Questionnaire Reach | Visibility | Engagement
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This document contains a questionnaire for creators of media content, focusing on documentary filmmaking, to help them gain knowledge about reaching audiences and encouraging engagement. The questionnaire contains sections on defining the topic, identifying target audiences, choosing appropriate platforms, considering how the content may invite debate or polarization, factors influencing longevity, whether the goal is immediate impact or a slow burn, desired outcomes and metrics, and how to address potential criticism. The goal is to provide guidance for creators to strategically think through audience engagement over the lifetime of their projects.
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Questionnaire Reach | Visibility | Engagement
- 1. Questionnaire Summary For me, it’s imperative that we start thinking audience-first as we create content. Who do we want to reach, where can we find them, what are their interests and motivations and how do we engage with them. Such engagement can be leveraged in many ways and make our work all the more fulfilling. To that end, I’ve started devising this questionnaire. This is a questionnaire for creators and producers of media content, with a special focus on documentary filmmaking. The aim is to help the reader gain a more thorough knowledge of a project with regards to reaching audiences, gaining visibility and encouraging engagement, also early on in the lifetime of a project. The questionnaire is intended to be a guiding instrument and is to be revisited over the course of the project as more knowledge is gained and clearer goals and needs are identified and expressed. Reach | Visibility | Engagement 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 2. Table of Content 01 Topic 02 Target Groups 03 Platforms 04 Intensity and Polarisation 05 Longevity 06 Flash or Slow Burn 07 Impact 08 Narrative Reversal 09 Collaboration 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 3. What is the topic on the surface? What undercurrents can be identified? What larger questions are being discussed? How can the topic be identified differently for different groups? What are the first questions that come to mind regarding the topic? Topic What is your topic on the surface, and what undercurrents can you identify? You probably – hopefully! – have a fairly good idea of what topic your story is addressing and reflecting. This overarching topic, of which your story is a facet, has other facets, other undercurrents that underpin the topic itself. Take some time to look into these as well, to see how they impact your story, directly or indirectly, and how such connections can help you get your story in front of more people. What are the larger questions that are being discussed around the topic your story centers around? I.e. look into what kind of conversations are currently taking place, online or in other media, and how these discussions have evolved as of late. Try to decipher who are the main voices, what is the popular opinion, what new connections or conclusions have been drawn, and what other topics are adjacent to the one your story talks about. How can the topic be interpreted differently, for different age groups, territories, genders etc? Again, this is something I’m guilty of myself and quite conscious about – there are many more viewpoints on a topic than those of you, your team and anyone else involved in your project. Focus groups can be a valuable asset here, but simple web searches to find out how communities and individuals with different experiences and different backgrounds view the topic and address the topic can be valuable. What are the first questions that come to mind regarding the topic? This is a short and potentially fruitful exercise – get your team, a focus group or some other group of people together, explain the topic as best you can in relation to your project. Give them 2 minutes, paper and pen, and have them write down all the questions they can come up with, no matter how inane or “stupid”. This has the potential of giving insight into new inroads into your topic and broadening the horizons of your story. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 4. Target Groups What are the personas of your audience? Territory, age, gender, interests, motivations? Habits and possible levels of interaction? What sub-groups can be derived from the core target groups? How can we use social listening as a tool? Regarding personas - find out as much DEMOGRAPHICALLY as you can about things like age, gender, income (and disposable income!), ethnic background, marital status and family. What we’re talking about here are basically statistical data that relates to the population and more precisely particular groups within this population. This builds a framework for the personas that make up your target audiences. Work your way GEOGRAPHICALLY down from the international, global level to the national, then on to the regional and if possible also the local level. Looking at the persona PSYCHOGRAPHICALLY is where you “fill in the blanks”, so to speak, and fill out those personas you’ve already started building, with information about their activities and interests, about their attitudes and needs and wants, about their personalities and values – i.e. all the intricacies that make people differ from each other and that let you know which strings to pull on to try to achieve the desired outcome. You can dive into these areas almost endlessly, but very few of us have the resources to do that. At the very least, you should know as much as possible about the answers to a few questions regarding your target group(s): What territory? Where in the world are the people you want to reach, and what are the characteristics of those particular territories? What age group? Targeting Gen Z is monumentally different from targeting boomers or millennials, and clarifying this question will help you avoid some mistakes. What gender? Now, gender fluidity notwithstanding, this is an important area to be quite certain about and deserves both scrutiny and some thought put into it. What are their interests? This can be a potentially valuable piece of information, as it can help you hone your approach to engaging with them, through areas that are already of interest to them and through activities they already find interesting. What motivates them? For instance, if social validation motivates their actions this creates a possible way to connect and engage and validate their actions. If on the other hand compensation in one form or another is the main motivation, this calls for a possible different course of action. What sub-groups can be derived from core target group(s)? No one person is like another, but groups of people obviously do share common characteristics. Is it possible for you to more closely find out what sub-groups can be derived from the main target groups you’re aiming for? Territorial, behavioural, interest-wise or with other characteristics? This in turn can help you find new angles to target such smaller groups, and through them the larger groups. Finally, look into automating social listening, to find out what conversations there are around your topics and characters. