Very few web series attract any pre-launch attention, those that do begin with a distinct advantage, an audience that is already aware of its existence. One of the biggest challenges a new series faces, is the ever increasingly daunting task of cutting through the clutter of online video. Furthermore, not only do web series need to compete with other shows, vloggers, and keyboard playing kids and kittens, they are also in competition with social media sites, other websites, games, and occasionally, real life. The competition for viewer attention has never been greater. Simply releasing a series and hoping that it will find an audience is not an option. Therefore, in order to be competitive, in order to build an audience, a series needs to begin generating buzz even before the show launches.
Early Teases Are Key
Two of the more successful series this past year, Compulsions and The Bannen Way understood the importance of prerelease buzz. In fact, no series in recent memory did a better job of promotion than Compulsions, which is not surprising given creator Bernie Su’s day job is in advertising. When asked about its importance, Su stated, “When you have pre-launch buzz, the press/public has bought into your hype. They’re excited, anticipating, and hungry for your content. It allows instant loyalty to your series right from the gun.”
However, once you have received the all important prerelease attention it is equally important to capitalize upon it. Su continues, “If you squander it, you’ve lost the opportunity to hook in that initial group of devoted fans. Once that chance is gone, it becomes so much harder to bring them back.” Of course too much hype, and a show runs the risk of creating a backlash, something the team behind The Bannen Way learned when its potential audience was nearly burned out on the show before it even aired.
Hitting the Message Boards
Series creators need to be proactive when it comes to generating buzz and building an audience. OzGirl creator Nick Carlton targeted the lonelygirl15 fanbase months before his series’ release. He went to sites like MySpace and Bebo, found out who the fans of the show were, and appealed directly to them to try his new show. Social networking sites and message boards are a great way to not only find a potential audience but also a great way to interact directly with them. In fact, targeting message boards has become a standard practice. At the recent Digital Hollywood conference, during one panel, various creators were asked how they got the word out about their show. They each mentioned that one of the things they did was target message boards centered on themes compatible with their respective series. If one is making a niche show, find out where the niche lives and go to them; sitting back and waiting for them to come is not an option.
Likewise websites that cover your particular niche or that cover web series in general are an invaluable resource. No matter how obscure the niche, chances are there exists an online community dedicated to it. Also, think broadly; imagine all possible groups that might be predisposed to watching. Furthermore, if launching a new show, contact a person who writes for the site and send them information about your series. Liz Shannon Miller from NewTeeVee has written a very useful post for creators about what information to include when contacting a website about their web series. If you want to ensure that your show receives coverage, do not make writers work for the privilege of covering your series. Similarly, when contacted for more information about your show, respond. For the most part, whenever I have asked those involved in a web series for information or had a question, they have been eager to reply; however, a few never acknowledged my email. Guess which series I tend to write about? [Email tips[at]tubefilter.tv to submit your series for coverage on Tubefilter News]
Similarly, creating a trailer can help build prerelease buzz even if the actual series is months from completion and gives potential reviewers something else to add to their article. When asked how useful a trailer can be to a new web series, Bannen Way co-creator Mark Gantt said, “I think we were very fortunate to have someone like Tim Street and Tubefilter find our trailer and post it on their site. It really started to get the ball rolling and people were aware of the show for a year [before debuting].” However, bear in mind, that “Coming Soon” does not mean “If we secure funding.” A failure to launch is a guaranteed way to lose an audience. Also, speaking of funding, a trailer can be very beneficial when meeting with potential investors. The team behind The Bannen Way independently financed their trailer, which they showed to Sony who financed and released the series.
There’s No Place Like Home
Congruently, make it easy for audiences to find information about your series. The simplest means of achieving this goal is to set up a website. The site need not be an elaborate social network; a simple blog that has relevant information is sufficient. Not only is this beneficial to those who need information to put in an article, but it also gives them a place to direct readers for updates and future information. Include a signup section and you can begin collecting information on interested potential viewers. Lastly, Kristyn Burtt, host of The Web.Files, wrote a comprehensive post on publicity earlier this month, which contains a number of useful tips. Every little thing that a show can do to build its audience is worth the effort. Right now, many web series survive on a very small audience. Evan an extra hundred viewers can represent a significant gain.
