GKN Weekly Update 7/10/12 – Facebook and Voiceovers?
Good afternoon, fellow face-meltees! It’s about time we didn’t hit 90 degrees for the umpteenth day in a row. I was just walking in downtown Lake Hiawatha and it wasn’t half-bad.
So, a few days ago I hit 1,500 friends on Facebook. Hooray, I’m the world’s tallest midget! So, in an ego-driven need to network, I posted it. I wrote, “Wow, 1500 friends? I didn’t think I knew that many people!”. My dear friend Melissa Exelberth replied, “You don’t.”
Pretty funny, right? It got me thinking, however; how many of those Facebook friends do I actually know? When I say “know” I mean met in person at least once and didn’t want to punch in the face. So as an exercise, I counted.
BTW the friend management system on Facebook is AWFUL. Go look at it right now. Click on your profile/timeline and click on your friends box. All it does it puke out a list of all of your friends in no particular order and there is no way of sorting them besides those seven ways, six of which seems to be pointless to me. Yes, you can categorize your friends by making lists but all that does is make a news feed for that list. Mark, get on this, will ya?
The other thing is that it sure didn’t feel like 1,500 people. It seemed like a lot less. Anyway, out of 1,507 friends I’ve met 795 in person at least once. The rest of them are either voice talents, past clients, current clients, or potential future clients that I haven’t met in person. Many of those I haven’t met in person are folks I’ve worked with for years and have corresponded with them extensively via phone, text, IM, email, or Skype.
So, as a voice talent using Facebook, what does all this mean?
Fellow GKN’er and Facebook VO guru Terry Daniel had this to say:
“Facebook is like a huge party! You won’t be able to talk to everyone but sooner or later, you may need each other and something cool could come of it”.
Good analogy, Terry!
TIP OF THE WEEK: Facebook is a tool, just like anything else. For some it’s a social secretary used just to stay in touch with friends & family. For others it’s a lame-ass status symbol. I use it primarily as a networking portal. It keeps my clients both past, present, and future aware of what I’m up to and hopefully they’ll keep me in mind for upcoming projects. So I guess it doesn’t matter how many friends you have on Facebook or if you’ve met them in person, as long as you’re treating them the way you want to be treated. Like I’ve always said, it’s not who you know, it’s how you treat who you know!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: If you’re always looking over your shoulder at your past, you miss your future. Peter Guber
STUFF!: I want to say goodbye to my friend Mark Morris, who died last week at the way-too-young age of 43. Due to circumstances beyond my control, Mark and I weren’t able to hang out for the past year or so and I am truly the worse for it. Mark was the classic “gentle giant”; 6’6″, over 350 pounds, but such a kind person who never had a bad thing to say about anyone and he was a BLAST to hang out with. You will truly be missed, Mark.
From Tom Dheere’s apartment, this is Tom Dheere, GKN News…
Just passing along that I’ll be doing a Power Marketing Workshop for Voiceovers this Saturday in NYC. For more details, you can reach me thru aaaVoiceCasting@aol.com. Among other items, participants will have doors opened to be connected with 10 of my personal agent friends and 26 casting director friends. Also, there’ll be little known inside information on your best personal marketing resource. Also, how to maximize the Sea change in the voiceover industry that occurred when home studios stopped being an option and became a necessity. One of the tips in the last workshop resulted in over $10,000 in savings to our clients who use Voice123. If this sounds useful, contact me for details.
Dan D
Sounds like setting up a Facebook business page for your voiceover business would be a better (and correct) route to serve as your “networking portal?”
Terry Daniel says of Facebook, “You won’t be able to talk to everyone.”
Literally, this is true but communication/interacting can be accomplished by simple things like “liking” a comment or sharing a post.
When it comes to social media I wish I could say this more often:
“Thanks for noting!”
More often than not though I find myself thinking “Thanks for nothing!”
Unfortunately, the art of reciprocity seems to be lost on most folks.
Best,
Ralph Hass
I’ve had a fan page for quite some time, Ralph. More than once I’ve threatened myself to de-friend people on my personal profile that I’m not actually friends with but I always stop myself. Why? Because they won’t necessarily “Like” my fan page once I de-friend them and then I’ve lost contact with them on Facebook, which is arguably the easiest way to stay in touch…