Social media for actors, and which of it is worth your time

None of this advice is ours and the page says whose it is. Every point comes from a video indexed on Acting Craft, our free searchable library of acting advice on YouTube, and each links to the video it came from.

One thing is missing on purpose. What you actually make, as opposed to where you post it, is covered in the audience section of marketing yourself as an actor. It is the bigger question, and answering it twice in different words would leave two half answers competing with each other.

Choosing a platform instead of defaulting to one

Ask whether it will move your career, not whether your friends are there. Choosing the network where you already hang out is a way to lose time. The right answer is different for every actor, because it depends on what you want the account to do. Source.

New connections and existing ones live in different places. If the goal is getting on the radar of people you have not met, a Facebook profile will not do it. If the goal is staying top of mind with people you have already worked with, Facebook is strong for exactly that. Source.

Forced to pick two, Heidi Dean picks Twitter and Instagram. They keep you visible to people you know, give you access to people you want to know, and make it fairly easy to grow a following. Twitter comes out marginally ahead because you can sort followers into lists, which makes staying in front of specific groups of industry contacts straightforward. Source.

If you have an audience already, match the platform to it. A show with a young audience makes a young platform a good home for behind the scenes material. A show with an older audience makes that same platform a waste of effort. Source.

Give one two months before deciding you hate it. You will never get good at something you dislike, so pick networks you enjoy. The caveat is that you cannot rule one out on instinct. Learn the basics, run with it for a couple of months, then ask again. Source.

The bio

You get less than a second. In person it is about seven seconds. Online it is under one, and the bio is among the first things somebody sees when they click into the account. Source.

Say the job title even though it is not searchable. Actor, dancer, singer. Instagram does not index bio keywords, but people have been trained by other platforms to scan for them, so the words still do work. Source.

Then name what makes you different, or what you love. The passion does not have to be industry related. The bio does not need to be all about acting. Source.

Carry the same language across platforms. Start from the bio you already have elsewhere and move the keywords, the passions and the points of difference over. Consistent wording is what makes somebody recognize you wherever they find you. Source.

Write it in a notes app to get line breaks. On an Apple device there is no return key inside the Instagram bio field. Write it in Notes, where you can add spacing and emojis, then copy and paste it across. Emojis are the language of the platform and are fine, as long as the ones you pick match the brand you are presenting. Source.

If you are making video

Pick a narrow audience before you shoot anything. New creators make random videos they hope everybody will like, and by appealing to everyone they appeal to no one. Decide who the channel is for, then research what that group already watches before making anything. Source.

Keep the keywords in the first 45 characters of a title. That is all that shows in search results, so the words people would actually type go at the front. Source.

Treat the thumbnail as a mini movie poster. It has one job, getting the click. A video can rank in search and still be skipped for a boring image. Shoot photos specifically for thumbnails ahead of time rather than pulling a frame from the footage. It feels silly and you get a better picture. Source.

The channel trailer only autoplays for people who are not subscribed. So keep it short and end on the ask. In the About section, say what the viewer gains by watching, and link your site and your other profiles. Source.

Turn on the branding watermark. It sits over your videos and lets a non-subscriber subscribe in one click without leaving the video. Source.

Read the audience retention graph. The free analytics show where viewers drop off. Losing them at the start usually means the intro is too long. Longer watch time means more visibility, which means more subscribers. Source.

Optimize playlists like videos, because they rank like videos. Described as one of the most underused growth tools, since most people do not realize playlists appear in search at all. They are also how you make sure a web series is watched in the intended order. Source.

Publish on a schedule and say publicly what it is. Weekly, biweekly or monthly, and which days. Put it in the channel art, the trailer or the About section, which also keeps you honest. Source.

Ask for the subscribe out loud. Do not assume somebody who liked a video will subscribe. Tell them what you want them to do. Source.

Tools that give you the time back

Edit a photo in the browser, free. The pass described is enhance portrait, crop square, then a circular focus, applying each step as you go. Overlays and a splash tool that turns the shot monochrome so you can paint color back into one subject are there too. Exporting takes an extra step: Save, then Download, then drag the resulting link to your desktop. Source.

Answer Instagram messages from a computer. A desktop client for Instagram DMs runs on Linux, Mac and Windows: search a user, click the name, type. The genuinely useful part is pasting prepared messages. If you met a dozen people at a festival you paste the same note and swap the name rather than writing each from scratch. Source.

It also shows who does not follow you back. Including large accounts you may have followed for no particular reason. You can unfollow straight from that list. Source.

Thirty scheduled posts a month without paying. Enough for most actors' rhythm. Drag the media in, drag it onto the day and time you want, write the caption, save. Onboarding needs the phone app to confirm the account is yours, and reusing saved captions sits behind the paywall. Source.

The one link problem

Platforms give you one link, which forces a choice you should not have to make. IMDb, or a social channel, or your website. A single page holding all of them means one click gives a visitor the whole map instead of one corner of it. Source. Disclosure: that video is about our own link tool, so read it as a walkthrough of one product rather than neutral advice. The problem it describes is real whatever you solve it with.

Hide the links you do not want shown. Under Profile, then Links, uncheck them. There are three templates, and the default puts your photo first, then call and email buttons, then your website, then anything else, then your social profiles. If you want the reel template to show your reel, the video has to be marked as a demo reel under Files. Source.

Pulling your Instagram feed onto your own site takes about two minutes. The steps: Integrations, then Instagram, then Set It Up. Register a new client in your Instagram developer account using the values the setup screen has already filled in for you. One step is easy to miss and stops the whole thing working, so it is worth naming: under the Security tab, uncheck the box that disables implicit OAuth before you register. Then paste the client ID, save, follow the authorization link, paste the access token, and reload. Source. Same disclosure: our own integration.

Follow exchanges, honestly

They exist, and one of them was reviewed here in detail. A tool that had run exchanges for other platforms for years added an Instagram follow section, letting actors share an account and pick up industry followers. Follows are tracked on an honor system paired with a reputation score. Source.

The review's own findings are not flattering. The reputation score tops out at 800 and one account showed 940, with no explanation anywhere of how the number is worked out. A popup blocker warning did not clear even after complying with it. The IMDb section shipped with two bugs: your own listing does not stick after a reload, and performing an action for somebody else asks for the running time of a title that does not appear to exist. Source.

And the YouTube exchange was removed rather than fixed. The stated reason was trouble with fake subscribers. The feature was cut instead of solved, which the review reads as a step back and which tells you something about what these exchanges attract. Source.

One practical warning if you use one anyway. Check which account you are actually logged into before you start following people. Following from the wrong account can get you reported and will drag the score down. Source.

Our own reading, and we are labeling it as ours rather than attributing it to anybody: a traded follow is a number, not an audience. Nothing above says otherwise, and the section is here because the tools are widely used and an honest description beats pretending they do not exist.

Everything above is attributed except the one paragraph that says it is ours. Platform interfaces, free plan limits and developer settings change constantly, so treat every click path here as a description of how it worked when the video was made. If we have summarized somebody badly, tell us.