So.  You’re an actor.  Or a dancer.  Or a comedian. Maybe you’re a spoken word artist.

You need to promote yourself.  Of course, you know that you should use every tool available to do so.  You’ve got your resume, and a good cover letter (and you’ve slaved over both of them to get them just right).   You’re taking courses.  You’re going to as many auditions as you can.  You’re writing letters.

But are you using the Internet?

Many actors forget to use the internet as a tool for self promotion.  When you think about it, it does make sense to use it.  After all, Googling is something that we all do.  If you want to find out about a company you want to work at, you Google them.  If you are curious about someone you’ve recently met, you might Google them too.  Why would you not try to take advantage of this?

If you want someone to be able to successfully Google you, you need to have a web presence.

That is what I want to help you do here.

This site will be used to teach you how you can a) set up your own web presence, b) use it successsfully and c) keep people coming back to your site.

There is one step that’s most important.  So important that you shouldn’t wait for another second before you do it.  Buy your domain name now.  Before you worry about doing anything else on the internet, you should buy your domain name.  Purchase your name with a .com, or a .net extension.  If you can, buy the .com.  Over time the .com extension has become the most popular, so I’d recommend that this is what you try to obtain.  Buy yourfirstnameyourlastname.com (ie: joesmith.com).  You might want to differentiate between them and place a dash between the two (joe-smith.com).  Get whichever one you think looks better.

Where should you buy the domain?  There are a lot of places.  You could buy from a Register.com, Godaddy, or any one of the many vendors out there.  For a lot of actors though, price is a factor.  Some domain vendors will charge between $25 and $45 US for domains.  For the price of domain registration alone, I recommend using Netfirms for your domain registration.  At $9.95 CDN, their price is one of the best (that’s just my opinion).

So.  Go now and buy your name.  We’ll talk about what you can do for your web site in a future post.

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Did you buy your domain name?  If not, that’s ok, there’s still time.  You can do it now.  I’ll wait.

——————–

So.  Now you’ve got a name…what can you do with it?

The not very helpful (but very vague) answer is: whatever you want to do.  However, you probably want something more substantial.

I’m going to assume for a moment that you are a complete beginner, and have no idea about what your options are.

Let me take a moment to clarify some terminology that I will be using: what you are going to have is a web site.  That’s a given. There are several different kinds of web site that you can have:
static, dynamic, and a blog.

• A static web site is a site built with an HTML editor such as Frontpage, Dreamweaver, HTML kit, Nvu
  or any one of many programs.  With a static web site, you will build the individual web pages on your computer and publish them to your webspace (provided by a host, which we’ll get to in a later post).  Any time you want to make a change to a page, you will need to edit the page on your computer and then publish the page to your webspace.
• A dynamic web site is a site that is powered by a Content Management System (CMS).  There are several free Content Management Systems that are available to you, such as Joomla, Droopal, Xaraya, and others.
  A CMS is normally powered by a database, which allows the system to take content that you enter and place it in your site template, which saves you from having to recreate a new page whenever you want to add or edit a page.  This simplifies the process of adding to your web site.
• A blog is a web site which acts as an online journal (a web log, shortened to blog in common internet language).  There are several different ways to have a blog.  You can use a service like Livejournal or Blogger, or you could install your own blog system such as Moveable Type, WordPress, or Greymatter.  A blog is another dynamic system (much like the Content Management Systems discussed above), but with slightly fewer options.

You can also have a combination.  You might have a static web site that incorporates a blog.  Or even a dynamic site that includes a blog.

I have my own personal preferences.  For blogging, I recommend WordPress, which is probably one of the most popular blogging systems available. Its popular because its easy to install and easy to use.  For Dynamic sites, I prefer Joomla, which I find has the most usability out of the box.  It is possible, with both
Wordpress and Joomla to have an attractive looking site without any knowledge of HTML or other programming language.  Both have many templates available that you can use for free (free is always good).

Next time,we’ll talk about choosing a host for your web site.

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Once you’ve decided what kind of site you want to have, you’ll need to find a host for your site.

