Crowdstagram: Instagram for Crowdfunding an Independent Film
[UPDATED: August, 2016]
As filmmakers, we know that it’s pretty much mandatory to have and be active on Facebook and Twitter. And even though there are dozens of other platforms, we should pick and choose a few of the ones we can make the most out of in marketing our films and ourselves. Depending on the audience for your film, you may decide to pin to your heart’s content on Pinterest, cater to the modern-age attention span with Snapchats, or even get hyper local with Yik Yak.
Then there’s Instagram.
While all those others are your choice, as a filmmaker, you should certainly be making the most of your Instagram as much as you do your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is especially true with regard to crowdfunding an indie film, and here’s a quick guide to get you started using your Instagram for your crowdfunding efforts.
Instagram your incentives. This is probably the easiest way to try and drive actual funding to your campaign. The whole point of Instagram is to post images for people to “like” and comment on, and if you’ve got some cool rewards on offer, you can snap some pics and post them. But sometimes a simple image alone won’t speak enough words to make someone actually buy that perk or reward, so use apps like InstaSize and Studio to add a bit more design to those images and create memes to entice your followers to not only show they like the image, but that they like it enough to contribute to your campaign for it.
You can also use Layout to create a single image from multiple pictures (great for flash sales on incentives), and Boomerang to create fun GIFs to spice up your outreach even more.
Shoot video updates. Are you doing a Reddit AMA? Did you just land an actor that everyone knows? Instragram’s video feature is awesome for shooting very quick updates up to the one-minute maximum for these kinds of events, announcements, and milestones. It’s also an opportunity for you to get out from behind the camera and get personal with your followers and contributors.
Put together a 15-second Instatrailer. If you’re crowdfunding for postproduction funds and have some footage of the film, you can cut together quite a compelling minute-long trailer for the film. Cut a few of them, since content is king and campaigning can be long. For great examples of Instatrailers, check out what @FilmShortage has been doing with the films they feature, like Kevan Funk’s Destroyer.
Instaminiseries. I wish I could take credit for this awesome amalgam, but it’s really from a pair of hip ladies who are doing some really cool and innovative stuff with their Instagram account. They’re paying homage to the silent films of Chaplin and Keaton with a fresh twist in Silent Brooklyn. Now, they’re not crowdfunding per se, but if they were, I’m sure they’d still be producing free content for folks to view while they raise funds for a future Instaminiseries.
And most recently, there’s…
Instagram Stories. Snapchat started the Internet craze of recording your life as it unfolds and revolutionized the way we take a selfie with its various filters. Well, Instagram now has roughly the exact same feature with a slightly more intuitive interface –– Instagram Stories. The real benefit is that you don’t have to migrate your Instagram audience to a whole new platform; anyone following you can watch your Instagram stories. This new feature is best used for realtime and more frequent updates than you would regularly make, and it doesn’t accumulate in your feed. Instagram stories are completely separate from what you would regularly post.
Now, there’s a few basic things to keep in mind when using Instagram:
Know the right hashtags. One cool thing about Instagram — well, there are a lot of cool things about Instagram — is that the more tags you use, the wider reach you have, versus Twitter, where putting more than two tags can statistically limit your organic reach. Instagram allows you to use up to thirty tags, so your potential reach far surpasses that of Facebook and Twitter. The only caveat? You need to know the right tags to use. Foodies, for instance, love using a ton of tags, but there’s a difference between “#eeeeeats” and “#eeeeeeeats,” and now no one even uses the right one anymore. So be sure to use the right one the first time so it always pops up as a suggestion in your subsequent film posts.
Documentary filmmakers, you have the added advantage of not only tapping into the #indiefilm community on Instagram, but also an audience interested in the subject of your documentary, so be doubly sure to discover all the right tags early on so you can establish yourself as a subject matter expert and establish your Instagram account as a resource for learning more about that subject.
Direct people to “click the link in the bio.” One of the things I actually really love about Instagram is that it doesn’t allow links except in your bio. That means if you want someone to check out your actual crowdfunding campaign, you have to direct them to the “link in my bio” with each and every post. And they will take that extra step, if your photo is worth the click.
And during a crowdfunding campaign, that means putting the campaign’s short link as your website, because when you’re crowdfunding an indie film, that’s the site that matters most for the duration of the campaign.
Remember: It’s promotion, not spamotion. Be professional with your promotion and remember that Instagram is about sharing images and video that matter, and unlike Twitter or Facebook, posting once is enough, as long as what you post showcases the best of what’s around. Talent trumps all else on Instagram; if every image you post isn’t the best example of your skills as a filmmaker and the potential this particular film you’re crowdfunding possesses, all the promotion in the world probably won’t yield the funds you need to make it.
Now that you’ve got this brief guide to Instagram at your fingertips, go out there and start snapping shots, hashtagging #cinematography and other tags, and building up your following so you’ve got a captive audience once you start crowdfunding your next indie film.
