Filmmaking is a labor of love. You pour your soul into a project then, after countless hours of agonizing work has been logged, you hand that precious creation over to a team of marketing professionals that you desperately hope can sell your vision to the masses. It's terrifying, and we understand. However when done well, social movie marketing can be a seamless extension of the film itself.74% of people in the 18-65+ age group are on social media, and they're all very savvy. So marketing films has moved beyond simply uploading your trailer and a few stills from the film. You've got to produce engaging, interactive content that rewards existing fans and recruits new ones. If this were the early aughts you might call these "DVD extras."

Leverage Current Events

You've got to break through the social media clutter somehow to sell tickets, and this is one excellent way. Leveraging current events and the buzz from another movie. Last year when Fifty Shades of Grey aired their notorious Super Bowl commercial, the marketing team behind the new Spongebob Squarepants movie smartly posted this bit of appropriative artwork. Simply genius.

Publicizing a film with a parody of another popular movie is just one of the tactics you can use to engage potential fans and acquire new ones. Current events are ripe with opportunities for movie marketers. Please, for the sake of Kris, find a way to use Kim Kardashian's latest twitter faux pas to market your movie.

Kreative is King

Wait. Sorry still stuck on the Kardashian reference. Creative is king. But seriously, it's crucial. You've simply got to find creative ways to tell the same story throughout the life cycle of the campaign. Below's an excellent example of the work we've done for The Big Short, and how we were able to represent the mood of the film based on in a short video.

Groundbreaking Interactive Ideas

Interactive is everything. You engage the user for far longer than a simple text over image post, and when done well you make fans and sell tickets. As JJ Abrams recently noted at SXSW virtual reality will become a key marketing component to a slightly more complicated and involved movie marketing strategy, but one that's catching the attention of movie goers world wide is alternate reality games, or ARGs. ARGs. They create a fictional world that users in the real world interact with, often through online communities. Some games even have dedicated social media accounts and coded websites to GPS coordinates that players must travel to in order to uncover clues.

Facebook Canvas

Where you could once only market to your customers with photos or video, Facebook is doubling down on the benefits of interactive storytelling as a way of connecting with your audience in meaningful ways (without driving them outside the platform). Facebook LIVE, Facebook 360 and Canvas are all prime examples, and there is surely more to come.

GoPro & Periscope

This is truly immersive, live story-telling. The GoPro-Periscope partnership enables marketers to broadcast live directly from a GoPro HERO4 Black or Silver camera. This innovative integration allows Periscope users to toggle between broadcasting from their iPhone’s camera to their GoPro directly from the phone screen with the simple touch of a button.Fans can use their Periscope interface to flip between the different camera angles, so they're constantly engaged. The possible applications for marketing are endless.

Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.