Web series creators simply cannot rely on an “If we build it, they will come” attitude. The intense competition for the audience’s attention affords a series only one chance to hook its viewers. However, with some forethought, planning, and effort creators can build enough prerelease buzz to hopefully cut through some of the clutter surrounding online video.
[About the author: One of the first generation, lonelygirl15 fans, Mathieas has watched the web series community grow from its inception, written about it extensively, and chronicled its ups and downs. He lives in Michigan, enjoys long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, and is a friend to children and small animals alike.]
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Annnd all of these series didn’t garner any real fans or viewership outside of this community, so this article is nice if you consider Daily Motion or an interview with the Web Files to be your measure of success, but nothing in the sense of having any type of real following. Kudos for information that does nothing.
Good advice. “Anyone But Me” put out promos, contacted friends like Kate Clinton who got it up on her website, then we put out the word to other sites, all prior to its launch on Strike.tv in Dec. 08. We’ve learned so much since then and building buzz is essential. BUT, sustaining it is the hard work and you have to back that up with consistency, putting out a season and then another and hopefully, another after that.
Thanks for sharing the things you know.
I agree, sustaining is extremely important, Susan. When you look at the view counts on a lot of web series (not that view count is the most important thing) you can see that there is usually a huge drop off from the first to the second or third video.
Oh, this will make a good follow up piece. It would be nice to hear some people’s thoughts on the subject.
Mathieas, if you do a follow up piece, talk to us. Tina Cesa Ward and I just skyped live
to Brian Rodda’s New Medialocity class on this very subject (and others).
Nice one, Mathieas! Congrats!
I gotta say, I have to agree with Jared. These are some useful tips for getting buzz in this bit of an insular group we have, but the real issue is how do you create *real* buzz that goes beyond the walls of the community. That’s the real question.
It is against the interests of tradition media to help you get a buzz for your indie web series. it doesn’t help the 3 companies that own everything.
Exactly Tom, I think unfortunately too many creators think that if they make a show the media will find it, report about it, and build their audience for them. The reality is that I follow this stuff fairly closely, yet I can state for a fact that there are tons of shows that I simply have little if any information about.
A lot of time and attention went into making the show, shouldn’t the same amount go into building the audience?
i have to disagree with jared’s comment, and not just to try to get invited to a candelit dinner with Mathieas.
I think mathieas’ comments don’t apply only to trying to get “buzz” on sites like tubefilter, but anywhere on the internet. Sure, you can follow these tips and your series may still go nowhere, but if you don’t at least heed these basics, your series is almost guaranteed to go nowhere.
If jared’s comment refers to youtube, there can be a whole other subset of recommendations to getting a following on youtube, but they flow from the same general principles. E.g., the teaser promo for Blood Cell featuring Jessica Rose (maybe 2 years ago?) generated big youtube views and thus decent hype. Ultimately they could never use that hype because the founding group went belly up (or something like that- was it 60 frames? I can’t recall right now), but it showed that teasers/promos can be a great tool.
As for message boards, OzGirl did a good job there. Did it develop a huge audience – no, but it did pretty well as compared to the average webseries, and it was able to parlay what it had into additional exposure for the creators/actors via the streamys, etc. the job of promoting yourself is never done.
if jared has better suggestions, i’m sure most here would love to read them. but the fact is that most webseries flop in terms of viewers, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the techniques that can help.
Jared appears to have misunderstood the coverage aspect of this article. This would have been a problem if the title had been “How to Build the Ultimate Fan Base.”
Instead, Mathieas crafted a great article that covered excellent past efforts.
@milowent – good points. Blood Cell scored big on the trailer but squandered the opportunity to capitalize on YouTube. Ultimately, it ended up in a washup deal with TheWB.com where literally no promotion was done by the studio.
There are lessons to be learned from successful online video launches of all sorts — branded, studio, indie, YouTube, etc. Each one have different goals, and some start with certain advantages, but all face a super-crowded marketplace for video content.
There are still only a fixed number of minutes in all of our days. And even if you shifted your entire budget of TV minutes to online video minutes, on average, that would be just 4 hours per day.
