Key word in the title of this blog is “rarely”. The world wide web is an endless cyberspace of information, pictures, messages, writings, music, graphics, stories, articles, and videos. The dissemination of such materials is easy, cost-effective, and rather convenient. The internet has even shifted various industry models for distribution of such materials and the content produced with easy access to people’s fingertips. With the Millennial Generation and the generation after reared and groomed through internet technology and the ubiquitous evolution of social media platforms people as potential audiences for such diverse content are more selective in what they read and watch. They surf the web looking for intriguing and interesting content, product, and the platform that allows for it. They are also plugged in to the hype of word-of-mouth advertising on what’s hot, popular, and good. Independent documentary films, a late 20^th century and early 21^st century explosion, is coerced to function within the limitless parameters of the internet before and after release. Marketing strategies and advertising schemes dancing on internet domain names and hyperlinks play a crucial role in what goes out and more importantly, what lives on.

Today, what is happening is digital content makers, internet marketing agencies (SEOs included), film/television/web producers all play the game of getting the most views, the most “likes”, endless email blasts, constant press releases and the biggest word-of-mouth sharing of links on many if not all important social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—among the growing others). How long will non-quality, nonsensical, poorly put together content make it among the fickle attention spans of internet users and followers? How important is it to compete with the top media makers today through creative means to plug in new and growing audiences? Stellar, original, high-quality documentary films like Super Size Me, An Inconvenient Truth, Food, Inc. Jesus Camp, The Thin Blue Line, and Hoop Dreams have life weeks, months, and even years on the internet often pushing the boundaries of how great a documentary can be. These types of documentary films survive and thrive in a cyberspace of internet users with fickle attention spans and little patience for bad and slow delivery. Often is the case that with such stellar documentaries is the type of films that are timeless in their storyline, important in their social message and are celebrated for being vintage like Hoop Dreams—for example.

While documentary films live in various domains in our society of media-driven technology such as film festivals, DVDs, and television broadcast today more documentaries often rely on media buzz promulgated by social media marketing for internet survivability in order to remain relevant for years down the road. So, why do documentaries today need to be good and establish itself as high caliber content? Because internet users will go elsewhere to pass the time and imbibe in content that entertains or speaks to them more vividly and more appealingly. Such living space for documentaries become rare in a marketplace where micro-distribution toward niche markets is essential. In other words, documentary films itself is selective in a limited space for distribution—whether that be an airing on a local PBS affiliate station or the Netflix category of documentary films. Documentaries cannot afford to be bad in production nor weak in marketing because together they have only a small outlet and space for release and marketing reach.

The internet created a world where the audience is waiting on content delivery 24/7 around the world. They are already in their theater seats awaiting to be plugged in and plugged away. Documentary film producers and directors, alas, have center stage with the internet. However, with a continuously huge flow of documentary films that come out every year their stage time is little to begin with—especially in an industry today that has been downsized for pretty much anyone with a limited budget to walk in and produce documentary film content. So, where bad documentary films may falter in word-of-mouth, internet survivability, and marketing reach the average internet user who are documentary film fans may never actually hear or come across such bad titles. Social media has allowed for one important thing documentary filmmakers have always needed since the beginning of its ascent into mainstream popularity—audiences to congregate and self-advertise their films which builds more audiences and newer possibilities for different venues to showcase such work. Good, high-caliber, award-winning quality is essential for that necessary social media plug.