Just like with domain registration, there are many thousands of options. Type “web host” into Google, and you will get about 210,000,000 results.  You’ll need to do some research to find the host that’s best for you.

Once thing I’m going to say here: you will need to pay for reliable hosting.  There are many services which will offer free hosting, but in all cases, a free host will place banner ads on your web site, which will interfere with the look of your site and and doesn’t look professional.

Most hosts charge on a yearly basis.  Some will charge on a monthly basis, but if you don’t want to worry about making a payment every month, paying for the year will really be in your best interest.  You can expect to pay about $100/year at a minimum.  This may seem a lot up front, but consider that you are paying for 12 months, and it seems a lot cheaper.

Now, on to things to consider:

If you want to create a static web site, almost any host will do.  Any web host can accomodate HTML pages and images (which is what a static site is composed of).

If you want to use a blogging application (like WordPress) or a CMS (like Joomla), you will need a host that supports and provides PHP and MySQL.  PHP is a programming language and MySQL is the database system that these applications use.  Remember, you don’t need to know the programming language.  This is just what these applications are made with.  All you need to know is whether your host can support them.  A couple of hosts that support these: Netfirms and Dreamhost.

Another thing you want to look at: reliability.  See what people are saying about the host you are looking at.  Type the name of the host into google and find out what people have written about them.  Check out hosting review sites and see how the host rates.  If you like what you see, then sign up for the host.  Remember, though: that you should probably look at more than one review.  At one time of another, every host gets a bad review from someone who had a bad experience.  Don’t take advice from the first place you find it.  Make sure you get a second or third opinion.

Don’t rush into your decision.  Don’t let anyone else rush you into your decision.  Once you’re comfortable with the host, sign up and pay for the hosting.  We can then look at setting up some different web sites and how you might go about it.

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Previously, I mentioned blogging as an option for your web site. Lets assume for a moment that you have no idea what a blog is, so I can make sure that we’re all on the same page.

Wikipedia describes a blog like this:

A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.
Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

You’ve probably seen a blog or two. Livejournal, for example, is a blogging community. BoingBoing is a popular blog that features interesting objects, articles, images and videos. Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: TNG fame) has a very popular blog, which is read by thousands of people every day.

So. A blog is your online journal. You can write anything you like, post as often as you like, and cover any topic that you like.

You might ask why you’d want to keep a public journal like this. There are several reasons: As a promotional tool, keeping a blog lets people find out what you are doing. It can save you the annoyance of having to send an e-mail to everyone you know each time you have a project you want to promote. Even more importantly, the blog lets people who aren’t on your email list find out about the project. Of course, as a performer or artist, you want people to find out about your work. You want people to see you perform. You can build interest, not only by talking about the project when its about to open. But also by talking about the process. You might want to talk about interesting things that happen in rehearsal, or things you come across in your research. Even when you are not promoting a project, your blog will let people follow what you are working on and planning on working on.

When you are writing the blog, you should ensure that you are writing in your voice. Don’t put on a character. Don’t try to sound cool. The blog is your journal, so it should sound like you. As well, don’t be afraid to have an opinion. By all means, talk outside of just your career and projects. Talk about politics, business, religion, thoughts you think about on the bus. Anything at all. That said (and trust me, you want to pay attention to this), don’t go slagging people. There’s a difference between talking about a difficult day at rehearsal, and slagging other actors or the director. One is completely understandable, the other will cost you friends and likely work in the future. There can be a fine line. So know when not to go into detail.

There are different ways to create your blog. You can use what’s called a hosted service like Livejournal or Blogger. These services are hosted at the service’s web site and publish and your postings are located there as well. With Blogger, it is possible to publish the blog to your site (external to blogger) or to host the blog at their ‘blogspot.com” service. If you decide to host with blogspot, your address will be something like yourname.blogspot.com. Likewise, if you use Livejournal’s free service, your address would be yourname.livejournal.com. If you pay for their service, you can point your domain name to them and have your blog be at joesmith.com.

