I’ve recently gone through a spate of unfollowing people on Twitter. This is partly to do with the fact that I have been at home over Christmas and therefore using Twitter more, but it’s also something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

Bottom line - my feed was getting choked up with information I didn’t care about.

Why is that important? Well, we’re in the age of attention now. The age of information is well and truly past. If anything it’s the age of information overload. People’s online habits have changed and instead of waiting for information to come to them, they are actively searching it out and filtering it as they go.  

Twitter is a great place for that information. For many people, it is a place where you can stick to one subject – in my case screenwriting and indie filmmaking – and consume a lot of information quickly. From here, you can filter out what is important/relevant/interesting for later and also “meet” other interested in the subject.

I use twitter as a source of information almost exclusively for these subjects – with the occasional foray into “Strictly Come Dancing” or “X Factor” if I am feeling so inclined.

What I noticed in my recent unfollowing spate was a pattern around why I unfollowed people. Now, I don’t want to make these people wrong for doing the below – hey, it’s your twitter, knock yourself out – but I just wonder how many of the below reasons have made other people unfollow them too or at the very least stop engaging with them.

1)      Constant promotion of an e-book – This is just plain lazy. Marketing 101 is - sell to your audience and if you don’t have an audience, then build it. Marketing books to other authors or writers – come on. They followed you to talk to you about writing, not for you to constantly bombard them with badly worded sales messages about your latest fiction ebook. Now, if the book was about screenwriting or filmmaking – I’m there, I really am. Other than that forget it. It’s spam.  Unfollow.

2)      Constant “fund my project” tweets – Same as above. Why are you hitting up other broke writers and filmmakers to fund your project? They are too damn busy trying to fund their own project without you bombarding them with “fund my film” tweets. There are a few crowdfunding campaigns that do have perks directly for the filmmaking community – great, market away! Look, I’m not saying don’t ever promote your film or crowdfunder to film or writing people - believe it or not they are probably interested in the final product and the journey you had getting it out there - what I am saying is - like the promotion of an ebook – you need to promote these things to the audience you are trying to sell your end film to. If you can’t understand the concept of audience on a low budget short film crowdfunder then I worry for you – how the hell are you going to explain it when in a room at Paramount trying to pitch for actual cash?  Unfollow.

3)      Repeated retweeting – There is nothing  more frustrating to me than seeing someone retweet 5-10 posts they were mentioned in in a row, and clogging up my feed with them, their name and whatever the heck they were mentioned in. I go to Twitter to find useful information - this is not useful information, this is you standing in a playground yelling “Look at me, look at me”. Unfollow.

4)      Never talking about the subject I’m interested in – Twitter is a great place to talk to specific people about specific subjects. I followed you because on your profile it says filmmaker or screenwriter. But when it comes to the tweets you are making they are nothing to do with these subjects and it makes me wonder why I am bothering following you. I’m not talking about the odd tweet about your family, the football, the rugby or that kind of thing but constantly talk about everything but the subject you profess to love is distracting.  Unfollow.

5)      Those goddamn “X people followed me Y people unfollowed me” auto tweets – Do you know how sad that makes you look? It’s saying – Y people have already left my party because I’m so deadly dull and boring that I can’t keep followers! There was a nasty strain of autotweet a few months ago that was similar to this that basically said “@scriptpunk has unfollowed me” What-the-actual-fuck? You are tweeting this, naming and shaming people who unfollow you…and new followers are suppose to be impressed by this? Come on, grow up. This is your public image we are talking about. Unfollow.

Social Media is not about how many followers you have. It’s really not. What are we, five years old? You can have 100 followers all hyper engaged or 1000 followers who have just followed you because you follow them. What is your preference?

If it really is "I want 1000’s of followers" then knock yourself out, there are several follower adding pieces of software out there that will make you feel really important.

If it is that you want to engage with people who talk your talk and are interested in the subjects you are in, then do yourself a favour and go for the 100 engaged followers.

And my last point, before I get off my soap box and go make another cup of coffee, if you have a specific project/book/film to promote, then do us all a favour and create a separate twitter account and build the audience up for the project there.  Yes, it's hard work - but so is making films and just like the work you put into films, the work you put into building your audience will pay off...if you have the where-with-all to do it in the first place.

Our concept art competition has been ongoing for the past four weeks. We are now opening the voting up to the public to get their opinion on which piece of work encapsulates the spirit of the yet to be made film. It’s had over 650 votes so far, and we want to make sure you don’t miss out on getting your say.