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 5. Platforms What does the project’s scope and budget allow for? What is the desired effect and how does that influence? What limitations exist for different platforms and are these limitations for good or for bad in the context of the project What platforms make sense looking at topic and target groups? What platform(s) make sense in light of your topic and your target group? If you’ve done your research regarding your target group(s) and their habits and interests you should have a notion of what platforms you’d be most likely to reach them on. If it’s teens or 20- somethings you want to reach, Facebook is most likely not the right answer (and perhaps not for many other groups either in the future). Put this to the test and seed some content on platforms you believe should be the right ones for you and evaluate the outcome. This again, leads to question two: What do the project’s resources allow for? It’s all well and good to draw up plans for releasing content and engaging with people on different platforms, but each and every venture is costly, both in time and funds. As long-term planning is a necessity for anyone wanting to build a community or at least an interested group of followers it is crucial to – from the very beginning – weed out unnecessary platforms and engagements. See how far you can stretch yourself and go no further. On the contrary, leave some resources untapped, in the event that your activities are successful – if so, you’ll be scrambling to keep up with the interest from your audience. What is your desired impact? You should have a fair notion of what you actually want to achieve with your project, be it to raise awareness about a topic or to affect more direct change, or perhaps simply to entertain (no small feat that, either!). Knowing what the desired impact is can also help you decide on platforms to utilise, as some platforms are more geared towards dialogue and debate (if that’s what you’re after) while other platforms are better at offering content that is more easily digested and shared onwards, if that serves your purpose better. Of course there is also the possibility to combine these, by letting short-form content be shared widely, but acting as the entry way for audiences to engage on other platforms in discussion and debate. Finally, look at the limitations of each platform and analyse whether these are for the good or for the bad in the context of your project. A successful Reddit-thread in an appropriate subreddit can be enormously advantageous for your project, but if you do not want to invite debate at an early stage, that platform should be saved for later. A short-form Instagram post is easily shared, but if you’d rather see more deep engagement from the start it might be best to save some of your greatest content for other platforms, etc. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 6. Intensity and Polarisation Does the project invite debate and taking sides? Does the project allow for civil discourse? What levels of moderation will be required? Does the project give rise to increased polarisation? Does it have the potential to get heated? Does this project invite debate? Are there venues – online, IRL or otherwise – for people who have knowledge of or opinions about the topic to discuss about it? If such venues exist, what is your natural role there and can you assert any sort of control – conversely, if such venues do not exist, can you in any way facilitate them? Does the project allow for civil discourse? I think we’ve all been witness to or part of toxic debates, which will drive many sensible people from your project long before they’ve had the chance to immerse themselves deeper. Much of this hangs on how you communicate around your project, what your tone is and how you, for instance, address narrative reversals (i.e. when audiences “turn” on you and “attack” you). It’s been a common tactic of many corporations to flood negative discussions around them with toxic comments and people, thereby averting many from taking part of arguments – you should strive to do the exact opposite and flood any discussions with sensible, respectful dialogue. Does the project give rise to increased polarisation? This might be something that you want for your project, especially if you have an agenda with the project. Do be aware that you’re feeding into the polarisation of society as a whole, however small your role and your project is. But polarisation can also be fruitful if you want to follow up on some of the more extreme viewpoints and perhaps even widening the scope of your project. What level of moderation will be required? Now, if you are not in control of the venue(s) where discourse is taking place, you will have less possibilities to moderate anything. You can still, however, set examples for other participants to follow, you can call out unreasonable or toxic behaviour etc. But do be aware that much of this will take resources away from other things you might want to or should be doing, so budget and allocate resources accordingly. