RMM

This is the third and final in a series of posts looking at people’s decision making behaviours regarding cinema visits in the age of social media, compared with our behaviours ten years ago. You can read the first post in this series here and the second post here.

Following post 2 where I explored the statistics of audience data, I will now  use the number to draw some wider considerations about social media and cinema-based decision making!

Firslty, a key observation for filmmakers is that securing or creating an audience during film production can prove to be invaluable. This is a pivotal point when it comes to financing, especially so for independent filmmakers. Despite many films tending to be on the rather costly side, others manage to be successful without breaking the bank. Social networks represent a cheap new sphere of influence where fan bases can be built prior to production resulting in lower costs. How should you target and approach relevant online groups then?

The demographics of my study indicated a majority of 18-24s sliced into two groups - frequent users (10-15 hours per week) of the Web and extremely involved who spend more than 25 hours. This creates a group of spectators and joiners who will read and watch content online, participate in networks but rarely will they get any more active. The most often used websites turned out to be YouTube, Facebook, general review websites, and blogs. Twitter was left out of the picture which isn’t surprising considering previous research around Twitter conversation types indicating only 9 % carry meaningful information, the rest being “meaningless babble”.

Considering the above and previous findings, the dos and don’ts of building an audience online in a cost-effective manner become obvious. First, targeting social networks where friendship relationships are maintained will allow users to spread information in a manner that is natural to them, be it whether you want to generate awareness or influence action. If you only want to do the former then also consider interacting with audiences via leading review websites because of their credibility, information availability, and extensive user and film database.

On a final note, bridging and synchronizing digital and traditional information sources will be useful when targeting a larger audience with varying attitudes and needs towards traditional media and the internet. As Seth Godin recently blogged, people change their posture when they have options, and it is logical that some will need more time in order to adapt and become exposed to social media but I think we can already see that social media is having a significant impact on conversations relating to movies, which in turn can play a key role when it comes time to decide what film to see when heading to the cinema.