Stars Taryn O'Neill, Janna Bossier, and Craig Frank at a New Media Vault Event.

Inspired by Mathieas’ Tubefilter piece on building buzz, and a  shout out to Dialogik Digital and the immense help they did in our pre-launch, I figured I’d blog about Promoting a Web Series. Please note, I am not claiming that the promoting of our show was a complete success, nor am I claiming it to be the right way to promote a show, it’s just the way we chose to do it.

When you’re doing an independent series for the web, one of the big daunting tasks is in the promoting of your web series.  Most people who create shows aren’t promoters, advertisers, or public relations gurus, they are filmmakers and storytellers.

Personally I’m glad to see that the “if you build it, they will come” watch mantra is dying fast. Why? Well the internet is a HUGE place. There are a lot of eyes out there, and you’re never reach them all. That is why you need to guide your target viewers to your show, and you need to find your audience.

I’m going to re-point to Pam Kulik’s, Dialogik Digital post on this because she really has it fleshed out better than I do so take a look. She really covers our Launch Strategy,  Promoting, and Audience Building, so I encourage you to learn from it, I know I did. I remember being on a conference call with them and Dailymotion before our launch and the two P.R. reps just chatted away about all this promotional/press jargon that I had no clue about. -

If you’re a web series creator, if you get anything out of this post, I’d say look into finding/hiring some P.R. representation, it’ll shoot your promotions forward 10 fold. (continue reading…)

Fellow Streamy Nominee, Kristyn Burtt (The Web Files) and I at The Good Knight's Quest Premiere

First off, I want to congratulate all the Streamy Award Nominees. There were a lot of peers and pals that I deeply respect that scored nominations and that is just awesome. There were several I was so thrilled to see that it felt like I was more excited than the nominees themselves.

Anyway it’s just been a crazy week. So crazy that this blog post is coming 3 days after I originally wanted to write it. The good thing with the extra time for this post is that I can reflect more on what the nominations means to the team, the show, and me. I’ll admit, I was nervous as heck going into Monday morning (when they announced the nominations). I had figured that’d we pull in a few nominations and do well, but you never know until it’s official.

I am truly thrilled with our Streamy nominations. What the Streamy Awards means to everyone else is subjective, but to me it means a ton. Last year when we were finishing Compulsions, I set a hard deadline to my team. “This show is coming out in its entirety this year, distribution deal or not!”, and sure enough with grinding hard work, and the promotional support of Dailymotion, it premiered and has been extremely well received. One note to add, as one fellow deeply respected creator pointed out to me on Monday, the nominations (and any possible wins) will also hopefully give us enough recognition to propel us into a Season 2, which is and should be the goal for any Season 1 series.
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While taking some R&R at my family home this past week, a common occurance is that I’m being seen in a different way by some friends and family that have sampled the series. I should also add that other members of this team have come across similar changes in personal perception. The most obvious person being Craig Frank and his pre-Compulsions classification as just a comedic actor.

Honestly it’s an odd feeling to keep hearing the surprise from your long time friends that “you wrote this?… you… really??”. I had one old pal say that she’d keep hearing my voice over the monologues and VO’s while watching the show and she couldn’t wrap her head around where it was coming from. I’ve had other friends refer the show to other friends and state “as you watch it, remember that Bernie wrote every word.” Another common jab I kept hearing was “I’m not hanging with you alone anymore.” Personally, part of me thinks this is kinda cool, but the other part of me thinks of that  Storytellers goal to get the viewer/reader totally engrossed into the characters and story and not into the logistics or how it’s made. Thus I haven’t figured out overally if this is a good thing or bad thing yet… I can just say that it’s odd. One thing’s for sure, it’s a New Year… and things are different.

Coming in the next few weeks we’ll begin our wide release across the other Web Distributors to get more eyes on this series. We will still continue to have the show on Dailymotion, we have nothing but positives to say about them.

as always be sure to sign up on our EMAIL LIST, fan us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter

Now you can watch Compulsions (and a slew of other web shows) on the new Dailymotion iPhone App. Our series is one of the feature shows along with TempsMort.tv, and Legend of Neil. So head over to the iTunes store, grab the app, and experience our show on the (really) small screen! [source: Tubefilter]

The Compulsions Crew shoots the final scene of Season 1, Episode 8: Promise Kept

It pleases me to be basically forced to answer this question. Our Season 1 Finale Episode 8: Promise Kept was not 4 days ago, and everyone I’ve come across since that day (strangers, friends, fans) ask me the same common question “When is Season 2?” Or let me try this in another more accurate way… “WHEN IS SEASON 2?!?!” (continue reading…)