Social media is an important part of building an acting career. That goes without saying and most actors know this. That's why everyone in the industry promotes their social media at every opportunity.

A few days ago, I was out jogging when I saw a bus driving by. It had an actor's face plastered on the side (at least I would later find out he was an actor) along with the usual "follow me @."

It got me thinking about the lengths actors will go to, in order to promote their social media and I realized that just about everyone is doing it completely wrong.

The truth is that many people become quite successful by using social media to boost their acting career, but they don’t do it the way you would think.

Social media can make or break acting careers, so I'm still shocked to see just how many actors have no plan for how to use it.

If you want to be a professional actor, you have to figure it out. It's simply not an option to ignore it and hope things work out for the best. You need to have a solid plan for growing an audience, connecting with them, and influencing them to support your work.

That goes way beyond simply counting the likes and shares you get on a selfie. If you do it the way professional actors do it, it's actually quite simple....

Just like you wouldn't approach an audition being completely unprepared, you shouldn't approach social media that way either, since what you are hoping for is to be seen on social media.

We'll get into what that actually means in a moment...

First we have to go over why most actors never really get their social media going well.

The reason is that they don't think about what stage their social media is at. Are they in a place where they just need to get their number of followers growing?

Do they have a sizable following already and just need to get those followers energized and supporting their career somehow?

Those are two very different places to be and they require you to do different things with your social media.

Once you establish where you are, then you can start thinking about how to take the next step.

Where many actors go wrong is that they look to other actors and other "big accounts" for inspiration and don't consider the strategy behind the content.

For example, if you have 3,000 followers and you start posting the same content as an account that has 3 million followers will get you very different results.

It's great to look to those accounts for inspiration, but you then have to make the content your own.

This can actually be quite simple...

First, think about what the content you are posting is intended to do. Is it aimed at growing your follower count by promoting shares?

Is it aimed at engaging your audience, or is it aimed at getting people who haven't interacted with your content in a while re-engaged?

All of this can get complicated very quickly, but it doesn't have to. Here's a few things that successful actors do with their social media...

For starters, they plan out their content, so it's not always the same thing over and over. This also helps them create a lot of content in a short amount of time.

Anybody who tries to grow their social media will inevitably hit a wall where they run out of ideas or just get tired of posting all the time.

Planning out your content prevents that.

As far as the content itself, they engage their audience because Instagram cares about a lot more than how many likes you get.

So, to fully take advantage of every piece of content successful actors ask their audience questions and get recommendations on a variety of topics. Starting conversations is a big thing that Instagram looks for and this is an easy way to start those conversations.

This is something you can get creative with. You could do anything from asking for new workout routines, to asking your followers to pick your outfit for your next audition.

They then take time to study how their audience responds to the content and they use the feedback to create content their audience will enjoy and come back for.

One of the most impactful things they do is modify their content for each individual social media channel, instead of just sharing the same content to every platform.

For example, comedy is best received on Twitter. That doesn't mean it won't work on Instagram, it's just better suited for a text driven channel.

When you start to approach your social media like this.

You'll find that you're able to grow your social media much easier and connect with your audience on a much deeper level than you would otherwise.

That's ultimately what makes accounts really take off. Then, it's just about connecting your social media to your acting career and using your influence to improve your career.

That said, social media is not going to make opportunities just fall into your lap. You still have to do everything else required to build your acting career.

Even when you grow your follower count, you still need to have a dependable way to make yourself visible to the industry. That's why I built this...

If you don't do that, then you are just working on social media for the sake of working on your social media.

Becoming an influencer is fine, if that's what you're after, but building your social media influence in order to build an acting career is a completely different path.

You have to combine those efforts.

Regardless of what you do on social media, there are still some things about the industry that won’t change.

Remember, reputation is everything in the industry so you should always have a reputation that is in top shape when you are working on trying to catch an industry decision maker's attention. That's where this comes in.

At some point, they will look further into your background and try to find out what you're about, beyond what's on your reel and resume. You want to make sure that when casting directors look into it, they find that you are a true professional. Here's how I can help with that.

We'll go further into what CDs actually do during the casting process, at another time.

For now, get started on what we went over today and don't hesitate to reach out for help. Leave a comment below or shoot me an email.

I'll always respond and help however I can because I truly want to...

See you at the top,
Scott