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 7. Longevity Is this a one-off thing or longer term? Does it affect a smaller or larger number of people? Will we be able to identify with it, to take it to heart? Will people be talking about the same thing in five years time, what will they be saying then - and what would we like them to be saying? Is the project about a one-off thing or something that is or can be longer term? This is probably the most natural place to start thinking about longevity. If what your project is about is a true one-off it’s one thing, but if what your project is about depicts a reoccurring event, either physically or as a part of the zeitgeist, it will be possible to revisit your project in due course. Is the topic something that affects a smaller or larger number of people? The more people that can feel an organic connection to your project and the topic you’re talking about, the better chance of longevity as new people and new audiences discover your project, raising it up into the larger awareness over and over again. Will people be able to identify with my project? Artistic freedom is a must, naturally, and the viewpoint of the creator, director or producer is crucial in order for the project to find its own voice and its unique presence in the world. At the same time, it pays to keep in mind that there is an audience out there that should ideally be able to identify with if not all, then at least a sizeable part of what your narrative is about. The more people that can identify with aspects of your project, the more voices you will have to carry the message forward, thus increasing longevity. Will people be talking about the same thing five years from now? What will they be saying – and what would be like them to be saying? It’s of course impossible to predict the future. That said, a plan for how our project will stand the test of time and remain a crucial part of the discussion around our topic years from now is a good thing to have. If we are aiming for an impact with our project, envisaging how we influence talking points and discussions years from now is a step in the right direction. We might not get it right, but we do increase our chances by planning from the get-go. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 8. Flash or Slow Burn Are we aiming for a strong immediate impact w/o tail? Or, will embers glow for a long time? How? Where do we start, what is the initial entry point? When or in what context can embers be brought to flame? Reasons to go back to the same topic from fresh angles? Do we aim for a strong, immediate impact without much of a tail? If so, we can put all our efforts into making this splash as big as possible, reaching as many as possible with one concentrated message, without worrying about taking care of the fallout. Perhaps if all you want is eyes on one particular thing that is taking place – an election, a decision, a court ruling, a happening or anniversary or something suchlike – a strong push in that direction is all that is needed Do we want to create something that is more akin to a fire where we keep the embers burning indefinitely, ready to be put ablaze again at a moment’s notice by adding more fuel to the fire? Is our project then a continuous one, with content being released continuously and with certain flash points integrated in the form of events, happenings and so on? How do we keep the embers alive in between these flash points, what kind of stories and content can we release that will keep up the interest in our project? How can we continuously create new angles to approach the project from over time? If we truly want to create a story or a narrative that can stand being stretched out over a longer time, we need to be on the lookout for new ways for people to enter our story, interact with it and keep interest in it. These new ways should ideally also offer enough new content or knowledge or enjoyment that audience members already familiar with the story can find reason to again interact and engage. Finally, we need to think and plan for what we create as the initial entry point into the story. Ideally it should be an entry point that can be re-used or reshaped to be re-used, to increase the recognizability of the project. If it succeeds, the same entry point or type of entry point can be used to create a narrative whole that feels solid and connected, also over time. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 9. Impact What do we want to achieve with the project? Who do we want to reach? What are our KPIs? What do we want them to do? What do we want the project to mean for us professionally? What do we ultimately want to achieve with the project? I.e. if we paint a picture where our project has arrived at the best possible outcome, what does that look like? Have we changed legislation? Have we uncovered some secret or tragedy? Have we influenced politics? Whatever it is, know what it is you actually want to achieve. Who do we want to reach? We might have – or rather, I hope we have – target audiences clearly defined at this point, so we know some of the people we want to reach. But who do we reach through them? What leading figures or influential people can we hope to reach and how? And when we’ve reached them, what do we actually want them to do? Take action? Something else? Get in touch? Whatever it is, make sure to create entry points and road to that action that are easy and enticing to follow. What do we want the project to mean for us, professionally? This is also an important part of anything you’re deeply involved in, and nothing to beat around the bush about. Of course you want your project to mean something for you as well, as a content creator or filmmaker. An acquaintance told me their film would ideally raise their status as documentary filmmakers in the eyes of film funds and festivals – and if you know that that’s a desired outcome, you can better lay the right foundations. What are our KPIs? How do we actually measure if we’ve succeeded or not? When should we be content, and when should we re-evaluate and push further? Take some time thinking through your KPIs so they’re not over-ambitious, but neither to non-challenging. