MMM Logo - Red NameA little over one year ago I decided to restart Movie Marketing Madness. I was, quite frankly, feeling the itch to do so again, primarily because I wanted to regularly write something unique and didn’t just want to keep doing the same “Here’s what I think about the latest social media news” type of posts.

The decision to do so was not taken lightly. I knew I needed to keep it going for at least a year or it would just come off as kind of a flighty, spur-of-the-moment decision made without knowing what I was committing to. But I did and was determined to make it work.

When I shut down MMM back at the end of 2011 it was hard. I still loved writing it, but my schedule at the time just wouldn’t allow me to give it the attention it deserved. There had been a few times over the years I thought about bringing it back, but never got around to it until September of last year, when I mapped out what the first two months would look like (an essential element of planngin any editorial program) and got to work. So what have I learned in the last year?

That this is hard work. There have been a half-dozen times where I’d planned to write about a movie but just couldn’t get my hands around the campaign or where my schedule got unexpectedly busy and I couldn’t get to it. Otherwise I’ve done everything I set out to do.

Planning is essential. I maintain an editorial calendar for MMM that is an invaluable tool for planning my writing. This is something I really started doing for clients at Voce when I was there and I can’t overstate it’s importance. Yes, mine is a small little individual blog and not a burgeoning media empire, but the ed cal tells me how busy the week is going to be, what I still need to work on and more. If you’re doing any sort of regular feature on your blog, this is a must-have. It can – and should – be fluid (more than a few times a movie I had slotted for X day wound up being pushed by several months or I just had the flat-out wrong date in there) but will help you long-term.

Distribution is just as essential. I have to believe more people are seeing MMM columns because I’m sharing them via email and cross-posting on Medium. We’re not in the same RSS and blogroll-driven world we were in 2011 and so I’ve adjusted to accommodate to that reality.

We’re not linking anymore. Seriously, no one links to other people. The online blog and media world has become so masturbatory, with each site only linking to its own previous posts on a subject, it’s a bit ridiculous. I knew this, of course, but have now experienced it myself. It sucks.

Movie Marketing Madness is still unique. To the best of my knowledge I’m still the only one doing any sort of deep-dive on movie marketing campaigns on a regular basis. Sure, the news blogs still cover new posters and trailers and the trades will run interviews or features once in a while about a campaign, but no one is doing so with the wide-angle lens I am. Not saying that to blow my own horn, just…OK, yes I am. I rock.

All in all I’ve had fun bringing MMM back from the dead, something that’s hopefully obvious by virtue of how I’ve written just a shade under 200 columns inside of a year. It wasn’t an easy decision to make but ultimately I feel like I’m doing good stuff. Your opinion may vary, but that’s cool. I have no intention of slowing down and I hope you enjoy the ride.