Post Festival To Do List



Suffering from post-festival depression (PFD)? Feeling listless and counting the days until the next St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival? Who isn’t?

Because we all know that film making is easy and you have nothing but leisure time on your hands, keep your pain at bay by throwing yourself into some useful work.

1. Add all your new Best Friends Forever to your contact list.
Publicists say the value is in your “list” so make sure you add everyone who gave you a biz card or email address to your contact list or address book. Also add them to your social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIN, Flickr, and MySpace too.

(Sneaky me – those links lead to my profile pages, so now it’s super easy to add me to your friends list. )

I know, I know. You don’t have time for all of this, but if there’s one thing you really should do, it’s…

2. Join Facebook.
Why? Because The St. John’s International Film Festival has a profile on Facebook and posts events and news to it regularly. Also, most of the staff, volunteers, Woop Woop Hoopers and filmmakers are on Facebook too. Never mind that, most of Canada is on Facebook. We lead the world in terms of percentage of population joined. Yay, us.

Consider Facebook a timesaver, and an easy way to stay in the loop. It’s really easy to use and you’d be amazed at how creatively people are using it to keep in touch with friends, family, and even to market their films or other events.

I’ll stress that – it’s a great marketing tool.

It’s also fun. Every time I log onto my account, and read what my friends have been up to, I am guaranteed a LOL or ROFL time. For example, a quick glance of my home page and I learn that we’re all suffering from post-festival depression, and so a post-SJIWFF support group has started online.

Another cool thing about Facebook is it has a great tagging system for photos. If someone has posted a photo of you, you will get notified via email. And vice versa. You can post your festival photos and publicity shots.

There are some great shots up on the SJIWFF group all ready.

Be sure to check out Noreen Golfman’s profile pic. It reminds us why we are here. And Kelly Davis is one fine photographer.

3. Contact your new friends and keep in touch.
Email your new best friends, send them photos that you took while you were there, that link you promised them, or just a note to say hello.

You know what they say, it’s all about networking and who you know. Don’t miss your chance to know the wonderful people who were at the festival.

4. Support your new friends.
Add recommendations to their LinkedIN profiles. Forward their notices, press releases, or other publicity to your friends and networks. Comment on their photos, write on their walls. Link to their sites. Digg them. Stumbleupon them.

It all helps. It really, really does.

5. Search for fellow bloggers and add comments to their sites.
For the bloggers out there, commenting on other blogs is another another way to build community and stay connected.

Even if you don’t blog, leaving a comment on a blog is a good thing. When you comment, make sure you add your web site’s URL. That way other readers can easily click on the link and check out your website. Plus commenting builds brand and visibility. And as filmmakers, that is definitely what you want.

Hey, start now. Leave a comment below. What did I miss? Did I convince you to join Facebook? Are there any other questions you have about online marketing or web sites I can help you with? Fire away.

Coming up next – my list of marketing tips for over-extended filmmakers and other starving artists.

Tags: St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, St. John’s, Kelly Davis, Noreen Golfman, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, Twitter, community building, social networking, support, publicity

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