Aside from search engine traffic (and those who type the URL straight into the address bar), a site’s most important metric is referral traffic, that is, users who click a link to your site from some other location. Whether it’s from your Facebook page or a link from a partner company’s website, your best tool for drawing these inbound clicks is to have content that your target audience wants to read/watch/listen to. So, start a blog, write an entry about using organic, garden fresh ingredients in your recipes and post a link on your restaurant’s Facebook fan page. At Brolik, we nearly doubled the number of referral clicks to our website with just this technique. They weren’t bounces either, the users stayed on our site for an average of several minutes because they were actually reading the article. Write really good stuff and you’ll find that other blog websites will use or link to the content, giving you even more avenues for referral clicks. What better target audience for our web and interactive focused content than those who regularly read a well known technology blog like Mashable or Engadget?

3) Blogging for PR- A corporate blog can be the most direct, open line of communication with customers and the rest of your industry. It’s long been the territory of a PR firm to help establish corporate credibility with careful placement of press releases and articles in well known industry periodicals and resources. Now you can take control of your own destiny, forming a professional reputation for being on top of your industry with the newest ideas and tools. A lot of trust and respect comes with being the authority on topics related to your industry so make sure people feel this security with your brand. Conversely, the openness of communication that creating a blog allows can be a great way to show a little personality. Where more formal means of communication may obligate you to write with a straight face, your blog gives an opportunity to open up and live a little, forming a more human relationship with your readers.

Big studios behind Hollywood blockbusters put at least half and sometimes as much as twice their production budgets into grandiose marketing campaigns, and they handle all publicity. It must be nice, with the national TV ads, billboards, bus wraps, online contests, and corporate sponsorships… you just lay back and watch people flock to theatres.

On the other end,  there’s the low-budget indie filmmaker out there trying to make some noise with a first feature length film. It’s their job to produce (maybe direct, too) then figure how to distribute and market the final product in order to make money back. Unlike a blockbuster, the distributor that picks up the film probably expects the indie filmmaker to do a good chunk of the marketing and publicity. These days you’re responsible for making your film and selling it too.

So what’s the message? Indie films, more so than blockbusters, should have a marketing and advertising budget that exceeds, doubles or even triples the production budget.

It’s okay if your budget won’t stretch across all major cities and media outlets. Focus in on your niche audience and target your marketing efforts. A smaller movie marketed heavily to a highly specific audience segment is called a nichebuster. (source: howstuffworks.com)

Who has $1,000,000 to market an indie film after making it for $1,000,000? Coming up with the first million is hard enough. The second million won’t come to fruition unless you make it a necessity. Production can begin once the first million is raised, so often times the marketing budget fundraising falls to the wayside. Adding a lackluster 10% to the production budget as a marketing line item is not a satisfactory replacement. It’s like building a house to sell and not telling anyone it exists or where it’s located. Nobody is going to buy your house, or your film. You need a strategy to reach an audience and make a profit. You also need partners, some great marketing ideas, and investor money.

There’s a major misconception that achieving distribution for indie films equals success. That’s not the case. Aside from the major studios and the handful of 2nd tier distributors worldwide, the rest are small companies often with minimal resources and no ability to recoup expenses. I’ve heard stories of small distributors picking up indie films, seizing all rights to the work, then pulling in a dismal return. Some approach the deal by telling the filmmaker it’s their responsibility to push sales. It leaves you wondering, “What do they bring to the table?”

Peter Broderick (film consultant) talks about the “New World” of indie film distribution that’s DIY (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/movies/17dargis.html). Profitable films will require a vast online community and innovative marketing to niche audiences, one friend and follower at a time. Here are some productive exercises to get you moving in the right direction:

1. Find a niche for your film
Decide who is going to watch your film. Even more importantly, find out who is going to become a fan, tell all their friends, and blast your film across the online social universe.

2. Research your audience’s behaviors and hobbies
Once you’ve established your niche(s), figure out what your target market watches on TV, what and where they eat, what products they buy, and what websites they frequent. How else are you going to know where to market the film?

My audience is… the techie couple that loves Apple products, surfs the web 2+ hours a day, loves ecommerce shopping and pays close attention to staying fit and eating healthy.