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 10. Narrative Reversal The desired outcome when the project meets the audience? Worst case scenario when the project meets the audience? How do we approach and address criticism? What are our core principles? Where can we be flexible? What is the desired outcome when the project meets the audience? This ties into the points about Impact above. I.e. what would you ideally like to see happen when the audience gets hands-on with your project and your content? What are the worst case scenarios when the audience meets your project? Is it antagonism or attacks, or just a general indifference and a great big ‘meh’? Is it personal attacks on the creators or participants or is it a campaign against the project as a whole? How do we approach criticism, well founded or less well founded? Do we have a given spokesperson or can anyone in the project wade into the discussion? Should we have times set aside for the team to address criticism? How quickly should critical voices be engaged with? What is our stand, what are our core principles and where can we be flexible? It is possible that criticism and antagonism are well founded at times. Your project and you are neither infallible, most likely, and there are times when people’s grievances with your project do carry merit. However, you should always be clear throughout your team and your project where your core principles lie and to what extent you can stretch your approach to them when addressing criticism. To learn the origins of and to read more about the challenges of the Narrative Reversal, Polarisation and the need to embrace the Collective Journey mindset on a larger scale, please read Jeff Gomez’ thoughts over on his blog. 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 11. Collaboration Leveraging the reach of participants or other stakeholders How to active audiences and reward and validate them? How can we tap into other narratives and content? How can we best address inadequacies in our own skillsets? Who are our participants and stakeholders, and can we leverage their reach somehow? Absolutely try to tie down agreements that participants and other stakeholders agree to use what reach they have to help your project reach more people. Ideally, offer them suggestions for messaging, calls to action etc, to make the process easier. How do we activate audiences, and once we have, how do we reward and validate them? Following up on the call to action point above, how would audiences best be activated in connection to your project? What kind of rewards would make sense in this context? How can we ensure that the ones who do become active feel properly validated? What other narratives or pieces of content can we tap into to increase our own relevance and attractiveness? Are there zeitgeis-pieces that our project would fit in alongside of, naturally? Can we collaborate with those creators somehow? Where are our own weak points? What do we not master, and do we have the time to master those skills? If not, who can we approach for guidance or assistance or even deeper involvement? 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
- 12. Thank you It is my sincere hope that this questionnaire can be of help when trying to navigate media projects in today’s day and age, when reaching and retaining audiences not only make total creative sense but also is becoming increasingly financially critical. If you found this to be of interest, feel free to head on over and read more on my site simonstaffans.com. Any comments, additions, examples, collaboration suggestions, speaking or mentoring engagements or other queries can be directed to my email at simon (at) rethinknms.com . 2022 Simon Staffans, This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Editor's Notes
- As written. … One thing to note – this questionnaire assumes that you a) want to reach an audience with your project, b) that you are comfortable doing so by also exploring the use of other platforms than a broadcasters 9pm art documentary slot on Tuesdays and c) you have and inquisitive and open mind with regards to audience behaviour and technical possibilities
- One core part of any project we’re working on is the larger context in which the story finds itself. Oftentimes, it can become difficult to “see the forest for all the trees”, especially when you have been invested in a project for a prolonged amount of time. I know from personal experience that it is easy to get lost in the story arch of your protagonist or in those exchanges or scenes that you fall in love with. This happens all the time – while pre-producing, while out filming, in the edit… As the investment in the story increases, it can be challenging to take the necessary steps back and view the full picture. To help along the process, consider continually answer the following questions: What is your topic on the surface, and what undercurrents can you identify? You probably – hopefully! – have a fairly good idea of what topic your story is addressing and reflecting. This overarching topic, of which your story is a facet, has other facets, other undercurrents that underpin the topic itself. Take some time to look into these as well, to see how they impact your story, directly or indirectly, and how such connections can help you get your story in front of more people. What are the larger questions that are being discussed around the topic your story centers around? I.e. look into what kind of conversations are currently taking place, online or in other media, and how these discussions have evolved as of late. Try to decipher who are the main voices, what is the popular opinion, what new connections or conclusions have been drawn, and what other topics are adjacent to the one your story talks about. How can the topic be interpreted differently, for different age groups, territories, genders etc? Again, this is something I’m guilty of myself and quite conscious about – there are many more viewpoints on a topic than those of you, your team and anyone else involved in your project. Focus groups can be a valuable asset here, but simple web searches to find out how communities and individuals with different experiences and different backgrounds view the topic and address the topic can be valuable. What are the first questions that come to mind regarding the topic? This is a short and potentially fruitful exercise – get your team, a focus group or some other group of people together, explain the topic as best you can in relation to your project. Give them 2 minutes, paper and pen, and have them write down all the questions they can come up with, no matter how inane or “stupid”. This has the potential of giving insight into new inroads into your topic and broadening the horizons of your story.
