Image you put a lot of passion into creating your own Virtual Reality Project – wouldn’t you want a lot of people to see it and interact with it?
For his master thesis, Julian Leupold created an interactive 360° documentation on extreme athletes based on the VRdirect platform. However, he didn’t want his short movie to be a university project only but share it with the world.
The interactive short movie “Into the Sky” documents what drives a paraglider, an aerobatic pilot and a parachutist to risk their lives in breathtaking maneuvers. The audience can experience the maneuvers in a very realistic manner by interacting with them and deciding on the perspectives from which they want to experience them.
After finishing his documentation, Julian looked for ways to promote it in order to make it available to a broad audience.
To make it easier for you to decide which channels to use in order to reach the biggest possible audience with your Virtual Reality project, we created a list with 4 possibilities to easily promote your VR experience.
1. Social networks? Yes!
Indeed, it is one of the easiest ways to showcase your work on social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter. These networks enable you to share your content with a broad audience and by having your users interact with your posts, your messages get spread even further. At the same time it becomes possible to engage with the community and to easily get feedback from your users.
Bear in mind that social media channels can only play linear 360° video content without interactions. Therefore, create a video or screen capturing of your interactive 360° project, upload it to social media and link to the immersive experience via the caption.
To make sure that you reach the right audience, promote your social media posts with ads. All social media networks offer easy ways for page owners to create and publish ads and have very detailed targeting options available. This way, you can make sure that your ad reaches the people which are interested in your content and hence likely to interact with it.
Julian created a dedicated Facebook Page for “Into the Sky”. He used it to announce the release of his project through a trailer on Facebook two weeks before the actual movie went live in order to arouse curiosity and generate interest. Moreover, he shared photos and press articles on his page and a regular video of the documentation.
2. Your own Virtual Reality App
A branded Virtual Reality app which only holds your content has the advantage that users don’t get distracted by third-party content and that you can moreover drive people to using it by promoting the app, e.g. through app install ads on Facebook.
If a branded Virtual Reality app is not an option money-wise, the VRdirect App is probably the best way to go.
The VRdirect App enables anyone to easily make their Virtual Reality projects available to end-users, employees or partners without having to develop their own app.
VR projects can be accessed via keyword, code or link and be permanently stored in the VRdirect App with just one click. Thus, a personalized Virtual Reality library can be created in no time.
Virtual Reality projects distributed via the VRdirect App can be created with the VRdirect Studio, our authoring and publishing platform. The experiences are instantly available on iOS, Android, Daydream and Oculus Go:
3. Competitions and other collaborations
Build awareness for your project through innovation contests.
Entering a contest helps your work to get seen by more people and to reach audiences which you normally wouldn’t be able to address. Look for contests which best fit your topic and which have a good reputation.
Another way to broaden your audience is to get featured by media companies and blogs. In Julian’s case, the Augsburger Allgemeine, a well-known newspaper published an article on “Into the Sky”. Moreover, Julian showcased his project at the work exhibition at his university. And also the skydiving school he collaborated with published the spot on its social media networks which also generated a lot of traffic.
4. Word of mouth
Speak about your Virtual Reality project!
Word of mouth might not lead to the biggest rise of your reach but recommendations by business partners, friends or family are still the most trusted source of information. People are more likely to talk about something from a trusted source because it signals credibility. Word of mouth is a free form of advertisement or promotion, shared by customers. It works to build an engaged fan base and encourages people to spread more information about your project.
Julian for example created a wide network of people in favour of his short movie thanks to his cooperation partners.
The Into the Sky App is available for iOS, Android and Oculus. Take a look!
Now you are best prepared to promote your Virtual Reality project. And if you haven’t started yet but would like to create your own interactive Virtual Reality project, start your free trial today or schedule a call with one of our experts to get to know more about your own Virtual Reality project.