If you bought your domain name, nad you want to get hosting for your site, look for something with MySQL and PHP and set up your own blog, using something like WordPress. For the last several years, WordPress has been the blogging application of choice for many people, for a few reasons:

1. Its easy to use.
2. Its reliable.
3. Its highly configurable.
4. Its free.

Instead of using a standard theme, there are thousands of free themes available for WordPress at themes.wordpress.net. Having so many themes available lets you find the look that’s right for you. There are also plugins that you can use to add features and functionality to your blog. I’ll go into details on using these in another post.

Another blogging application that you might choose to use is Moveable Type. Although its difficult to find on their site, there is a free version of Moveable Type, which you can find here. Though there are templates available for Moveable Type, there are far fewer than for WordPress. As well, MT doesn’t have a simple way to add plugins the way that WordPress does. However, once its installed, its relatively simple to use.

I’m not going to go into the specifics about installing these applications in this post. The installation process is well covered in the documentation for the applications and on their web sites. I may go into it in detail in a future post, however (if the need is there).

Now you know a little about Blogging. If you want to see more blogs in action, I’d recommend taking a look at these popular blogs:

www.wilwheaton.net
www.neilgaiman.com/journal/
www.boingboing.net

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Right now, I’m going to talk about something that you will probably
have to do at least once, if you want to  make your own site. 

This particular post, is for the “newbies”.  Those of you who are
familiar with the whole uploading thing…go have a coffee.  I’ll cover
something for you another day.

When you upload files to your web host, you will use a program called an “FTP program”.  FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of programs you can choose from.  I’m going to suggest a free program called FileZilla.

Using FileZilla, I’m going to take you through the process of
connecting to your host, finding your files on your computer and
uploading to your site.

First, and overview of the Filezilla interface. 

If you click on the image to the right, it will open in a new window.

Don’t get scared. 

At the very top, you’ll see a series of icons, and to the right of
that, four entry fields for address, username, password and port.  This
is where you will enter the login information for your web hosting
account. 

On the left hand side of the program, is the “local site” section. 
This represents your computer and the files on it.  There are two
sections.  Let’s take a closer look:

The top section. is a series of folders, with plus signs beside
them.  This is what is known as the “folder tree” for your computer. 
This is for navigation through your computer.   You won’t use this
section for uploading.  This is a great way to get through several
folders to where you have your files stored.  Assuming that your hard
drive is called C: (and you are using a Windows Computer).  You’ll want to go to C:\Documents and Settings\your name. 
You might have your files stored in a folder on the Desktop, in which
case you’ll go to C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Desktop.  If you
put it in a folder in the My Documents folder you’ll go to C:\Documents
and Settings\your name\My Documents.  When you click on a folder in the
top section, you will see the contents of that folder in the bottom
section (both sections are pictured above).

Take a look to the right side of the screen (directly beside the
left side that we’ve just looked at.  This is where your files at your
host will be located.  Right now, since we aren’t connected, you
shouldn’t see anything here.  When you are connected, it will simply be
a matter of dragging your files from the left-hand side over to the
right hand side.  What could be easier than that?

These are the two most important sections.  You don’t really need to know much else.  However, for completeness, I’ll go over the other sections that matter.

Now, take a look below the two sections we’ve already talked about.  You’ll see the section I will refer to as the queue.

 This section should be blank right now.  But when you have
connected and dragged files to the right-hand side, the names of the
files will appear here, as well as an indication of the uploading
status. 

Directly above the “local site” (left-hand) and the “remote site”
(right-hand) sections, you’ll see a blank section. This will contain
the server responses.  For the most part, you will be able to ignore
these sections.  But watching this section will show you any problems
that might occur, and will help you know if you have been disconnected.

This will be easiser to under stand if we see it all in action,
so let’s login. You will need to know your address, username and
password.  Most hosts will provide this for you almost immediately
after you sign up.  In the address field, you will enter your FTP
address.   In the username field, you’ll enter your user name.  And in
the password field, you’ll enter your password.  Makes sense, right?  
If you don’t know any of these, you’ll really need to contact your host
to get it.  Once you’ve entered this information, click the “Quickconnect” button. 