It’s a good start, but keep digging.

3. Specify a marketing budget
For our purposes, we’ll say it’s $1,000,000.

4. Figure out how people will buy/watch your film and how much it will cost
This is your conversion.  Figure out how many conversions you’ll need at the projected cost to make your money back. Investors will want to see this. For example, how many iTunes purchases at $2.99 will you need to make $1,000,000 back at a 70/30 revenue share? Upwards of 478,000 downloads. Sounds pretty daunting, right? If you break that up between theatrical ticket sales, Netflix/Blockbuster rentals, and DVD sales, maybe the number becomes a little less intimidating.

5. Choose your channels, break down your spending
With so many options, you really have to focus on finding your niche audience and getting the most reach for your budget. Blogging and social media initiatives have the most potential for generating buzz for the smallest payout, but they take discipline, a lot of great content, interest from your followers, and time to grow. Other mass media options call for a large initial buy-in for a big swooping impact, but the results may be spotty and less focused on exact geography and niche audience. A TV campaign, for example, can hit a massive audience, but it’s typically the most expensive option, it’s not highly targeted, and not built to engage your audience in two way conversation. Here’s a short list of options (by no means all) to get you started:

Brand Marketing – Website. mobile website, mobile app
Online Marketing – Search (text/image ads), online display, rich media, video ads, social ads (Facebook)
Traditional/Offline Marketing – Print (magazine and newspaper ads), outdoor (billboards, digital signage, bus wraps, etc), TV, Radio
Event/Sponsorship Marketing – Event screenings, event sponsorship (advertise to a built in audience)
PR/Content Marketing – Blogging, affiliate blogging (incentivize outside bloggers), SEO, social media (Facebook, Twitter)

6. Figure out who your advocates are and use them
This should be something you consider before making your film. It’s more than just what makes you different. You need to figure out how to use your talent and partners to become advocates, or spokespeople for your brand. In a conversation last year with a Philadelphia producer, Patricia Weisser, she explained how her interest in bringing Neil Patrick Harris to her film The Best and the Brightest, went beyond his acting talent. Neil brings an extensive online following (over 670,000 on Twitter – @actuallyNPH). Patricia added, “We really considered the Internet following of our entire cast during casting process. In fact, John Hodgman (PC from Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign) and Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun of the Dead) have an equally impressive number of followers. Other cast members including Amy Sedaris, Kate Mulgrew and Bridget Regan have quite a rabid fan base as well.”

Other Indie films may choose to enlist the talent of an athlete or entertainer to add a recognizable face and a niche following. Hiring star power is expensive but extremely attractive to an investor or distributor.

7. Target cross-promotional opportunities (think product placement)
If all of your characters drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, maybe you need to call Pabst early on and pitch your film as an exciting sponsorship opportunity. Pabst, in an effort to promote their Pabst Art brand agreed to sponsoring the recent Philadelphia premier of Runner, a short film by Expressway Productions.

Or think of it in reverse, as a co-branded partnership. Can you team up with a company that is releasing a new brand or product, and become a platform for their launch? It’s certainly worth investigating.

8. Create a contest or promotion
There are many online contest platforms and compliance marketers out there who specialize in helping you reach your online fan base with a contest or promotion. Realtime Media (a compliance marketing agency) and Yunno (an online contest engine) are two options in the Philadelphia region. Their solutions will integrate into your Facebook fan page and drive buzz once your followers start generating content, publishing their activity, and “liking” your contest. This can be a powerful vehicle for building your film community.

9. Your film should have a life beyond the screen
If it makes sense, consider creating an interactive website for your audience. This can be as simple as a forum or a social platform where audiences can delve deeper into the characters, interact with other fans, and view behind-the-scenes content.

Sometimes films will go as far as to create games to create excitement for a movie. “Inception”, the recent release starring Leonardo DiCaprio, launched a number of web games that start the audience on the mind-bending journey. Read more about the viral campaign here.