There are two prizes – the prize for our favourite and the prize for the public favourite. These could be totally different treatments. So, we won’t tell you our number one but right at this point we want to know yours.

Go look at the designs and then vote by Facebook or Twitter for the one you think is the best.

Go to http://www.talenthouse.com/design-for-cancer-hair

If you can share our Talenthouse page with as many people as you can, we’d be most grateful.

Share this http://www.talenthouse.com/design-for-cancer-hair

We are still in the very early stages of bringing Cancer Hair to the screen. One of the things of key importance to us is the ability to showcase what the film is about to potential funders. The easiest, and best, way to do this is via Concept Art.

Good concept art captures the essence of the film without giving too much away. It brings out the themes and concepts (hence the name concept art) of the piece into one image. For me, the reason it is so key is that it puts an image to the film before the image themselves have been captured via a camera lense.

We have teamed up with creative powerhub Talenthouse to find WONDERFUL concept art for Cancer Hair. Amazingly, like actually amazingly, Nokia have sponsored our creative call and so we are pleased to announce there is even some cash in it for the artist/designer or expert illustrator who manages to a) capture our attention and b) promote the heck out of their entry via their own social networks.

Let me tell you a bit about Talenthouse. You really should consider using it, if like us you are looking for great art or a way to collaborate with creatives around the world.

Basically, it is where creative people meet and collaborate with each other, with brands, with projects and get paid and recognised for their work.  

The concept is quite simple. You put out a creative call via Talenthouse – for in our case – Concept Art. Talenthouse promotes this to their community of artists around the world and if they are interested in your project,  they will submit something.

You can choose the “best” submission for you. But the best bit is that there is social element to the voting on talenthouse. This means that the artist can use his or her social capital to promote their work, or your project. That means you benefit not just from their great art but the halo effect of their friends, and followers, knowing about your project. Genius stuff.

If you are an artist, designer or illustrator I’d love for you to go our call for submissions and enter something.  Cancer Hair Concept Art Call On Talenthouse.

If you are a producer, director why not have a look at Talenthouse as something you can work with as part of your engagement going forward.

I’ve been Indiegogo-ed!

We’ve been organising a Breakfast Club for a few weeks now to coincide with the ENTIRE Indiegogo team coming over from the states to promote the site and the awesome fact you can now crowdfund in good old Great British pounds. I had the privilege of going to not only our Breakfast Club Event but the Indiegogo Launch Night too.  Great stuff, great team!

First up, information you really need to know about Crowdfunding in general.

• Crowdfunding is not Begging
• Nor is it just about getting the money for your project (if you think that is what it is all about then you are in for a surprise)
• It’s about building your audience
• PS Your audience is more than your mother, a few friends and all the other cash-poor creatives you know…so, build your film audience now. If you have a film about Dalmatians, go engage the Dalmatian loving community and provide them with valuable content about their niche before you start hitting them up for cash.
• 
  

There are a few tips that the team let us in on that were specific to IndieGoGo

1)      Indiegogo Pioneered Perks – Perks are something that you can offer a funder in return for their support. Remember it has to be something that is of value to the funder – that doesn’t mean it needs to cost you to produce it. It could be an hour consultancy with you or a piece of the set you’re not going to use again. Whatever it is make it of value. Signed DVDs or a poster from a cast no-one knows isn’t really going to cut the mustard. Be creative!

2)      Flexible funding – IndieGoGo allows you to get the funding you do raise. So if, for example, you don’t reach your goal of £5000 but get to £4500 then you still get the money to take your project forward. Other sites, not to mention any names, do not.

3)      Raise Money in Stages – Don’t be over ambitious. You can raise money for your project in stages – i.e. Development, production, post-production and marketing/distribution.

4)      $25 Sweet Spot – Campaigns that have a $25 perk statistically do far better than those without. Make sure you have a banging $25 perk.

5)      Get a team of crowdfunders – Again, campaigns with a bigger team do better. Get more engaged people on your team and you will raise more than you would by yourself.

6)      Make sure you have links – More links on your page to quality content and websites get you more money.

7)      Diversify your promotion methods – IE use your website, twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and all other means at your methods.  

8)      Update your campaign – The more updates you do, the more money you’ll get. You have to be engaged and let people know how fabulous your campaign is going.

9)      Get lots of pretty pictures   - It’s not rocket science, do a banging video and make lots of pictures about your production, storyboard, cast etc. These things make the project seem inevitable.

