Day 81: Pick-a-Little Talk-a-Little

Hello beautiful people!

Let’s get on-brand with social media!

It’s no surprise that people can have wildly different experiences with the various social media platforms. When Periscope first launched, I was on cloud nine, broadcasting at least once every 24 hours. This helped me grow my business simply by being early to the party, being phenomenal at selectively-interactive extemporaneous speaking, and being consistent. I encouraged a few friends of mine who also run small businesses to get on board the Periscope train… and while one found the experience to add to her business growth somewhat, most couldn’t “click” with their buyers or found the whole experience to be frustratingly off-brand.

This is happening again in 2021 with Clubhouse. EVERY time I open my mouth on a stage at Clubhouse, I get ~50 new followers at Instagram, a dozen new sign-ups to my mailing list, and Self-Management for Actors goes back into the top 10 at Amazon. Every. Time. I. Speak. At. Clubhouse. Finding platforms that align with not only our strengths but also with our audience’s needs is fun and profitable. Frustrating yourself that it’s not working that way FOR YOU just means you’ve tried to mimic someone else’s social media life, to make their buyers and targets into your own, and if I’ve taught you nothing about how TARGETING is everything… um… why do you keep frustrating yourself like that?

It’s good that there are different types of social media out there! We’re not meant to be amazing at every possible style of tech-connection available to us. Heck, for some of us, it may be off-brand to use any of it! While we always must be Googleable in this business (yes, even if “mystique” is your primary Fascinate advantage [Day 39]), it’s important to find social media outlets that align with our most castable brand!

I’ve always loved this lighthearted look at social media platforms through donuts. Hee hee! There are many other versions of this list out there… such as newer ones including Snapchat and Periscope, older ones with Vine and Meerkat, and ones that don’t use donuts of course! I wanted to show this off though because this second list below is really appropriate for how actors in particular tend to fail at social networking. They see everything as a portal for selling themselves to potential buyers. No. Nooooooooo. No, no, no. They ingratiate themselves rather than being of service. They repel buyers because they always appear to be selling… when it’d be so much better if they’d just look like a solution out there living the dream!

Click to enbiggen.

Click to enbiggen.Oh, and while I’m sharing images, here’s that subscription hierarchy again from Day 53. The reason I love this one is because some jackass marketing person who tries to sell tips to actors has decided that “every actor needs an email newsletter” since email subscribers are the most valuable type of subscriber. Nope. Again… no. Nooooooooo. No, no, no. Your most valuable subscriber may be someone watching your YouTube vids! Because what you are “selling” is your content, your consistency, your brand as a performer (and hyphenate), your ability to write a powerfully effective email about your latest breakthrough in acting class, your redesigned website, the agent you just landed, or that rerun of the one-line co-star you’re so excited about is nowhere near as effective at getting the job done as a 30-second on-brand clip you fling up at YouTube every week!

Certainly, if you love writing email newsletters and you’re as prolific as, say, ME, when it comes to output, build that subscriber base and treat them like the gold that they are! Be ridiculously consistent in what you put out (unless your brand requires that you confuse the hell out of people and always keep ’em guessing) and have a blast with what you put together. But seeing as there are probably very few next-tier agents, managers, casting directors, producers, showrunners, directors, and writers clamoring to sign up for your MailChimp blast, the anxiety you may feel about putting all that together is wasted energy. Hooray! One less thing!

Today is all about getting more mindful, purposeful, and strategic with our use of social media. Creator, not consumer. If you’ve got an hour to spare, Gary Vaynerchuk’s 2011 talk at the SAG Foundation here is really fantastic. Gary Vee is all about the long game and as someone who has built an empire on the long game, I am a big fan of that style of thinking and investing! When you’re not in a hurry, the results come tenfold! Here’s one of Gary’s books (Crush It), and here’s his YouTube channel, if you find him intriguing enough that you want to do a deep dive on his content. Pro-freakin’-lific. No doubt! In fact, here’s his PDF on How to Create 64 Pieces of Content in a Day.

Now, I know I’m running the risk of doing a little information overload here today, but bear with me on just two more infographics and a quick vid from my Instagram feed (cross-posted at YouTube, for Google SEO goodness). This first infographic measures various social media platforms in terms of several factors — engagement, reach, networking, etc. — and here’s what’s fun for me: I see something like this, I look for the platform I most prefer for engagement (Twitter) and, welp, whaddayaknow… dead last.