10. Consider what services and distribution outlets to utilize:

Eventful.com – Figure out where to screen your film based on audience demand

Film Baby – Expose and sell your work to a world-wide audience while keeping an average of 80% of the sales

CreateSpace – Self-publish then sell your work through amazon.com and other sales channels

FlickRocket – Set up a fully-branded online movie shop

iTunes – Become an iTunes content producer and open your film up to millions

Netflix – Submit your film to Netflix, DVD-by-mail and online streaming service

Super D – Have access to retail outlets across the globe once you’re a part of Super D’s catalog of independent films.

11. Establish goals and metrics
Once you’ve chosen your channels, figure out how you’ll measure success. What are your online and offline goals and what are you measurement tools? Choose metrics for measurement (ex. page views, paid views, downloads, tickets sold, website impressions, Facebook fans & likes, Twitter mentions) and then define success as it relates to each metric.

You will likely spend as many years in sales and marketing as you do planning and producing your film. If that turns your stomach, then be ready to pay a consultant or producer’s agent to do the work for you. Even then, you should be the film’s biggest advocate and publicist, and you’ll have to champion the film with all your might to make it a success.

You need to think like a blockbuster and grind like an indie. Assume you’re going to have to do it yourself but utilize as many partners as you can in the process. It’s going to take some smarts, some serious nichebusting and probably a crazy stunt or two.

More Reading:

Paranormal Activity: Low budget Film Marketing
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=139588

Warner Bros. viral tactics:
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/learn-viral-marketing-from-warner-bros21133.html

Macgruber: Mobile/App marketing for the film
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/6087.html

Digital Ditribution: how to get your film on iTunes:
http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-get-your-indie-film-on-itunes.html

Article about hybrid distribution
http://deadharvey.blogspot.com/2010/04/getting-your-film-distributed-talk-with.html

Truly understanding your film
https://www.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1005

iTunes music store and the indie artist
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/35012.html?wlc=128121120

Foursquare is a relatively new social networking “game” based on exploring your city. It’s an application on the web, but it’s also available for cellphones, with apps for smartphones and touchphones. When you go somewhere, you “check-in” to that location, whether it’s a park, a restaurant, a bar, your office or a store in the mall. Checking in gets you points, and checking in to new locations or adding locations to Foursquare’s database gets you even more points. You compete with your friends to see who gets the most points weekly. In addition, users earn “badges” for achieving different goals and can add location-based “tips” and “to-dos” that others can see. Other users can complete a “to-do” and check it off as “done” for their account.

All of that is fun, and the rewards-based premise of the game is really smart, but that’s all meaningless to a business owner or even a busy person. It seems like it’s all a game and you could just write it off as such. But when Foursquare’s user base grows as quickly as it has, and when so many people all over the world are using it, you need to pay attention. Remember back when you first heard about Twitter but didn’t know if you should pay attention or not? Consider Twitter hindsight and look forward to Foursquare. The reason you need to pay attention to Foursquare is the newest part of the game, a feature that will most likely get developed out even more: Locations, specifically restaurants and stores, can register specials and sales with Foursquare. When a user is at a location, she can view the specials there. When a user is at another location that’s near a location with specials, Foursquare will suggest to stop by the location with the specials. This way, restaurants and stores can market themselves through the game. Everyone playing wants to get points, so they’re already in an ideal mindset to come and spend money at your establishment. There’s also the intangible brand loyalty when you prove that you know and respect their game, or more importantly, their way of life.

So you do need to pay attention to trendy social networking services, especially if you’re a business owner. There’s a marketing sweet spot somewhere in a service’s development where we see a growing user base and a small amount of businesses that understand the best ways to leverage the service. Exploit that sweet spot before a service is mandatory for marketing. It takes some paying attention to what’s out there. And most of what you pay attention to won’t help you one bit. But when you find one that pays off, invest your time.

In a few months, when there are more businesses taking advantage of Foursquare specials, or even when Foursquare pulls from some sort of database to automatically get specials and sales info, you won’t have the opportunity you have now. Take advantage of the early knowledge, and continue to give new services a fair assessment when it comes to marketing your business. After all, these social networking companies have to make money somehow, and that somehow will almost always have something to do with other businesses paying to capitalize on their userbase and their data. It’s the social part of these services that’s important, not what you actually do while you use them.

http://foursquare.com

http://foursquare.com/businesses/