Photo by: Roderiques Photography

by: Natalie Lipka

As many of you know, I have a segment on Hollywood Close-Up called “Natalie’s Social Media Moment.” This all started because I am fascinated with the idea of social media and social media marketing. I’ve never taken an official “marketing” class, but I’ve taken several workshops about taking your acting career to the next level. In my blog Spaghetti Acting, I wrote about the importance of self-promotion and how these essentially free social media sites can help.

Most of us are familiar with the big ones: Twitter and Facebook. I still use these as my main marketing tools, recently adding LinkedIn to the list. All of these are important pages, but finding the time to manage them can seem daunting. And then, every day, there seems to be another social media platform that I “should” be on – the newest, latest or greatest. Often when I feel overwhelmed by something, I stay away. So I’ve decided to take you on this journey with me to take a look at some social media sites that I would like to better understand.

Pinterest
My best girlfriend from college joined Pinterest and loves it. She wanted me to join, and since I was the one who talked her into getting on Facebook, I knew that I had to build a profile. But that’s all I did. Sorry, BFF, the truth comes out! Of course, she knows I’ve done nothing on there because she can see my profile. Well the good news is, once I logged in recently and went to my profile, a little box popped up on the bottom right saying “learn about your profile and how to use it.” Sweet! So, what is Pinterest? A pin is a visual bookmark. You create online bulletin boards, name them and then pin your interests to them. It’s completely visual. It says goodbye to the days of bookmarking on your computer and definitely to printing things out and thumb-tacking them to a corkboard.

Why it’s good for actors — This all sounds simple enough and fun, but how might this help me with my social media marketing for my acting career? It’s another way to connect and share your interests and be a resource for others. We are constantly being told to have a life outside of acting and I think this is a pretty quick and easy way to share that part of your life with others.

Google+
Seems to be an exclusive online club for people with a google account. Google+ works with circles. I like this because it seems like a clear way to manage your friends list. You can add people to your circles or follow them as you would on Twitter and now on Facebook. The main draw for me in this one is Google hangouts. You can chat via text or by video with up to ten people. These video chats can be private or public.

Why it’s good for actors — Imagine what you can do with that when you are trying to do a crowd-funding project. I can see how Google+ can work for larger businesses, but would be great for actor groups who work together that cannot get together that often in person. Late night discussions about the biz on Google+ can help with accountability. Also, I noticed that if you post a video to your YouTube account, it goes onto your Google+ profile. Just another way for industry professionals and friends to easily see your work.

Vine
I mentioned Vine briefly in my social media moment during Ep73, when talking about the Kanye debacle, how there were videos on Vine of Beyonce saying, “No Kanye, No.” Basically it’s a place to share six-second videos. When you get the app, you can film all in one take or separate shorter moments and Vine will put them together as a six-second video. Then the video plays on a loop.

Why it’s good for actors — As actors, we want to be on camera and we want people to see our talents. What better way than on Vine? We are being told to make videos shorter and you can’t get much shorter than that! Whether you want to just show your personality or your acting chops, I think Vine should definitely be an option to consider.

Have anything to add to my list? Love it or hate it, how do you feel about social media?