Wait.  What about the port field?  You shouldn’t have to
enter anything here.  Unless your host is somewhat unusual, they will
use port number 21, which is standard for FTP.  In which case, the port
number will automatically fill itself in when you click the
Quickconnect button.

As you are connecting, you will see some text in the
Response are scroll by.  This may happen very quickly.  Don’t worry. 
Just pay attention to the colours.  If you see any red text, take a
look at what this says, because that is an error message.  If you don’t
see any red, that’s good!  Its working.  Once you are connected, you’ll
see quite a change in the Remote site section.

Here’s where you need more information from your host.  You need to
know where you will put your files.  With some hosts, you’ll see a
folder as soon as you login that has your domain name (yourname.com). 
With others you’ll see a folder called www or public_html.  Chances
are, this information is found in the email that your host sent to you
when you signed up.  Open whatever folder you are supposed to place
your files in, and then pay attention to the local site section (left
side).  Locate the folder with your files and open it on the left
side.  You want to see the files for your site in the lower portion of
the local site section.  
It should looks something like the image to the right.  I’d like to
draw your attention to the folder that doesn’t have a name.  Beside it,
you should see two periods (..).  This is not an actual folder.  If you
are inside a folder, you can click this to go up one level.  For
example, if you opened the images folder seen in the image above, and
then wanted to go back to the main folder (where you index file is),
you would just double-click the nameless folder.

Click once on one file to highlight it.  Then, on your keyboard,
hold down the CTRL + A keys.  This will highlight all of the files and
folders you see. 

Turn your attention to the remote site section, and make sure you
are in the location where your files are supposed to go (inside the
yourname.com folder, or the www folder or the public_html folder - once
again, if you aren’t sure contact your host).

With your mouse, drag the files from the local side to the remote
side and let them go.  You will see some action in the queue, showing
the upload progress.  Once a file is uploaded, it will remove itself
from the queue.  Once all the files are uploaded, the queue will be
empty and you are finished uploading. 

You’re done!  Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

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Let’s assume for a moment, that you have a web site.  Now, you are asking yourself, how you get visitors to your site.

Believe me, that’s a question that people have been asking since the first web sites were built.  However, you’re not looking for thousands of visitors. You just want people who might give you work to find you
your web site.

The first step in making that happen, is to make sure you put your domain name on everything.
It should be on your resume. It should be on every cover letter you send.  It should be in your email signature.  And speaking of email: make sure that you are always sending mail from the email address at
your domain (you@yourname.com).   The reason for this is two-fold: 1) it looks more professional than actorguy8569@hawtmail.com and 2) it contains your domain name, which encourages people to visit your site.

As an actor, you’re probably thinking more about promoting yourself in the “professional” world: to agents, casting directors, artistic directors and the like.  And that is a big part of your web site.  You are promoting yourself to the people who can (and hopefully will) give you work.  By putting  your domain name on everything you send out, and by sending all your email with your you@yourname.com address, you’re increasing the chances that one of these people will come to look at your site.

But, if that’s all you want to do, you’re missing the chance for something else: some measure of fame.
I’m not talking about being photographed by paparazzi while you’re at the hairdresser kind of fame.  I’m just talking about having your name known outside of your circle of friends and family.  You can have “fans” or regular site visitors, from all over the world.  People who will come to see you in that small film role, watch you on that TV show you did an episode for, or even go a little out of their way to see you in that show that’s touring in Northen Manitoba (or wherever).  So, how do you get these loyal visitors?

Before you can get visitors, they have to be able to find you.  Which means that you have to get your site “out there” for them to find.  And that’s done with two words:  Goo.  Gle.

Back just a few years ago, there were many search engines on which to find web sites.  Everyone had their favourite, and if you wanted to reach the largest segment of people, you had to submit your site to all
of them.  Now, there’s pretty much one place that an internet user goes to search:  Google.  Yes, you can submit your site to Yahoo and MSN as well.  It can’t hurt.  But if you don’t submit to Google, you’re probably missing the largest opportunity for traffic.