- Target groups per say is something that has been researched and discussed in thousands of papers, presentations, posts and videos over the past decades. Every single brand worth its salt is interested in honing down the correct target groups for their products, and a documentary filmmaker should not be any different. From the very beginning of your project you should, naturally, have an idea about whom you’re making the film for. To strengthen your knowledge regarding this, there are numerous ways to arrive at what target groups are the most viable for your project, like for instance to start looking at films similar to yours and what audiences they’ve had. Here are some questions in different categories that you would ideally know the answers to, in order to best reach the target audiences you’re aiming for: DEMOGRAPHICALLY Find out as much as you can about things like age, gender, income (and disposable income!), ethnic background, marital status and family. What we’re talking about here are basically statistical data that relates to the population and more precisely particular groups within this population. This builds a framework for the personas that make up your target audiences. GEOGRAPHICALLY Work your way down from the international, global level to the national, then on to the regional and if possible also the local level. This knowledge about where the people you want to target and reach actually live, will influence greatly how you go about reaching them and engaging with them. PSYCHOGRAPHICALLY Here you “fill in the blanks”, so to speak, and fill out those personas you’ve already started building, with information about their activities and interests, about their attitudes and needs and wants, about their personalities and values – i.e. all the intricacies that make people differ from each other and that let you know which strings to pull on to try to achieve the desired outcome. You can dive into these areas almost endlessly, but very few of us have the resources to do that. At the very least, you should know as much as possible about the answers to a few questions regarding your target group(s): What territory? Where in the world are the people you want to reach, and what are the characteristics of those particular territories? What age group? Targeting Gen Z is monumentally different from targeting boomers or millennials, and clarifying this question will help you avoid some mistakes. What gender? Now, gender fluidity notwithstanding, this is an important area to be quite certain about and deserves both scrutiny and some thought put into it. What are their interests? This can be a potentially valuable piece of information, as it can help you hone your approach to engaging with them, through areas that are already of interest to them and through activities they already find interesting. What motivates them? For instance, if social validation motivates their actions this creates a possible way to connect and engage and validate their actions. If on the other hand compensation in one form or another is the main motivation, this calls for a possible different course of action. What sub-groups can be derived from core target group(s)? No one person is like another, but groups of people obviously do share common characteristics. Is it possible for you to more closely find out what sub-groups can be derived from the main target groups you’re aiming for? Territorial, behavioural, interest-wise or with other characteristics? This in turn can help you find new angles to target such smaller groups, and through them the larger groups. In conclusion, knowing whom you’re targeting and as much about them as possible will be one of the most valuable tools you will have in your toolbox when you strive to reach audiences and engage with them.
