Instagram Best Practice Guide: The Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival
Posting for @DTLAFilmFest
Posting on behalf of the DTLA Film Fest should be fun! Ultimately it’s a good way to engage our audience to come out to the festival and enjoy not just the films, but other services we offer such as — Live Q and A’s, panels, and interactive visual experiences. Leading up to the festival, we must focus our attention on the feature films and get the word out about the cast and the film.
The most important thing is to have fun with this!
Tone and voice of the brand
We pride ourselves on our mission and we want you to be able to do the same. So we must stay on brand with our voice so that our followers aren’t misled.
The DTLAFF is dedicated to showcasing diversity and underrepresentation. In that respect, we feel it important to showcase different kinds of posts. In season or off-season, we want to share news from accredited news sources like The Los Angeles Times, Variety, IndieWire, and other publications that highlight the changing landscape in diversity that we ourselves strive to make an impact on.
In line with this, we want our tone to be interpreted as inclusive, helpful, informational, eager, friendly, and fun.
Word Count
On Instagram, we want to be able to take advantage of our word count, but we also have to be mindful of our consistency and what we portray ourselves to be. According to SproutSocial, the ideal word count length for an IG caption should be within the 138–150 range; we also want to abide by that ideal to be able to retain our audience.
Visuals
We also want to be able to let the visuals tell their own story. Leading up to the festival, the main film posters will be distributed to us, but remember to let our audience know who we are as well:
How Often/ What Time to Post
With the festival being seasonal, we will make these recommendations for our peak season of social media posting. We would like to follow the guidelines from HubSpot by choosing to:
· Post at least 3x a day
· Daily from 10 AM — 3 PM PST
· Wednesday at 11 AM
· Friday 10 AM — 11 AM.
The days that have specific times will be focused on our more compelling content: announcements, film spotlights, and recaps.
ADD, ADD, ADD #’s and @’s
While researching add as many relevant #’s and @’s as possible. Since we are a non-profit, we want to be able to use the power of hashtagging for people to discover what we do. Be mindful of what to hashtag though, something that’ll connect with the audience and has more weight may be more powerful than irrelevant small tags.
Cast members, the film, and other associations by affiliation are worth tagging. With hashtags, there is a limit on Instagram. Be mindful of how much you are tagging. The suggested amount is 2 to 5, but we are looking to expand on reach so don’t be afraid to go over a bit.
Below you can copy and save these #s for quick and easy access.
Hashtags
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#dtla #dtlaff #dtlafilmfest #fbf #independentfilm #filmindustry #filmakers #womeninfilm #producer #cinema #films #film #shorts #documentary
#filmmaking #filmproduction #indie #filmmaker #filmfestival #independentfilms #documentaries #movies #webisode #tvpilots #dp #actor #actors #Hollywood #featurefilm #movie #shortfilm #latinosinhollywood #production
How to Respond to Customer Service Issues
Be sure that our community is taken care of. If they need extra clarification lead the conversation to a Direct Message and handle the situation in a way to best accommodate our guests. We want them to come back year after year because of a great experience.
Use emojis, be friendly. Show our followers that we’re here to be social too.
The most important part of this is to have fun and be creative. Interact with our base and help us find more film-buffs to be a part of this amazing festival. We’re here year-round, but we shine when the festival comes to light.
Go to dtlaff.com for more info.