Before you can submit your site to any search engine, you have to make sure that your site has the elements that it will need for the search to find them.  You need to make sure that your site has HTML tags for META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION.  For the more technical minded, these tags look like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”A description on your site”>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Keywords found in your site whereby each keyword is separated by a comma”>

If you are using Joomla or WordPress, don’t worry, I’ll teach you about how to get these in a future post.

A quick word about keywords:  don’t lie.  There are people who might suggest that you use words that don’t apply to your site in order to bring in more traffic.  There are two reasons why you shouldn’t listen to them: a) it doesn’t work and b) its dishonest.  If someone is looking for a web site about the new pokeman game, and you’re site comes up, they aren’t going to be happy about it.  Granted, this happens less and less these days, since most search engines have refined their search processes.  But its still a bad idea.  The
keywords are going to help the search engine to identify the search words that will return a result for your site.

Here’s how you submit your site to Google:

1. Go to www.google.com/addurl
2. Fill in the information requested.
3. Click the Add URL button.

Once that’s done, Google will index your site.  Every so often, the search engine will return to see if you have added pages.  This keeps the listing updated.  The search engine will do this on its own.  You don’t need to do anything.

Both Yahoo and MSN have a similar process for adding your site.

Now that you’re getting some visitors, you want to make sure that they have a reason to keep coming back.  There are a few ways to do that:

• Keep your web site up to date.  This may seem like a no brainer, but there are thousands of web sites that haven’t been updated in ages and are showing months old or even years old information.  This is an almost immediate turnoff for any visitor.
• Keep a blog.  I’ve discussed blogging previously.  But it is a great way to keep people coming back to your site, as well as keeping them up to date on the latest news.
• Have a photo gallery that you frequently update.  Make sure you get pictures from shows that you do, as well as any photo shoots you participate in.  And put them on your web site.
• Multimedia.  Any chance you get, make sure that you have clips of any film or television you’ve done (you might want to ensure that you have permission to use them on the web, since there’s been a
  lot of to-do about that of late).  As well, you may also want to create audio clips.  Or you can go one step further and create a podcast (I’ll go into that more in another post).

All of the above are great ways to keep your visitors coming back to your site.

By submitting using your domain name at every opportunity, submitting your site to search engines, and giving your visitors a reason to come back to your site regularly, you will increase your chances for successful self-promotion, but may also find “fans” in places you never thought possible.

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Chances are, that someone out there is Googling your name. Maybe they are a potential employer (casting director, agent, director, Artistic director, etc). Maybe its somone who saw you in a recent production and is curious about your past work.

What do they find? What comes up at Google when your name is searched?

If you’re not sure, go now and try it.

—————–

What did you find? Did you get the results that you would like to see when someone searches for your name? Are you happy with the information that appears?

If you are like most actors, there are a couple of news articles that come up that mention your name, or your name appears on the web site of a theatre company that you worked with.

Take a look at the first item that appears in your google search results. Does that result represent how you want to be portrayed?

For about 99% of people online, it doesn’t.

Let’s see what you can do about that, shall we? Here are some steps on how to take control of your online identity:

1. Get your domain name. This isn’t expensive. In fact, its pretty cheap. You can get a domain name for as low as $9.95/year from www.netfirms.ca. There are other registrars that will sell you a domain for a similarly
low price. Truthfully, there is no better investment in creating your online identity than yourname.com, or even .net, .ca or…whatever is available. If the .com is available, grab that. I covered more about this in this article.

2. Be selective about what goes on your site. Carefully decide what information to put on the site. Do not put your phone number, your address, or social insurance info. Since you are a performer, make sure you do
put your acting credits, upcoming events, biography and photos online. Obviously (presumably this is obvious, anyway), you don’t want to put anything embarrassing online. You want to be in control, so before you put that picture of that one time you did that nude scene, ask yourself: Would I want my mother to see this?

