A micro-indie project like FrackNation should get trounced by a film promoted by one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
Matt Damon’s Promised Land, an anti-fracking polemic gussied up as a Serious Oscar Contender, got shellacked by FrackNation in the battle of Facebook all the same.
Promised Land’s Facebook page features 12,155 “likes” and 318 Facebook users “talking about this.”
The FrackNation Facebook page, by contrast, has 22,117 “likes” and a robust 3,297 people “talking about this.”
FrackNation director Phelim McAleer shared some of his views on social media with Breitbart News, tips conservative filmmakers should heed the next time they consider a Facebook-based marketing campaign:
- Social media is about community building. That means dissent as well as celebration. Promised Land from very early on deleted comments that were negative or even questioning of the film, [co-stars] Matt Damon & John Krasinski, or the validity of anti-fracking claims. Regardless of their intent, this isn’t a good sign for engagement. People are less inclined to interact if they think their posts are going to be removed.
- They went so far as to turn off Timeline posting for fans. This isn’t a good sign to the growing community. It shows that the page owners are less interested in building a community and more interested in using Facebook as a broadcast tool. It shuts off an avenue of communication with the audience.
- The page itself did little or no interacting with its members or other pages. Again, this is using the medium like a broadcasting tool instead of a two-way communication tool. It’s a top-down approach that social media users react negatively to.
- When things got tough, they abandoned ship. The last serious post from the page was on January 11. The film’s wide release was only on January 4! It’s clear that Promised Land wasn’t out to create a sustainable community of fans. It was more like an electronic billboard.