This 5-step guide provides strategies for building engaged audiences on social media for the entertainment industry. The steps are: 1) Choose social media channels based on objectives and audience; 2) Harness fan power through crowdfunding, crowd-sourcing ideas, and demonstrating demand; 3) Get people engaged by sharing your process, celebrating peers, and connecting fans; 4) Plan a launch campaign by assembling a social media team and prepping content and surprises; 5) Go live for the showtime with strategies like Insta-premieres, Snapchat stories, in-person fan interactions, and live social video. The guide offers specific tools and tactics for each step.

1. Building Engaged
Audiences on Social Media
A Step-by-Step Guide for the Entertainment Industry
Editorial Manager, Owned Media
@dgodsall
David Godsall

2. • Step 1: Choose your channels
• Step 2: Harness your #fanpower
• Step 3: Get people engaged
• Step 4: Plan your launch campaign
• Step 5: Showtime!
5 steps to social media success

3. Step 1:
Choose
your
channels

4. What are you trying to accomplish?
To choose the right social media channels, first you need establish your
objectives and what you’re willing to invest to achieve them. Here are some
questions to get you started:
• Who is the target audience for your project? (Think both geographically and
demographically.)
• How much time do you have to devote to managing your social efforts?
• Do you plan to bolster the reach of your messages with paid social or will you be
relying on organic reach?
• Is someone on your team going to be dedicated to managing social media, or are
day-to-day responsibilities going to be divided among a group of people?

5. • 58% of the entire global adult
population is on Facebook
• 19% of entire global adult
population is on Twitter
• 21% of the entire global adult
population is on Instagram
• Globally, Snapchat has the most
users aged 16-24 (57%)
• Facebook has the most users
aged 55-64 (10.6%)
Who’s on what?

6. Top apps

7. • Thirteen of the top 15 fastest-
growing apps in the social
media and messaging
category globally have evolved
into multi-use mobile-social
content platforms that offer
chat as a feature.
• Chat app and social
networking app feature sets
are converging.
The fastest-growing apps

8. Social is video

9. • 8 billion videos are viewed on Facebook daily
• Facebook views are aided significantly by autoplay
Facebook vs. YouTube
2013 - 2015

10. Charlotte Zoller, Director of Social Media,
Pitchfork
“You can’t survive solely on YouTube anymore
because if you have the content, you have to go
where your viewers are. This is especially true for
Facebook right now, as they tweaked the algorithm
to no longer favor YouTube video links anymore.”

11. • 65% of Facebook’s ~4 billion daily video
views come from mobile
• In Q2 of 2015, the average YouTube session
on mobile was 40 minutes
• 36% of people watch long-form videos via
mobile every day
• 50% of YouTube views are on mobile
• 90% of Twitter video views are on mobile
All content is mobile content

12. Video consumption takes on new forms with Snapchat’s
disappearing video and the new looksey playfulness.
The fragmentation of social video

13. Tools and tactics
1. Search streams
Set up search streams in Hootsuite to track keywords or hashtags on Twitter or Instagram that
relate to your project. For example: the keywords “horror movies” or the hashtag “#indiefilm.”
2. Twitter lists
Create a Twitter list of all the accounts you’d like to keep tabs on. For example, a list of influencers
or other artists you’d like to collaborate with.
3. Get started with social ads
A little money can go a long way when advertising on social networks, thanks to highly specific
targeting capabilities. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, for example, allow you to set targeting
parameters for your ads based on location, demographics, behavior, or interests.

14. Step 2:
Harness
your
#fanpower

15. Crowdfunding
• More than 40,000 film projects have
been funded on Indiegogo since the
site’s 2008 launch at the Sundance Film
Festival.
• Facebook is the most effective channel
for driving traffic to crowdfunding sites
because of its video-friendly algorithm.
• Your chances of crowdfunding success
are far greater if you’ve built your social
media audience in advance.

16. Crowd-sourcing ideas
Twitter enables you to invite whoever
you want, so follow people inspire
you.
Leverage Instagram’s high
engagement rates to test your ideas
and get feedback.
Pinterest enables creatives to curate
and share inspiration.
Treat social media like a dinner-
party—the more interesting the
guest list, the better the
conversation.

17. -Stephen Hawking
“Mankind's greatest achievements have come
about by talking, and its greatest failures by not
talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our
greatest hopes could become reality in the
future. With the technology at our disposal, the
possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is
make sure we keep talking.”

