TOP 10 WAYS TO CREATE AN ACTING CAREER: THE SOCIAL MEDIA WAY-PART I

Top ten lists seems to work for David Letterman.

So I figured why not give an acting career a top ten list using the top ten social media best practices? According to Career Builder, social media is crucial to the recruiting process on any corporate level. As actors we are constantly seeking to be recruited as opposed to doing the recruiting (seeking representation aside). Social media practices can seem foreign to many people who aren’t familiar with what it has to offer. I decided to explore Career Builder’s suggestions and apply them to an acting career.

1. SET A GOAL- What do you want? If you just want to be famous, do something stupid and spread it all over the internet. If you want to build a career, decide specifics for yourself in terms of how you want to market yourself. Setting a clear goal for yourself is key before you jump into this often times unrewarding career. Having a goal that you’re always striving to achieve, will help prevent you from losing focus or getting distracted by the low moments that you’ll inevitably face.

2. MASTER ONE MEDIUM- Building a strong profile on Actors Access is a great place to start. Actors Access is not only a popular source of talent for casting directors, but it’s also widely used among managers and agents. Keeping your profile updated and complete is incredibly important. Putting too much information is even better. The more specific information provided about yourself, the less likely casting directors will pass over you as they search for that one specific talent or look.

3. MANAGE YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION- Beefing up your SPECIAL SKILLS on your resume or sharing with your different networks on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter about a job you just booked or an audition you nailed is so smart. The more people that know what you’re doing and how well you’re doing it, the better. Word of mouth isn’t a myth. It’s real. People love to tell other people about the cool happenings of the people they know. So don’t be shy. Talk about yourself! Doing it on social networking sites will spread your word faster and to more people.

4. CREATE A USER EXPERIENCE- Build a fan-base. For every job you book, you have to create that buzz for yourself. Same thing applies to your auditions. Every time a casting director meets you, you want them to become a fan. This will build a lasting and supportive relationship.

5. LISTEN, LEARN, AND ENGAGE- Actors naturally tend to listen to our audience. We can always gauge how well a performance is going based on that instant feedback or instant gratification… the applause. The same must apply when you’re not on stage or on set. Listen when the phone isn’t ringing. take it in, examine what’s going on, and do something. Trust that you’re a part of an indutsry that is cut throat for a reason, therefore engage so you can develop in new ways.

TOP 10 WAYS TO CREATE AN ACTING CAREER: THE SOCIAL MEDIA WAY-PART II

Here are the last few social media best practices that coincide with building an acting career. I hope you’re coming up with new ways for yourself as you’ve been reading. What works for one person, may not work for the next.

6. HIGHLIGHT SPECIFIC JOBS- I’ve always felt that the people who are in decision making positions in this industry, lack imagination. So you have to show people and tell people what specifically you can do. People stop listening when you say you can do it all… “If I gain 30lbs. and you put a gray wig on me I could play a grandma.” Why bother imagining something like that when there are thousands of people in this town who fit that same description, that can be here in twenty minutes to audition? Be specific and stick to your specific highlights.

7. VISUALLY STIMULATE- This is the number one way to stand out. Seek the best pictures. Spend the money and get the best. If you put forth half efforts into your company, you will achieve maybe half of your goals. Also, seek the best quality for your reel. This is your shot to prove you belong in front of the camera.

Image via Wikipedia

8. BOOST YOUR RANKINGS- The Internet Movie Database is a prime example for boosting your rankings. The more people who view your profile on this site, the lower your starmeter is. To put this into perspective, Emma Watson’s starmeter is 1. This means she has a high level of public awareness or interest and more people are clicking her profile than any other celebrity. My starmeter is 49,449…huge difference in click traffic!

9. PREPARE TO CHANGE- Social media is evolving so quickly and most people aren’t even sure what will really stick. Try out many different sites so you can be everywhere, no matter which site gets stale.

10. PROMOTION- Let people know where you are on these social networking sites. Add it on your resume, your website, and email messages. Promoting doesn’t end once you’ve created a profile. It never ends.

If you take on each of these best practices it would take a tremendous amount of courage and risk. Literally putting yourself out there in such an exposed way is challenging and scary, so do it. Put yourself out there as if today was your first day you decided you wanted a career as an actor.

ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE

New social media offers specific tools for corporate communicators, PR professionals, and investor relations professionals to get there message out quickly and effectively through engaging and brief online video demos. In the social media world, these demonstrations must draw the consumer in and keep them engaged enough to want to buy their products.  In a recent post titled You Are Your Own Company, I stressed the importance of actors treating themselves like a company and they are the CEO. We are the product so the messaging must be clear and concise, and the branding has to be on target with what you’re trying to “sell”. This doesn’t mean you sit back and let social media do all of the work. Social media can help but there is plenty more you can do for yourself before social media can show progress.