3. Link to your site, using your name. Having the domain name with your name (eg: yourname.com) helps a lot, but that’s not all you need to do. Make sure that those linking to your site link with your name. For example, the author is at philrickaby.com, however, the more effective way to link would be to link with the author’s name: Phil Rickaby. This helps a search engine like Google associate your name with your address. If other actors link to your web site, ask them to link your name rather than your address. If you work with a theatre company, ask them to link your name to your address. This will help to increase the likelyhood that a search for your name will return your web site.

If the first site that appears in a Google Search is your site, the site that displays the content that you want
it to display, then you are in control of your online identity. After all, remember that the majority of people who perform a search online don’t look past the first page, let alone the first returned item.

By following the steps above, you have a better chance of controlling what the first impression of you is (speaking from an online point of view, that is).

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The other day, I was talking with Siobhan Richardson about her blog, and she mentioned that sometimes she wonders how much to talk about in her posts.  Specifically, how to deal with ideas.

I think it depends on the idea.  Or rather, it depends on the product.  If you are a writer, the your product is your story, so you are not going to post the details of that story in your blog.  But if you happen to be an actor then you are the product.  Describing how you went about researching a character or perhaps a specific technique that you’ve found working for you doesn’t diminish your product.  Its something that leads back to you.  Someone might find your insight helpful, and when they next encounter a similar situation, they might think “I remember when I read about this on [your name]‘s blog.”  The I remember reading this statement becomes even more important if you are a director, or like Siobhan, a fight director (or any of the many theatre-related professions where a particular expertise is needed).   Sharing an insight or an idea directly related to what you do does not diminish your product.  Speaking of a technique you’ve developed for, say, bringing out the acting in stage combat simply puts the idea out there.  No one else will be able to take your idea and implement it in quite the same way you do, because its yours.

Keeping your ideas to yourself doesn’t help you get the word out about what you do and who you are.  It helps you build your personal brand by letting others know of your expertise and what makes you unique.  The shared idea isn’t really something anyone can steal from you, but even though you’ve spoken of it, its your idea, and only you have the experience that brings the idea to life.  A reader might be able to take insight or inspiration from your blog post, but in the end, their interpretation will be their idea.  All you will have done is plant the seed.

Sharing is what makes the internet world work.  And its something that you can use to help people notice you.  Take the risk and share your ideas.  All you have to lose is the opportunity to have a reader remember you.

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Warning: I’m going to talk twitter.  Not about things that happened on twitter, but about twitter in general.

Let’s face a sad truth: most actors don’t have a publicist.  Heck, most actors don’t even have enough of a following to need one.  Most actors don’t have a following at all.  Using social media can help.  Oh sure, chances are that you won’t be the next Wil Wheaton, but you can gain a bit of a following.  And even more importantly, you can use social media to network with other actors and other industry types.

I’m going to skip over Facebook, since it seems that practically everyone on the planet is on Facebook, and those that aren’t have decided not to be for some very good reasons.  On the topic of Facebook, I will say this:  since “practically everyone on the planet” (if you’ll excuse the gross exaggeration) is on Facebook, refusing to make use of this social medium may limit your ability to connect with both other people in the business, and with people who might want to follow you.  Maybe I’ll cover this in another post.

But for the moment, I’ll cover Twitter.  To get the basics out of the way, wikipedia describes twitter as: a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

So why would you want to use a “microblogging” service that limits you to 140 characters? Isn’t there a massive signal to noise ratio problem?  Well, the honest truth is, yes.  But you control who you follow, and if someone annoys you, simply stop following them.  The benefits of the medium far outweigh the detriments.  A social medium like Twitter works best when it is considered a two-way communication.  That should be your goal: communication.  People who follow you will do so because they find you interesting.  The best way to keep them around is to be interesting (I know, no pressure).  So, how do you do that?