- There are obviously quite a few platforms to choose from, both more traditional and newer, socially geared or more one-way, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. I will not strive to explain all of these and the intricacies of posting and following up and analyzing and engaging on each of these – Reddit is another universe than TikTok, Instagram another universe than YouTube etc and there are numerous resources to take part of to find out more about these from a creator’s POV – but some questions that I’d advise any person with a project to answer in order to find some more clarity regarding choices would be: What platform(s) make sense in light of your topic and your target group? If you’ve done your research regarding your target group(s) and their habits and interests you should have a notion of what platforms you’d be most likely to reach them on. If it’s teens or 20-somethings you want to reach, Facebook is most likely not the right answer (and perhaps not for many other groups either in the future). Put this to the test and seed some content on platforms you believe should be the right ones for you and evaluate the outcome. This again, leads to question two: What do the project’s resources allow for? It’s all well and good to draw up plans for releasing content and engaging with people on different platforms, but each and every venture is costly, both in time and funds. As long-term planning is a necessity for anyone wanting to build a community or at least an interested group of followers it is crucial to – from the very beginning – weed out unnecessary platforms and engagements. See how far you can stretch yourself and go no further. On the contrary, leave some resources untapped, in the event that your activities are successful – if so, you’ll be scrambling to keep up with the interest from your audience. What is your desired impact? You should have a fair notion of what you actually want to achieve with your project, be it to raise awareness about a topic or to affect more direct change, or perhaps simply to entertain (no small feat that, either!). Knowing what the desired impact is can also help you decide on platforms to utilise, as some platforms are more geared towards dialogue and debate (if that’s what you’re after) while other platforms are better at offering content that is more easily digested and shared onwards, if that serves your purpose better. Of course there is also the possibility to combine these, by letting short-form content be shared widely, but acting as the entry way for audiences to engage on other platforms in discussion and debate. Finally, look at the limitations of each platform and analyse whether these are for the good or for the bad in the context of your project. A successful Reddit-thread in an appropriate subreddit can be enormously advantageous for your project, but if you do not want to invite debate at an early stage, that platform should be saved for later. A short-form Instagram post is easily shared, but if you’d rather see more deep engagement from the start it might be best to save some of your greatest content for other platforms, etc. And, four pieces of advice – First, be prepared to change tack and direction quickly, if things are not going the way you’d want them to. You might have made the wrong decision regarding a platform or how to approach a certain platform, so don’t throw unnecessary resources at something that doesn’t work. Second, be prepared for success – if you do manage to get the masses onboard, have a plan in place for how to deal with an enormous influx of engagement, so the narrative doesn’t run away from you. Third, be prepared for the narrative reversal – you will have people not agreeing with you, being suspicious of you, even trolling you. Be prepared and have a plan in action for how to respectfully approach such engagement, and strive to turn doubters into believers. Fourth, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You don’t know everything, and you shouldn’t have to – so find people who have the knowledge you might be missing and see how you can work with them to arrive at the goals you’ve set for yourself.
- Polarisation is quite self-evident – is your project one that will invite people to take clear sides in the debate, will it polarise the discussion and along what lines. Regarding intensity it’s a little more nuanced – i.e., is your project one that many people care deeply about? When people engage with the project, will they pour their hearts and minds into the interaction? This analysis of your project will, again, help you when it comes to devising a suitable strategy for reach and engaging with audiences. Some questions you should consider attempting to answer, from the point of view of your project: Does this project invite debate? Are there venues – online, IRL or otherwise – for people who have knowledge of or opinions about the topic to discuss about it? If such venues exist, what is your natural role there and can you assert any sort of control – conversely, if such venues do not exist, can you in any way facilitate them? Does the project allow for civil discourse? I think we’ve all been witness to or part of toxic debates, which will drive many sensible people from your project long before they’ve had the chance to immerse themselves deeper. Much of this hangs on how you communicate around your project, what your tone is and how you, for instance, address narrative reversals (i.e. when audiences “turn” on you and “attack” you). It’s been a common tactic of many corporations to flood negative discussions around them with toxic comments and people, thereby averting many from taking part of arguments – you should strive to do the exact opposite and flood any discussions with sensible, respectful dialogue. Does the project give rise to increased polarisation? This might be something that you want for your project, especially if you have an agenda with the project. Do be aware that you’re feeding into the polarisation of society as a whole, however small your role and your project is. But polarisation can also be fruitful if you want to follow up on some of the more extreme viewpoints and perhaps even widening the scope of your project. What level of moderation will be required? Now, if you are not in control of the venue(s) where discourse is taking place, you will have less possibilities to moderate anything. You can still, however, set examples for other participants to follow, you can call out unreasonable or toxic behaviour etc. But do be aware that much of this will take resources away from other things you might want to or should be doing, so budget and allocate resources accordingly.
