Using Hashtags for Your Indie Film

There are about 186 million users on Twitter sending 500 million+ tweets sent each day, which comes out to approximately 200 billion tweets per year. Instagram users post more than 95 million photos and videos per day, or about 34 billion pieces of content per year, and if you’re brave enough to jump into TikTok, you’re joining 600 million users who post almost every day.

Short story: you have to cut through A LOT of noise in order to get the word out about your indie film on social media. The good news is that you have a huge potential audience. The bad news is that the vast majority of them don't know (much less care) about your film.

It’s time to get smart about your hashtags.

Here are some of the most common film-related hashtags you'll encounter on Twitter and Instagram (among dozens of others):

#indiefilm // #supportindiefilm // #filmmaking // #setlife // #filmmaker // #filmfestival

Incorporating these general hashtags into your posts and tweets will immediately focus your audience engagement efforts and help get your content in front of the best-fit audience groups which, hopefully, are also the ones that are most interested in your project.

I recommend using a single hashtag to represent your project across all social platforms. Usually, it will be some variation on your film title. If your title includes commonly used words or phrases, you can always add a qualifier such as "film" or "movie" at the end of the tag. For example, if your film title is #PIRANHACONDA, your hashtag writes itself. But, if your film title is, say, THE RED CHAIR, you might go with something like #RedChairFilm or #RedChairMovie. Hashtags aren't case specific, but sometimes using both upper- and lower-case letters helps increase readability and accessibility for your audience.

Now that you have your primary hashtag, you can begin expanding your potential audience reach by including additional hashtags that correspond to the specific phase of your production or release. If you’re crowdfunding, add #crowdfunding to your posts. If you’re in production, #setlife will come in handy. At a #filmfestival? I think you probably get the idea by now.

For Instagram, creating hashtag groups are also useful; group like hashtags together and use one or more of those groups together, according to the relevance to your post. You can have up to 30 hashtags on an IG post, so you have plenty of room to include a lot! Here are some examples of groups:

Group 1: Women Filmmaker Focused

#directedbywomen #womeninfilm #womendirect #womendirectors #womendirector #femalefilmmakers #womenfilmmakers #womenfilms #femalefilmmakereveryday

Group 2: Behind the Scenes Focused

#behindthescenes #inproduction #filmproduction #filmproductions #production #productionlife #filmcrew #filmcrews #filmcrewlife #setlife #filmset #filmsets #filmsetlife

Group 3: Now Screening at Film Festivals

#filmfestival #filmfestivals #filmfestivalcircuit #festivalpremiere #nowscreening #filmpremiere #filmfestivallife #filmfestivalseason

Once you have these developed, you can add those hashtag groups when it makes sense. Are you a woman filmmaker who is starting production on your film? Share a pic from the film set, and use Groups 1 & 2 together on that post. Or, if your film is opening at SXSW, use Groups 1 & 3 together (and don’t forget to add the South by hashtags!).

For Twitter, the recommended number of hashtags per tweet is only three; so make them count! Choose your own branded hashtag, and add another to it. #supportindiefilm is always a good secondary go-to for independent film.

Over on TikTok, hashtags are the most effective way for users to see your content. The trick here is to fit a short line of text and as many hashtags as you can into only 100 characters! #fyp and #fypage are two of the most popular; aiming to get your content on people’s “for you page” as a suggested follow. Some useful film-related hashtags for TikTok are:

#indiefilm // #indiefilmhustle // #indiefilmmaker // #indiefilming // #indiefilms

One of the most efficient ways to grow your online presence is through the effective use of hashtags. Hashtags aren't magic, but they are useful, so find a few that make sense for you and put them to work.