Social Media Overwhelm – What To Do
Many coaches will tell you that being on all the social media platforms is essential to growing your voice-over business. That to be effective in your voice-over marketing, you need a comprehensive, coordinated strategy to be everywhere your target audience is. That you need to post regularly to all the platforms.
As a result, when it comes to marketing their voice-over business, many newer talent descend into social media overwhelm. They try to be everywhere all the time, driven by a scarcity mindset and a fear of missing out. It’s exhausting and it can be very discouraging.
Don’t let a scarcity mindset and FOMO drive your social media marketing.
Then, the quality of the content sinks because the focus is on quantity. Talent are so concerned with having something to post today that there’s no real strategic approach to what’s being created, to whom it’s being targeted, and why.
The idea that you need to be everywhere all the time on social media is simply not true. And it’s not healthy for our industry because of the individual overwhelm and compromised quality of the collective content we’re producing.
The only social medium that is essential to growing your voice-over business is LinkedIn because of its search and targeting capabilities, its massive database, and its professional atmosphere.
The rest…Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, and all the rest simply are not necessary to grow your business. They’re nice-to-haves. Are there people on these platforms that are not on, or active on, LinkedIn? Of course. But being everywhere all the time to everyone is not necessary.
This approach to social media results in a lot of confusion for newer voice actors. Our most precious resource as entrepreneurs and voice actors is time and when we’re faced with the idea that we need to spend hours upon hours daily marketing our business on social media, this kind of thinking leads to big-time confusion around how to prioritize one’s time.
I cannot stress this enough: prioritize the time you spend generating leads and reaching out to prospects. This is the most impactful habit you can develop for the success of your business. You don’t need to spend all day doing this, but you do need to do it every day.
Once you’ve done your prospect outreach…
Once you’ve done your auditions…
Once you’ve done your paid work…
Then, you may find you have time for social media work.
I highly recommend starting with the most impactful habit (lead outreach) first thing in the morning. This is your top-of-the-funnel work. Then move on to your auditions. These are bottom-of-the-funnel, ready-to-go opportunities.
Then, if your day gets chaotic, at least you have that done.
Your prospect outreach and auditions are how you consistently feed your pipeline of work. They must be prioritized and done consistently – every damn day – to build a maximally successful VO business.
Yes, this work is a higher priority than actual paid work because if you don’t do it today, you won’t have any paid work tomorrow. If nothing goes in the funnel, nothing comes out.
Now, let’s take a breath. The key to social media marketing is to go deep first, then wide. Start small and work to master one platform. Let go of trying to be everywhere.
I highly recommend starting with LinkedIn. Work on growing your LinkedIn network with:
Prospects/Clients – people with whom you may end up doing business
Industry Relationships
Peers – other voice actors (for support, mentoring, referrals, etc.)
Coaches, Mentors, Producers, Service Providers, etc.
Agents, assuming you’re ready for representation
The object is not to rack up connections for the sake of numbers like many people do on social media. These need to be quality connections — not just connecting with present and past colleagues but, more importantly, prospective decision-makers, clients, and industry connections.
As you develop 1st-degree connections, engage with them. If their content resonates with you, like and comment on it and tell them why. If they have an exciting announcement or achievement, congratulate them.
Don’t like or comment for the sake of it. Quality is way better than quantity. These interactions should come from the heart. And they can go a long way to building relationships over time.
When you post content, keep in mind who in your network you’re targeting and why. Plan out your content a week or more in advance so that you can post quality content for a specific audience.
Once you have LinkedIn mastered (you’ve gone deep), you’ll be able to transfer those skills to other social media if you have the time. Pick another platform and go deep.
If you try to be everywhere all the time, you end up nowhere fast.