With all of this in mind, I'll be ramping up my audience build for a short film I plan to make early next year.

“Writing is 10% Hard Work and 90% ignoring the internet”. Boy, ain’t that the truth.

I have been experimenting with Rescue Time this week. Rescue Time is a software system that tracks when you are being productive and when you are fucking around online and not doing what you should. I have some pretty tight deadlines in the run up to Christmas, and although my job does involve a high proportion of using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote various bits and bobs for the LSF and freelance clients, it is not where ALL my time should be.

I was particularly drawn to Rescue Time for two reasons.

1)      It tracks what you do during the day and you can work out when you were the most productive. For me it is the morning, and oddly post 8pm at night.

2)      You can set up “focus time” where the software essentially blocks all distracting sites for a period of time you have set.

This week I’ve been trying to finish a short script. My pattern up to now has been this. Write a bit, get stuck on a dialogue line, go on Facebook, piss around, go back to the script, push a little bit forward, go onto twitter, see if anyone has “@”ed any of my accounts, make a cup of tea, wait for the clock get to a quarter before restart, restart, visit Facebook.

It’s a familiar story and I think one many writers are probably familiar with.

Step in, Rescue Time. Now the pattern is write an bit, get stuck on a dialogue line, go on Facebook, Rescue Time pops up saying “Hey, you told me you wanted to be focused for 30 minutes, what you doing on Facebook?”, I blush, go back to the script and actually work through the dialogue line.

It has been amazing to see just how often I stop what I am doing and go looking for a distraction instead of knuckling down and working through the problem.

This week it has meant that I have actually managed to smack my To Do list square in the kisser. It has also meant that I have had the opportunity to see what sites are the main offenders for my skiddling around – aside from Facebook and Twitter, the big offender is the Daily Mail site. I know. I'm a little disgusted by this myself. *shameface* this is what happens when you have a secret passion for celeb gossip.

Anyway, if you are struggling and want to put a bit of zap under your productivity, then have a look at Rescue Time. There is a 14 day free trial and then it is a couple of quid a month. I am going to see how I get on with it for a month or so. If I am still using it in January and haven’t managed to wean myself out the bad habits then it’s a keeper.

…rule number one, don’t “@” people and ask them to retweet you so they can get to a specific number of followers.  

So, you are in a bar with some friends, and some guy comes up and asks if you want to join him at his empty table for a drink. You say no. Same guy comes up ten minutes later asking the same thing. You say no again. Same guy comes up 20 minutes later and asks the same thing - again. You tell him to fuck off.

Twitter is a bar.

I’ve actually had to block someone who repeatedly comes into my Twitter stream asking me to retweet his name so he can get more followers. Dude, this is not how the internet works. I don’t know you from Adam. Why would I retweet your needy post and blot my own timeline with useless  information?

Firstly, this obsession over getting more followers is a dead end. More followers does not mean a) you are popular b) people will read what you say.

There is a lot of noise of there and having someone follow you who follows 35,000 other people is going to mean you are a small voice in that persons stream. Secondly, people follow people generally because they have something interesting to say. They don’t want repetitive crap posts about your quest to get to 1000, 2000 followers whatever. When I stop following people, it’s because I have become uninterested in their messages. I don’t mean the occasional  - “I’m going to have coffee”  post, I’m as guilty of that as anyone, what I mean is they keep saying the same thing like promoting their e-book, or pushing an Elongated crowdfunding campaign, or asking me to retweet their name so they can get 1000 followers – Hmmm? The same message turns me off. And I’d hazard a guess it would turn most others off too.

If you want to get more followers on Twitters there are two very easy things you can do.

1)      Post Valuable Content, Hashtagged appropriately, about your Niche – Twitter is about information. If you post valuable information that people can use, they will see you as an interesting person and likely follow you. Sales messages are OK occasionally – like one in ten posts – but if you really want to position yourself as someone to follow then be an information pimp. Your followers will grow organically and are more likely to be interested in what you are saying.

2)      Buy and Use Follower adding software like Tweet Adder – If you insist on being all about the numbers then stop harassing people to retweet you for more followers. Pay £30ish quid and buy Tweet Adder. Tweet Adder automatically follows people for you – once you set the list of people you want to add up. Twitter Etiquette is that most people refollow you if you follow them, hence by you adding people you follow you, yourself will see a rise in followers. Of course, the quality and actual usefulness of these followers is debatable.

As in real life, so in Twitter, Facebook or any of the other networks out there. Take the hint!