Client: Hanson Hosein and Independent America – Rising From Ruins
The following contains a proposal, amended for discovery and including useful tools, for a social media strategy to promote the upcoming independent feature film, Rising From Ruins, part of the Independent America documentary series produced by HRHMedia.
About
The Independent America documentary series focuses on the struggles and challenges faced by small businesses and business owners, as well as those communities such businesses occupy. 2005’s The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop took the documentarian, Hanson Hosein, road-tripping across the United States, capturing stories of hardship and determination in the face of growing mega-corporate encroachment. Unfortunately, August 2005 brought devastation to one location the filmmakers were unable to visit for Mom & Pop until much later. Thus, 2008’s Rising From Ruins returned to the scenes of post-Katrina New Orleans to document the growing struggles faced by NOLA residents and small business owners as both government and big business attempt to execute a difficult and controversial recovery – one that hardly includes ‘mom and pop’.
Rising Above Challenges
As an independent feature, Rising From Ruins faces myriad challenges in today’s social media space, a space that is continually leveling the playing ground for both studio and independent productions. Already faced with potential waning public interest in Katrina-related features, the current scattered presence of this project’s promotional content throughout several web services, like Vimeo and Facebook, may not produce the scale of impact Independent America is looking for during Rising’s roll-out through the course of 2009. A more concentrated approach to engaging chatter and to sharing content about Rising From Ruins in certain social networks and with micro-blogging tools like Twitter might have a more worthwhile effect. But, Independent America already knows that such concentrated engagement alone is not what this project needs. That’s why they’ve struck a deal with AOL’s SnagFilms, which has secured distribution on both Snagfilm and the increasingly popular Hulu.com. Despite such achievements, though, Rising will need a stronger social media campaign, coming on the heels of, and in promotion of, Rising‘s debut at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Proposal (amended with client feedback)
It’s simple: build a new social network with Ning.com, entitled “Independent America: Where Do You Stand?”. This new social network will exist to foster and drum up the debate surrounding the place of big business in “small town” America. Users can create profiles, write their own in-network blogs, and start forum topics about whatever they wish to discuss related to mom & pop America. Most importantly, though, they’ll be strongly encouraged to post videos documenting their own stories, local communities, and political or idealogical positions. In other words, this site will take a scattered on-line conversation, one that is floating in many different web spaces, and give it a unofficial focal point. A social media director can guide things along at first to get the ball rolling. Prominently feature Independent America: Rising From Ruins through embedded video promotional content and trailers, all of which will point users to the full-length film debut at SIFF and later at Hulu.com. Now, although directing traffic to the Hulu launch and SIFF screenings of Rising will be the primary motivating factor of this new social network, the purpose of the site will also be to establish a place that anyone who is interested and passionate about the subject can make their voice heard and debate the messages and opinions of others. Furthermore, users can take on the role of documentarian in their own communities and cover the subject in their own words, posting these stories and video mini-docs to this new “Where Do You Stand?” site.
Tools Needed
Creating the new site using Ning will only be the first step. To generate buzz for both the film and this new story-sharing space, some of the tools already in use will be exploited. Here are some steps to take:
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Create the new public site using Ning.com. Hopefully the ambiguity of the name will bring traffic.
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Post badges indicating partnership with the University of Washington, Open Door, HRHMedia, SnagFilm, and the UW’s I-School. These would link to appropriate sites that either feature Rising From Ruins or the site as a story-sharing venue itself (such as the I-School would do).
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Create Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter profiles, all of which are named “Independent America: Where Do You Stand?”, all of which direct users to the new site. Consider purchasing ad space on Facebook if financing to do so is available.
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Populate each of the above with embedded videos from existent HRHMedia-maintained Vimeo and YouTube accounts.
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Create a central blog in the new site, authored primarily by Hanson Hosein, with entries that discuss the film the same way the current official site for Rising From Ruins and the old IndependentAmericanFilm.com TypePad blog have already done. However, intermixed with that, blog about any and every article related to the overall big business vs. small town America debate. Basically, this gives people a launchpad and something to read. Nevertheless, ALWAYS stay on message and be completely open about using the site as a vehicle to promote these films and the Hulu debut, but, more importantly, express that the site is here to establish a venue to debate the film and the issues it presents.
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Start three primary discussion threads in the new site’s forum area: “Recovering from disaster?”, “Fighting big box stores?” and “Small Business Resources”. Fill these threads up with as much helpful content as you can find, linking to third party locations. Watch the crowd do the rest.
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Start a fourth forum for local meetups to be organized – where people can plan get-togethers to organize initiatives or simply host BBQs. Perhaps the first could be initiated by Independent America and be for NOLA natives to meet and have a viewing of the film.
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Find videos on social networks that already tell stories about independent America, and add those to the video area. Encourage users to post their own videos or share from other sites.
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Develop link partnerships with websites dedicated to small business.
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Run searches for community activist bloggers and email them about your site.
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Tweet every action on the site through the Twitter profile. Be noisy. Post highlights from the site to the Facebook and Myspace profiles.
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Ruthlessly comment and drop references to the new site at politically-oriented blogs and newssites across the web, on both sides of the debate (meaning, when stories about big box stores ruining small communities are run, or stories about small business disaster recovery issues crop up, at sites like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Free Republic, National Review Online, CNN, Fark, Digg, and so forth, jump in and drop word). Be shameless.
- Lastly, in terms of long term strategy, as the site increases in noteriety and revelence, publish a page about your new social site on Wikipedia.
Forecast
This is an exhaustive social media strategy, but a necessary one. A grassroots discussion underlies the themes at the heart of Independent America’s films, and this grassroots discussion must be tapped. Merely focusing on generating buzz for Rising From Ruins will wind-up being intolerably less effective. An on-line home needs to be established that fosters the debate and allows users to take ownership of the ideas behind the film. Without doing so, Independent America: Rising From Ruins becomes just another one-way salvo in a two-way world. We predict that the site will take on its own meaning as users mold it to their individual needs, and this social media strategy will evolve with the needs of the users. Nonetheless, this site will become the go-to place and authority for the big box debate because it will be a place everyone can shoot and share their stories.
Prepared for Hanson Hosein’s Social Production course, Spring Quarter 2009, Master of Communication in Digital Media program, University of Washington, Seattle.
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Tags: hanson hosein, independent america, katrina, MCDM, mom and pop, rising from ruins, small business, social media, social media strategy, uw