- Looking at longevity with regards to a project we can see how (and if) we can hope to see our engagement play out over the long term. This goes for the projects themselves, i.e. how their innate ability through topic or approach can hope to keep engagement and interest going in the long term. It also goes for the projects as a part of the larger world, i.e. how will the topic stand up to the test of time. Why is longevity of interest? Since we’ve already invested time and resources into getting our projects off the ground, my opinion is that we would be wise to get all the mileage we can out of our efforts. By keeping our project current and in front of people and encouraging them to engage with it over longer terms, we not only keep in touch with them for information, dissemination, marketing and awareness, we also increase our possibility to have an active audience available to tap into for future projects. Some questions to ask yourself about your project in order to arrive at greater clarity regarding this: Is the project about a one-off thing or something that is or can be longer term? This is probably the most natural place to start thinking about longevity. If what your project is about is a true one-off it’s one thing, but if what your project is about depicts a reoccurring event, either physically or as a part of the zeitgeist, it will be possible to revisit your project in due course. Is the topic something that affects a smaller or larger number of people? The more people that can feel an organic connection to your project and the topic you’re talking about, the better chance of longevity as new people and new audiences discover your project, raising it up into the larger awareness over and over again. Will people be able to identify with my project? Artistic freedom is a must, naturally, and the viewpoint of the creator, director or producer is crucial in order for the project to find its own voice and its unique presence in the world. At the same time, it pays to keep in mind that there is an audience out there that should ideally be able to identify with if not all, then at least a sizeable part of what your narrative is about. The more people that can identify with aspects of your project, the more voices you will have to carry the message forward, thus increasing longevity. Will people be talking about the same thing five years from now? What will they be saying – and what would be like them to be saying? It’s of course impossible to predict the future. That said, a plan for how our project will stand the test of time and remain a crucial part of the discussion around our topic years from now is a good thing to have. If we are aiming for an impact with our project, envisaging how we influence talking points and discussions years from now is a step in the right direction. We might not get it right, but we do increase our chances by planning from the get-go.
- When talking about reaching and engaging with an audience and achieving the desired impact from that interaction, one helpful way of analysing your project is what I like to call Flash or Slow Burn. It ties in with the last post about longevity but is more hands-on and helps when deciding what kind of actions should be taken across the life of the project. In essence, we need to decide whether a short and sharp impact is the best for our project or if we want to create something that simmers for a longer while. Do we perhaps need to plan for a combination of the two and how do we get them to work together most flawlessly? Some questions that can help you on your way would be: Do we aim for a strong, immediate impact without much of a tail? If so, we can put all our efforts into making this splash as big as possible, reaching as many as possible with one concentrated message, without worrying about taking care of the fallout. Perhaps if all you want is eyes on one particular thing that is taking place – an election, a decision, a court ruling, a happening or anniversary or something suchlike – a strong push in that direction is all that is needed Do we want to create something that is more akin to a fire where we keep the embers burning indefinitely, ready to be put ablaze again at a moment’s notice by adding more fuel to the fire? Is our project then a continuous one, with content being released continuously and with certain flash points integrated in the form of events, happenings and so on? How do we keep the embers alive in between these flash points, what kind of stories and content can we release that will keep up the interest in our project? How can we continuously create new angles to approach the project from over time? If we truly want to create a story or a narrative that can stand being stretched out over a longer time, we need to be on the lookout for new ways for people to enter our story, interact with it and keep interest in it. These new ways should ideally also offer enough new content or knowledge or enjoyment that audience members already familiar with the story can find reason to again interact and engage. Finally, we need to think and plan for what we create as the initial entry point into the story. Ideally it should be an entry point that can be re-used or reshaped to be re-used, to increase the recognizability of the project. If it succeeds, the same entry point or type of entry point can be used to create a narrative whole that feels solid and connected, also over time.
