We asked our friend Steph Bleyer, founder of Six Foot Chipmunk, about her favorite tech tools that help clients reach and activate new audiences. Here’s a peek inside her toolbox:
Call2Action – Customizable, sharable widget. It’s like a mini-website. Trumps YouTube for embedding films trailers on Facebook (and every other platform). It’s a must-have for every film engagement campaign. Five stars.
Vokle – Want to do your next post-screening Q & A from your living room? I’ve produced many panels using this call-in/text-in/tweet-in video platform, which works particularly awesome if you have multiple panelists in disparate locations. You can embed the video player on your site and your partners’ sites and folks can call in like they’re on a video-radio-web show. Big love.
Mailchimp – To keep in touch with our audiences, I ditched lame Constant Contact years ago for Mailchimp. The e-newsletter templates are tighter and less non-profity looking, it’s easy to administer and there’s a cartoon monkey that will crack you up.
Textmarks – I’ve searched high and low for the best texting tool. I haven’t found it yet. If you want to text your audience an occasional call to action, Textmarks will do the trick (for free, w/ ads). We all want to collect email addresses at every screening without using a clipboard, right? Well the only service I can find that will let you do this with mobile requires that you have a minimum operating budget of $500k.
Eventbrite – When organizing a one-off national community screening event, I recommend centralizing RSVP’s using Eventbrite. This will guarantee that you will collect the e-mail addresses from most screening attendees without having to hassle your screening organizers to send you their lists (which they rarely do).
Ushahidi – Free, open-sourced crowd-mapping that will show people where your screenings are taking place around the world. Yes, Google Maps can do this but Ushahidi can do it better because your screening organizers/audience members do the work. They can text, email and tweet in screening info. BAVC created this sample.
Salsa – Their tagline “ingredients for organizing” is spot on. I used Salsa to register and collect info about people participating in a week-long film engagement project that The Huffington Post co-hosted. Salsa is one-stop shopping (from donation collection to Click2Call) but I can’t vouch for all of the features, just the easy peasy registration function.
Just Give – I’ve used this multiple times to collect on-line donations for film campaigns. They skim off 3%. You have to be a 501c3 or have fiscal sponsorship. Can’t remember why I got hooked on them, maybe they’re just cheap and easy.
Change.org – I’m no fan of petitions. In fact I hate them. They’re the least creative approach to engagement. Don’t get me started. If you really need one, I recommend using Change.org’s free petition tool.
Steph Bleyer is the founder of Six Foot Chipmunk. She is currently working with Purpose on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and BBC’s Why Poverty? film series, as well as Eugene Jarecki’s upcoming doc about the war on drugs, The Documentary Group’s ground-breaking doc 10×10, Rada Film Group’s doc, An American Promise, about the black male achievement gap and the lovely Ben Niles on his new flick about music education.