18. Demonstrating demand
Anyone—from
independent
filmmakers or large
studios to individual
fans—can set up an
event on TUGG,
requesting a film be
brought to a local
theater near them.

19. Finding talent
• Straight Kill Films held an
online casting call for its
upcoming film.
• Anyone could submit an
audition via YouTube.
• Actors used Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram
to promote their auditions
using the hashtag
#StraightKillAuditions.
• The campaign resulted in
almost 1,000 auditions.

20. Tools and tactics
1. Search streams
Set up streams for any specific hashtags you use during your crowdsourcing efforts and
engage with anyone supporting your campaign .
2. Link shorteners
Shorten the URL to your crowdfunding page (Ow.ly and Bit.ly are common services) and
use the shortened link in all of your social media posts.
3. Analytics
Create weekly reports using Hootsuite Analytics to track the number of clicks your link is
getting, and the activity around your hashtag.

21. Step 3: Get people engaged

22. Share your process
• Inviting fans behind the
scenes Helps build
excitement.
• Parts of your process
that may seem
mundane to you and
your fellow pros, but
your audience will love
any chance to peek
behind the curtain.

23. Celebrate your peers
• A strictly self-promotional social
strategy has limited reach.
• Fans want to connect with fellow fans.
• Sharing the work that inspires you
keeps your community engaged while
your next project is still in progress.

24. Connect your fans
• Hosting a regular chat creates a venue for
fans to connect.
• You’ll need a clever hashtag. Seed and
Spark uses #filmcurious, for example.
• Ask your followers to submit any
questions using the hashtag.
• RTs amplify the conversation, enabling
new fans to discover you and your
projects.
• Quora and Reddit are both great social
networks for hosting Q&A sessions.

25. Tools and tactics
1. Consistent content:
Create one high-value video per week, such as longer tutorials or progress videos, and
upload to YouTube or Facebook.
2. Incentivize sharing:
Offer to release something desirable—a trailer, sneak peek, or a bonus clip—after your post
gets a certain number of RTs, likes, or shares.
3. Build your list:
Run a sweepstakes contest for free using Hootsuite Campaigns. Your audience will be
entered to win in exchange for their contact information, which you can then use promote
your project via email.

26. Step 4: Plan
your launch
campaign

27. Assemble your social team
• Assign people to specific tasks, such as
replying to @mentions on Twitter or
comments on Facebook.
• Create a schedule for who will be handling
social on a daily (or hourly) basis.
• Divide channels between team members.

28. Get your content ready
• Your premier day content calendar
should contain your channel-by-
channel and hour-by-hour plan.
• Make sure all your visual assets are
created and approved in advance.
• Schedule messages in Hootsuite
ahead of premiere day so your team
can focus on real-time opportunities.

29. Prep a premiere-day surprise
To promote Unfriended, a “found footage”
horror film centered around the online
experiences of a group of high school students,
a campaign was launched across social media
including Facebook and Kik Messenger.
The audience was able
to have one-on-one
conversations with the
killer, receiving chilling
messages from her on
both platforms.

30. Tools and tactics
1. Teams
Use the Teams functionality within Hootsuite to delegate tasks to other people within one
shared platform, without sharing all of the passwords to your social networks.
2. Google Analytics
Setting up Google Analytics will help you track the number of visitors to your website via
social, and which networks that traffic came from.
3. Influencers
Prepare a list of media and other influential people in your field so you can proactively
engage on social and amplify relevant messages.

31. Step 5:
Showtime

32. Insta-premiere
• Your most passionate fans are
likely those following you on
Instagram—reward them with
something surprising.
• Try revealing any big
announcements in a photo-by-
photo showcase.

33. Lights, camera, Snap!
“It’s real-time
movie-making,
one clip at a time.”
-Casey Neistat,
Snapchat Stories Star

34. In the room where it happens
Not everyone gets in on
opening night!
• Ahead of every performance,
members of the Hamilton cast put
on a short, unique show for fans
waiting in line for a chance to get a
$10 last-minute ticket.
• The videos are shared on YouTube
and promoted on Twitter with the
hashtag #Ham4Ham.
• The most popular videos have
>200K views

35. Real-time social video
• Periscope and Meerkat are great channels
for sharing red carpet moments.
• By sharing live, real-world experiences via
these social video channels, you connect
your online and in-person audiences.
• Save these channels for big moments.

36. On with the show!
Blog.hootsuite.com
Editorial Manager, Owned Media
@dgodsall
David Godsall