The key is to figure out how to break into that slice of the pie.
OzGirl sought out new fans and found them. Not a boatload, that’s true, but their actions gave them a step forward career-wise for the team behind it. Development meetings, new agents, contacts, that will help them create more projects in the future. And I think ultimately that’s what a lot of the independent web series community is looking for—a viable and sustainable career in making entertainment.
So buzz doesn’t have to translate into millions of views to be considered a win.
If you’re in a better place professionally and creatively after having launched your web series than before, then I’d say that’s what matters. No one starts out a genius filmmaker, it’s earned over time by learning and doing.
Being part of the greater Youtube community is a HUGE factor that can make or break a show. This includes making friends, commenting on other videos, speaking with other creators and going out and finding your niche and demographic. It is an extremely time consuming and sometimes tedious job but if you don’t do it, you will usually fail.
Few of the shows you mentioned even tried to do this. This is why you see so many shows with huge numbers for their pilot or trailer and nothing at all beyond that. If your numbers aren’t organic they won’t last.
Great article, very informative. Thanks!
Marc touched on something important. It’s really about what you as a creator wish to get out of having a web series. Knowing your goal is really important as it defines the path you need to take. For us, with OzGirl, it was never about making money or taking over the internet. But we consider it a success because we got what we wanted out of it.
Milowent has some good points – in the same way that telling stories on the Web doesn’t cause you to reinvent fundamental storytelling principles (that have been around since cavemen days), marketing on the web doesn’t cause you to reinvent fundamental marketing principles.
Some good advice here – another series that got some good pre-release buzz going was Riese. They got a web presence going early and by the time they launched the series they had over 10000 fans. That just kept on growing and they ended up with a SyFy deal.
Jared made a good point, however the “insular group” comment is the coolest two-words I read on this blog so far. You should all blame Japan for your worries and plights. Japan convinced everyone to buy video cameras and now you cornered yourselves into filmmaking careers. Ha-Ha! I like this blog entry. It is a good read. And notice how they promote shows within the blog about promoting shows… Did anyone catch that? Hey Jared, I’m with you. Bannen Way was picked up by Sony/Crackle… Of course it will have the hype. Bannen and Angel are exceptions to the rules, let’s be honest. But J, look down under “add Comment”…. It says “Advertise”. This is set up the same way magazines work. Like if you want your new DV gadget to be written up in DV magazine, then expect to buy ads in DV Magazine. We should be glad we have these writers doing this. They can be playing video games or something. Ya know for a while it seemed TF had Powell chained up in the dungeon slaving away at this. Now it’s a party again and everyone is chiming in.
I do think Mat is limited in his scope. This internet video thing is still pretty new on the timeline. Most people didn’t have broadband or any of these video uploaders and players until 2006-2007. Believe me, I was programming with ffmpeg on a FreeBSD server back in 2003-4 when no programmers were coding for video. Everyone should step back and consider the power of the internet. You really should not need facebook, twitter, or any domestic web portal to distribute a show. And right now cash is scarce, and it looks like it will get much worse. So creators waiting for sponsors or ad dollars is futile (now) unless you have big wallets or an agency behind you. Even the jobless celebrities are in on the game now. But Content is still king, so make a good show and use the power of the internet. It’s a crowded market. Quality product and branding will be most effective. This market sector really hasn’t worked itself out yet. Get a footing in there now, and hopefully in five years you will be a seasoned pro.
Todd, what I was saying is that it isn’t as much the press that a creator should focus on getting to cover a show. They aren’t the be all and end all of creating buzz. Getting that buzz from the source of your potential viewership on Youtube or places your demo gravitate IS. Speaking from experience, noobs don’t get tremendous press coverage out of the gates very often if at all. So what do you do? Go elsewhere and find your audience that way. THAT buzz is the kind of momentum that the press outlets and blogs won’t ignore easily.
Press coverage is always a bonus but it isn’t a death sentence to not get any right off the hop.
There are so many awful grammatical errors in this article. Don’t these get edited? How can you expect to be a respected news source if your authors sound like junior high kids?
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