Create a website that best represents your short film.

To start promoting your film, there needs to be a “home base”. One place that you can send people to, that has all the information about your movie, including the premise, cast/crew info, where they can see it, etc.

Don’t feel like you have to go flashy. Keep it simple and succinct.

Your movie website should have the following:

• An easy to remember name like GoneWithTheWindMovie.com.
• Your trailer should be very, very easy to find.
• A synopsis or summary of your film.
• Prominent display of festivals, awards, recognition, etc.
• Still / photos from both the movie and behind the scenes.
• Cast and crew information, with links to IMDB.
• Registration page to gather fans and email addresses.
• Links to other social media and online resources.
• Links to reviews, awards, interviews and articles.
• Email sign-up.
• Where to see the film.
• Where to buy the DVD (ideally right there on the website).
• How to contact you.
• Anything else you can add to build out the universe of the film and the filmmakers for your hardcore fans.
• A very clean, easy-to-use interface.

You can use WordPress for the Fissure TV website:

• It’s free.
• It allows viewers to post comments.
• Embedding YouTube videos is easy.
• It comes “out of the box” SEO ready – Search Engine Optimized.

A great resource is to check into local universities to see if there are any students who are willing to work for less to generate content for their portfolio. There are many people who ask students to work for nothing, if you can pay even a little, the results will be so much better.

Once you have the site up, submit it to sites like Digg and Del.icio.us to get a wider viewing audience and high search engine hits.

In general, while marketing, you should keep in mind the following picture:

If you want to fail your marketing campaign don’t put press photos on your site or put them in slideshow galleries that can’t be copied.