Well, first off, I’m not an expert.  I’m not a “Social Media Guru” (a phrase thrown around quite a bit these days), but I have been on twitter for three years, so I know what I like.  And more importantly, I know what I don’t like.  Here’s what I don’t like:

1. Over-sharing. Don’t share things that you wouldn’t share with acquaintances.  Or things that you wouldn’t want a potential employer to know.
2. Staying “on message”. There are a lot of politicians who try to use twitter, but fail because they don’t consider it a two-way communication.  Check out Jack Layton or Michael Ignatieff.  These two politicians use twitter as a broadcast, just sending words out into the ether, all of them words that stay on their political message.  There is no insight into the individuals behind them.  That makes for bad tweeting.
3. Infrequent updates. Just like a blog^*, you need to update often.  If you only update every week or so, I’ll forget about you.  Worse, there are many users who will purge tweeters that don’t update very often.  You need to make sure that you update regularly to keep you followers engaged.
4. Flooding. While it is important to update regularly, it is possible to over-tweet and essentially spam your followers.  Nothing is more annoying than a flood of tweets, especially if those tweets don’t present anything new.  Much as I love the Ontario Arts Council, their twitter feed tends to flood its followers.

As you can see, there’s a fine balance.  Tweet regularly, but not too much.  Don’t just broadcast but engage with your followers.  Retweet when you find something interesting that you want to share (its a way of saying “this is cool” about the person you’re re-tweeting).

So, why is this important?  I stated earlier that you could use twitter to build a following.  That’s true.  You can also use it to network with other actors/directors/people interested in theatre.  As a Canadian actor, you know that we don’t really have stars here. We don’t have a machine that makes people “famous”.  If you want to put the word out about the work you do, maybe get a bit of a following, you should use every tool you can.  And twitter is one such tool.

On its own, it won’t make you famous, but it could help.  And it definitely can’t hurt.

^* This is me, throwing stones at my glass house. Yes, I know I don’t update my blog as often as I should.

Posted in Self Promotion, Social Media, Web Stuff | No Comments »

Social media has a value to those who use it. That value is found only when we can connect with people. That’s why Facebook has become so successful. As a platform, Facebook’s strength is that…well, pretty much everyone you know is on there. If one was to try and leave Facebook and go to another social network, the major problem you would encounter would be the lack of people on the new network. A social network needs people to be…well, social. Since Facebook has the people, it has a value that no other social network can match.

The problem with Facebook is the high signal to noise ratio.  You have all those people you friended because you felt bad about saying no, and all those people who are acquaintances but whom you don’t know very well, and those people who didn’t like you in high school but friended you anyway so you friended them back because…wait, why did you do that again?  Then there are the apps.  The apps that clutter up your wall, the apps that share you information with…well who its being shared with isn’t really clear, is it?  Then there’s all that abysmal privacy stuff.

I would leave facebook, if there was a clear alternative.

But that thought got me thinking.  What is the value of the social networks I belong to to me as an artist?  Aside from Facebook, what do I use sites like Twitter or Linkedin for? I mostly use twitter to either follow people I find interesting (celebrities and authors) as well as industry people (actors, directors, theatre companies, etc).  Linkedin was originally used for keeping me linked to theatre-people that I had worked with, or were in my circle.  However, as time went on, people from my Day Job^tm started to find their way onto my profile.  Now, people from the day job outnumber the entertainment people on Linked in.  That’s not a bad thing, its just not what I intended.

If there was a viable social network that was aimed at just people in the entertainment industry, I would join it.  I don’t think I would completely ditch Facebook though. It has its uses socially.  But I would probably lock down my facebook profile, make it non-searchable, and cull some of those people I really don’t know, and start a “page” to connect with people that I don’t know (I feel kind of weird about having a “fan page” considering I don’t really have “fans”, but wth).  That way I’d still have the connection with friends, but I could move my professional connections over to the new platform.

Would it be possible to have some social network just for people in the entertainment industry?  Its possible that I could create a social network using Open Source software that could be intended for people in the Entertainment industry.   The software to do this exists right now in the form of Elgg, or  maybe Diaspora (provided that’s something installable) when its completed.  The problem in starting such a thing up, would be the whole issue of what makes a social network valuable: people. It would take time to grow, and if people did join, it could only be valuable to them if they invited their fellow colleagues as well.

So, I pose the question to other people in the entertainment industry: do you find Facebook useful professionally?  Would you use a social network focused on actors, directors, writers, casting directors, etc?

Posted in Social Media, Theatre | 2 Comments »