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SOCIAL MEDIA How To Use Twitter To Grow Your Voice Over Business January 13, 2014  By Heather CostaVoice Talent From a business perspective - is Twitter worth it? In my opinion: YES. Let me tell you how. Many types of people are beneficial to the success of your voice acting business. The main ones are your colleagues, businesses, agents, managers and casting directors. And Twitter provides a way for us to be in frequent touch with them all. 1. Your Colleagues When we all work together and support each other, in turn we will each find success. How many times have you booked a job through a referral from one of your VO buddies or met a great connection through a networking event? BUT to be successful in VO, that’s not enough … 2. Businesses As a voice over actor you’re not only a talent, you’re also an entrepreneur. No matter how many agents (or VO colleagues!) you have, you still would greatly benefit from directly marketing yourself. You need to network with businesses that HIRE voice over talent. 3. Agents, Managers & Casting Directors Agents and casting directors can often be the link between booking that BIG job and not ever even having access to it. View agents, managers and casting directors as people on your side! As talent we’re always trying to find ways to land that big agent or manager and become BFFs with casting directors. Well, if you view them as people, not just "your in” to VO success, you’ll get a lot further. Networking with them, taking an interest in them as people, is a great way to start! ENTER TWITTER ... So where does Twitter fit in? Thanks to social media, we have all of these WONDERFUL connections right at our fingertips! When you view marketing not just as "selling yourself” to that next big client, but rather as building relationships with people and businesses that can in turn use your services, you are certain to find more success. Twitter isn’t just about posting information about yourself. It’s about engaging in conversations and truly gaining an interest in the people you tweet with. To make the most of your time on Twitter, you want to post credible, engaging info. The goal is to get the attention of your target audiences, get your tweets favorited and retweeted and gain new followers. All of this will help build your social media presence and in turn get you more connections - which if networked correctly can land you paying gigs. HERE'S WHAT I DO ... How the heck do I use Twitter? For Twitter, I like to use a program called Hootsuite, which gives me the ability to:
Part of your marketing plan should include hitting different target audiences. Once you have established WHO you want to get the attention of, find content written by that company, written by people from that company, or comments about that company and post it, while sharing a quick comment in your tweet about WHY you like that content. If you can’t personally relate to it, then the connection between you and that business will seem random. You want it to be obvious as to why you’re posting the tweet, and memorable to the business you’re tweeting about. In order for all of this to really matter, you want to tag that particular business, and of course, link to the information you’re tweeting about. Don’t forget to use appropriate hashtags, as well - that’s key to making it obvious as to what you’re tweeting about, and for people to find your posts when they search those hashtags. FINDING RELEVANT CONTENT You can find relevant content to post by:
Retweeting information from companies and people you want to get the attention of is a great way to do just that! Eventually they’ll notice you, which is why it is really important that your Twitter profile is fun, memorable and obvious that you’re a voice actor. Just that alone will make the connection obvious as to why you’re posting about something that is somehow related to you. If your profile just says "loves moonlit walks on the beach and candlelight dinners,” you may get a date proposal, but they probably won’t think of you first next time they need a voice over. SCHEDULE YOUR TIME How do I make the most of Twitter without spending every waking minute using it? The key with successfully using social media in general, is to get in and get out, and make the most of your time while you’re there. In an ideal week, I will spend a couple of hours the prior weekend researching and scheduling all of my tweets for that week, so by Monday I’m good to go. Then I’ll make it a point to sign onto Twitter once or twice throughout each day to retweet, comment on tweets I was tagged in, and post a tweet or two on something that I may have just found out about. I’ll couple this with a lunch break or TV down time - and I know that if I don’t get to it, it’s no big deal, because I already have a bunch of tweets scheduled. If it wasn’t possible to devote that time during the weekend, then I will schedule my tweets daily - each evening I’ll set up the tweets for the next day. It all depends on how much time I have. I tend to only have a post or two throughout the weekend because that IS my downtime and most of the businesses and people I hope to get the attention of are mainly engaged on social media Monday through Friday. STAY WITH IT The beauty of social media is that once you create a presence, if you are too busy and can only plug out a couple of tweets that day (or even nothing at all!) you can pick it up again when you’re able, and most likely no one even noticed you were missing. However, if you’re only posting a tweet or two every few months, it’s probably not doing too much for your marketing. Twitter is a moving thing. You get on and off when you can, and once you have established a solid social media presence for yourself, you’ve always got a place there. Happy Tweeting! ---------------------------- ABOUT HEATHER Heather Costa is a full-time voice over talent and a member of the Voxy Ladies. Her voice over credits include Finish Line, Clear Channel, PetSmart, Chase Banking Corporation, Comcast, Prentice Hall, Carrier, the Educational Testing Service, the Village Voice and eBay. Web: www.heathercosta.com Email: info@heathercosta.com |
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Neil
http://neilwilliamsvoiceover.com
I too find the HootSuite scheduling capacity really convenient and have been using it daily, but really like your approach of scheduling out a week in advance. I'm going to try that!
Jen
http://www.jengosnell.com