In my last post, Staying Connected, I was able to introduce SpeedReels to you and just one of the many services they provide. Another cool service SpeedReels offers allows industry professionals to get their reels viewed by as many people online. This is their title feature, the speed reel. It’s a 60 second or less version of your full reel, which is comparable to the video demo I mentioned before. In terms of the entertainment industry, no one wants to take the time out of their day to view a reel! Now this  is a broad generalization, but believe me it’s true. You may recall in a recent post, when I mentioned that it is very hard to gain the attention of a casting director, agent, or manager, but if you have a trailer size version of your reel that you could email directly to them, you’re almost guaranteed they will view it. Take a look at my personal SpeedReel to get the gist!

In an interview with the  owner of SpeedReels, Matt Draper, he goes in depth about the quality you should seek for your speed reel. The advice he offers is really helpful and falls right in line with social media tactics.

STAYING CONNECTED

Most people are aware that the center of the entertainment universe is Hollywood. But in recent years major cities like Toronto, New York, and New Orleans have become entertainment hubs for television and film. As a Los Angeles based actress it can be extremely disconcerting when a role is being cast in New York. Granted, most times for larger projects, casting is being held on both coasts. However, I have lost out on several opportunities in the past due to distance. A key social media theme is connectedness. With distance being an issue sometimes, staying connected may feel difficult.

SpeedReels, a fully interactive service for actors helps solve this problem by allowing actors the opportunity to audition for projects being cast on another coast. Some casting directors will accept “self-taped” auditions. Every actor should take this opportunity but make sure you do it professionally. I can’t imagine some of the low-budget auditions some casting directors may see with actors recording their audition in their bathroom!

The process is very simple. They tape your audition, you quickly choose a take, you next-day mail it or SpeedReels will email the link to the casting director via a service called  you-send-it. This way they can view it immediately. There have been times where I’ve ended up auditioning before they even held casting sessions. Unfortunately, not all casting directors are up to speed with what new social media has to offer. They end up refusing the link which is super fast, cheap, and convenient, and rather accept a next-day mailed package which is $35 bucks out of my pocket, plus the fear that it never even gets in their hands. Take a look at an audition SpeedReels taped for me so you can get the gist of what this service really has to offer. And REMEMBER… it’s just an audition, so be nice!

ARE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS REALLY THE ANSWER?

This week hasn’t been very encouraging. I’ve been running around asking a bunch of actors if they’ve actually booked jobs by using new social media tools. The responses haven’t been positive at all. Everyone seems to be so negative about whether these tools are actually helping. So negative, that I even began second guessing the effectiveness of this movement. I think the problem is these tools really can’t work without the “conversation”. If people aren’t engaging then your efforts as an actor remain one-way. Think of a blog with no posted comments. Or a podcast that no one listens to or calls into with comments or feedback. Or a fully loaded profile on a social networking site without any “friends”. This is what it feels like as an actor sometimes. There’s no conversation! If the highly sought after agents or managers would actually engage with actors by viewing reels that are online and post comments, this would be one simple way that actors could get direct feedback. Casting directors could make comments about the terrible headshots or even the effective ones that are on the casting sites. If I were a casting director I would want to weed out the actors that aren’t serious enough to clean up their profile. If actors could gauge how they’re doing and see where they stand, there would be such a difference in this industry.

Thanks to a good friend and fellow actor, Robert Manning, I found an answer!!! It’s called CAZT. This is the most innovative and encouraging discovery since I became a professional actor. Your agent calls you with an audition that’s being held at CAZT studios. Woo-hoo! She emails you the sides (the audition material). You learn the material. The next day you go to the audition at CAZT. They offer you an option to receive your audition through a link that you can upload when you get home… with the casting director’s notes! The reason why I’m so excited is because actors never get to know how they do on an audition. They guess and are tormented by the experience when they don’t hear anything. Now actors can start to learn from their auditions. 

This is a real way that social media can be a truly effective tool for actors. I hope this becomes the norm for all auditions.

YOU ARE YOUR OWN COMPANY…

I’ve been talking so much about NOT getting work, what about when you do? How can new social media help you then? Getting the word out about you and your project as well as building a fan-base for yourself is huge in this business. You need a following and sometimes you have to start it on your own. Laura Roeder of Roeder Studios, talks about the importance of effectively positioning your company. For actors, “we” are our own companies. So we need to position ourselves effectively in this town. In this interview with Roeder, she discusses one way of doing this.

It was so exciting when I found this next example of getting the word out. It represents everything that social media is all about, with community being at the top of the list. There was a small independent theatre company in Australia called Happy Soldiers. They wanted to get more people in the audience for a new play that was opening. They decided to advertise non-traditionally, by assuming that people will support a play if they know someone in it. With only two people in the production, you would think this would be a difficult task. Take a look at this super creative way of getting people to support a production, without advertising.