- Impact is perhaps one of the most important aspects when analyzing your project, and an aspect that is becoming increasingly important and focused upon in the developmend, production and distribution phases. The term ‘Impact’ conveys quite clearly what it’s about, pretty much, but to be a bit clearer with regards to your own project, try to answer these questions: What do we ultimately want to achieve with the project? I.e. if we paint a picture where our project has arrived at the best possible outcome, what does that look like? Have we changed legislation? Have we uncovered some secret or tragedy? Have we influenced politics? Whatever it is, know what it is you actually want to achieve. Who do we want to reach? We might have – or rather, I hope we have – target audiences clearly defined at this point, so we know some of the people we want to reach. But who do we reach through them? What leading figures or influential people can we hope to reach and how? When we’ve reached them, what do we actually want them to do? Take action? Something else? Get in touch? Whatever it is, make sure to create entry points and road to that action that are easy and enticing to follow. What do we want the project to mean for us, professionally? This is also an important part of anything you’re deeply involved in, and nothing to beat around the bush about. Of course you want your project to mean something for you as well, as a content creator or filmmaker. An acquaintance told me their film would ideally raise their status as documentary filmmakers in the eyes of film funds and festivals – and if you know that that’s a desired outcome, you can better lay the right foundations. What are our KPIs? How do we actually measure if we’ve succeeded or not? When should we be content, and when should we re-evaluate and push further? Take some time thinking through your KPIs so they’re not over-ambitious, but neither to non-challenging.
- the Narrative Reversal is a bit different, but follows naturally on the notion of wanting your project to have an impact. The term is one I’ve gotten from Jeff Gomez on Starlightrunner Entertainment, and I really think it is quite spot on. The Narrative Reversal simplified is when you face backlash regarding your project. When people don’t agree, don’t like, don’t support, don’t follow, but instead engage in what could be described as a toxic way, or at least with criticism of either your project or you. This is never easy to face or handle, but answering some questions beforehand, thinking through scenarios and clearly defining some crucial key facets of your projects before the shit hits the fan could prove to be very useful. What is the desired outcome when the project meets the audience? This ties into the points about Impact above. I.e. what would you ideally like to see happen when the audience gets hands-on with your project and your content? What are the worst case scenarios when the audience meets your project? Is it antagonism or attacks, or just a general indifference and a great big ‘meh’? Is it personal attacks on the creators or participants or is it a campaign against the project as a whole? How do we approach criticism, well founded or less well founded? Do we have a given spokesperson or can anyone in the project wade into the discussion? Should we have times set aside for the team to address criticism? How quickly should critical voices be engaged with? What is our stand, what are our core principles and where can we be flexible? It is possible that criticism and antagonism are well founded at times. Your project and you are neither infallible, most likely, and there are times when people’s grievances with your project do carry merit. However, you should always be clear throughout your team and your project where your core principles lie and to what extent you can stretch your approach to them when addressing criticism.
- There is an ever-growing need to be a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to creating content and reaching audiences. You’d need to be a good producer to manage the project, you need to be a brilliant storyteller in order to craft something people will find interesting and engaging, you’d need to be proficient in marketing and social media to reach the right people, you need to be a social savant in order to engage with them etc and so on. This is especially true for those of us who work in smaller outfits and don’t have a large number of colleagues to call on as the need arises. And this is even more true when it comes to what we’re discussing in this series – reaching, engaging with and validating audiences. But if you feel you are lacking in one or more of these areas – which I guess most of us do on a daily basis – the key is to find the right people to collaborate with in the right amount. Some questions regarding collaboration that can help you frame you and your project in the correct light would be: Who are our participants and stakeholders, and can we leverage their reach somehow? Absolutely try to tie down agreements that participants and other stakeholders agree to use what reach they have to help your project reach more people. Ideally, offer them suggestions for messaging, calls to action etc, to make the process easier. How do we activate audiences, and once we have, how do we reward and validate them? Following up on the call to action point above, how would audiences best be activated in connection to your project? What kind of rewards would make sense in this context? How can we ensure that the ones who do become active feel properly validated? What other narratives or pieces of content can we tap into to increase our own relevance and attractiveness? Are there zeitgeis-pieces that our project would fit in alongside of, naturally? Can we collaborate with those creators somehow? Where are our own weak points? What do we not master, and do we have the time to master those skills? If not, who can we approach for guidance or assistance or even deeper involvement?
- As written. … One thing to note – this questionnaire assumes that you a) want to reach an audience with your project, b) that you are comfortable doing so by also exploring the use of other platforms than a broadcasters 9pm art documentary slot on Tuesdays and c) you have and inquisitive and open mind with regards to audience behaviour and technical possibilities