Dead last… for marketers.

Click to enbiggen.Ah! This is where I freakin’ love this stuff. Our industry is all about relationships and risk assessment. At its core, that’s it! If you’ve always felt like your personal experiences are a bit “off” from what the gurus out there claim you should be experiencing, you would probably love a book that a ninja in this course actually first told me about years ago, Blue Ocean Strategy. I freakin’ love so much about what this book champions. The TL;DR version of it all is that we make ourselves competition-free by studying what others do and then zigging when they zag. Not for the sake of being different but because it actually aligns with what we would prefer to do anyway.

When you think about the actors out there at the top tiers, don’t you see them as folks who mastered the game so they could play it at the “this is the way it’s gotta be” level just long enough to become so low-risk in the minds of the buyers that then they could do whatever the heck they wanted after that? That’s what I’m teaching here, y’all. Learn the game. Master it. Play by the rules so you’re seen as bankable. Stay consistent and professional. Prove you’re worth the investment. Then blow the mother effin’ roof off things by showing them how you’re gonna rewrite the rules!

(Just remember, that last part has to wait a looooooooong time and you’ve got to put in a looooootttttt of work to get to the point where you can write your own checks like that. We call that point “earning fuck-you money” because once you’ve got enough of the buyers’ bucks in your pocket, you can be Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes. No apology. Ever. Just having the time of your life. On their dime.)

Click to enbiggen.We only get to change the game by getting inside first. And we don’t get inside when we come at people yelling about all the ways we’re gonna change things. This is why it’s all called “ninja,” what we’re doing. By the time you realize we’re here, we’re so dang here you’ve decided we must’ve been here all along. We lurk and then lead. We end up showing ’em how it’s done because we’ve been studying them with meticulous attention to detail ’til we got inside. And that’s why we can leave this business better than we found it. We didn’t just bump into getting to this next tier. We strategized and energetically prepaved for it. And THAT is when the real work begins. So exciting!

So, back to how we go about getting on the road to this point that’s still a ways off from today: Loads of consistency, purposeful focus, strategic interaction, and — most importantly — keeping our brains free of the junk that gets us stuck and overwhelmed and any other of the less-than-best-version-of-us emotions that sometimes clutter our paths.

(Psst! That’s what this course is all about, right?)

Click to enbiggen.Today’s work: Write a breakdown for the social media platforms you currently use or think you may want to start using more consistently for building your brand. For example, if I were to write a breakdown for Periscope (my crazy-rabid love affair from 2015), I’d list it as improvisational, selectively interactive, relatable, inclusive, engaging, filled with insider POV potential, and along for the ride. When I then think about what I value about my interaction with my audience, I see a direct line between a platform like Periscope and my brand! You’ve only JUST begun seeing me use tools like Hootsuite (a social media scheduler) at our Facebook group in very specific situations and even then, I’m showing up and interacting organically in real time despite a scheduled post here and there. Why? Because ours is a relationship business and my buyers smell bullshit a mile away. Pre-programmed bot-blasted scripted content FEELS inauthentic on the receiving end and that’s why I’m not into it. I don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of it, and I don’t put my buyers on the receiving end of more than the teeniest bit of it!

But that’s Brand Bonnie Gillespie! Your brand may be all about efficiency and scripts and you may find that bot-blasted scripted content is awesome for you and your relationship with your buyers! Hopefully you did a lot of research to get to that decision (vs. just buying into some “how to grow your social media presence” one-size-fits-all kit that recommended such things). Today I want you to get purposeful with all this by writing the breakdown for social media platforms and then seeing which ones organically align with your brand, what you know about your buyers, and the style of communication that feels awesome to you and them!

With this, what clutter can you clear? Can you unsub from newsletters or go on a friend/follower diet based on what feels blissful to invite into your timeline? Do you have a ton of fans waiting to hear from you if you’d only set reminders to engage more consistently? When you think about connections in social media, do the “dinner party test” — If I wouldn’t invite you into my house why would I invite you into my gadget (a much more intimate place)? Is there some social media you’re using that you could bail on today, unapologetically? (That’s what I did with Facebook.) Such a great way to reduce overwhelm and refocus your energy on what matters! Is there a platform you see others using that you wish you knew more about, because possibly it’s something you could use in a strategic way? Let’s get curious, then let’s get purposeful! I’m excited to hear what you decide to try!

’til tomorrow… stay ninja!

Bon Sig