These ideas coupled with building networks of fans on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter will be incredibly effective. The idea is to reach as many people as possible with your talents and personality. You have to give yourself a shot, instead of waiting for someone else to give you one. So if it means immersing yourself on the web and exhausting every possible social media outlet, get on it!

REEL OPTIONS.

In my latest post, I mentioned a way of getting seen if you don’t necessarily have a reel yet. If you have some experience though, there are other useful tools that are a little more “outside the box”. Even though you may have a reel, sometimes a great way of promoting a new project is by showing casting directors the trailer (if it’s a film). This way they can still see you on camera and not only get a taste of your work but a preview of the film. Here is a recent trailer of a short film I starred in called US: A LOVE STORY. Uploading the trailer on YouTube may seem obvious but you would be surprised at how few people take advantage of this social media application.

Image via Wikipedia

Another way to beef up your reel is to keep it up to date. Every time you book something make sure you add it on your reel. I often hear actors make excuses about why their scene from a prime time television show isn’t included in their reel… “They couldn’t record it from their DVR”, etc… This past December, a TV holiday movie that I was in, premiered on the Hallmark Channel and I ran into this same problem. A great friend and fellow actor, David Green, suggested I go to EditPlus, a company that focuses on editing for entertainment professionals. EditPlus does way more than editing. All I had to do was provide the date and time my show was airing and they recorded the show onto a DVD for me, as well as a link that can be emailed to anyone that requests it.

There are so many social media resources out there for actors to take advantage of. In some upcoming articles I plan to introduce a few others. You do need more than a reel to be an actor. It certainly serves as an ideal business card though.

ARE YOU THE REEL DEAL?

Image via Wikipedia

There are so many people who come to Hollywood saying “They wanna be an actor”. I’ve been living here for four years now and I swear I meet a new person everyday that says they are an actor. The postal workers, police officers, car insurance agents, you name it, and more than likely their “real” job is an actor. But how many of these people are really actors? I believe if you:

1. are not auditioning
2. aren’t in class
3. don’t have a reel
4. don’t have an agent or manager
5. aren’t a member of SAG or AFTRA

BONUS*** aren’t actively marketing or promoting yourself!

then you are not an actor. I hate to be harsh but there are too many people in this town claiming to be actors who aren’t doing anything except waiting for a career to be handed to them. Last week I talked about skill clips which can be useful for actors to get a few more auditions. This week I want to talk about the power of having a reel. Now granted, getting an agent or manager or casting director to actually sit down and watch your reel is a feat in itself. Shame on you though, if one day they ask to see it and you’re not prepared. I’m originally from New York and  I am very familiar with many of the casting directors there. Often times I will get a call or email with a request to see my reel. One awesome way I can show it to them immediately is through Actors Access. I have a profile which includes extra features like my resume, photos, and a reel. All I have to do is email the casting director my profile and they can view it.

Actors Access also has a feature for actors who don’t have a reel yet. It’s called an Actor’s Slate. It’s a short video of you talking about yourself. This gives a casting director an idea of your personality. An example of an effective Actor’s Slate is of Kurt Quinn. I have never met this guy but you know exactly who would be walking through the door if you called him in for an audition. The quality of the video isn’t bad. You can hear him clearly. He appears to be confident. He plays on his strengths. And he is kind of funny.

Even though actors rarely feel like they have any control of their careers, we are the only ones who have it. No one is going to care more about your career than you, so utilizing all of the tools available is key. New social media is changing the way we get seen. Explore what’s out there!

AN INDUSTRY EDGE…

So you say you can  juggle eh? Well prove it! Many times actors would love the shot to prove that they’re really perfect for a part, and they never even get in the door. I remember auditioning for a film last year about a women’s high school track team. My agent asked me if I could hurdle and I laughed. I said… “OF COURSE I CAN HURDLE AND I’M SUPER FAST!” If only I had the opportunity to prove it. I knew if they saw me hurdling, I would instantly be called in to audition.

Casting Networks recently started featuring a page on their site called skill clips where a casting director can review an actor’s resume, scroll down to SPECIAL SKILLS, and  click on any skill to see a clip of the actor performing it. This will not only save the casting director time from bringing in one hundred actors who all say they can skateboard, but it also gives the actors with special skills an industry edge.

I certainly think it will be a while before casting directors fully rely on new social media to enable their casting process. However, I wholeheartedly feel that it is an actor’s responsibility to utilize every social media resource. Casting Networks, Actors Access, and Now Casting are great places to start. If the tools are out there, actors must use them because in this game, every ounce of opportunity and exposure is all part of that industry edge I have been talking about. There are so many actors who are offering the same talents, beauty, or persistence, so you must separate yourself in other ways.