I just read an article that recommends that actors and agents should start to list how many Facebook/Twitter friends an actor has on his resumé because indie producers are looking for “buzzability.” Are we going off the deep end with this social media bandwagon?

Alexander Nguyen

Ooh, Alexander, I am so with you, on this. When I read your email (before reading the article), my knee-jerk reaction was, “Hoo, boy! That right there is some bullshit!”

And now that I’ve read the article (that’d be “So How Much Should You Allocate to the Producer of Marketing & Distribution?” by Jeff Steele), I can safely say, “That right there is some bullshit!”

To be fair, the article is very interesting and of course the author didn’t create the concept about which he’s writing, so my reaction is more about being fed up with the whole “StarMeter, number of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections” thing. I’m ready for the pendulum to swing in the other direction, allowing us to stop worrying so much about all that mess. Even after months of unplugging last year, I’m experiencing social networking fatigue. And everyone knows the StarMeter is manipulatable.

While there are times when you may want to manipulate your StarMeter so that you appear to be “on the rise” (like right before a big agent meeting or when you’re in the final three being considered for a series regular role), for most of the actors who find themselves consumed by boosting their online profile, it doesn’t matter anyway. Until your numbers are really good, it won’t really make that big a difference. And by the time your numbers are really good, you don’t have time to care about it anyway. Sure, producers want to see bankability to know they can assure investors they will likely make their money back, but a fan hitting LIKE on a website does not necessarily equal a ticket buyer (AKA “butt in seats”), which is what gets a return on investment.

The “campaigning for fans” thing feels like a bunch of busy work, to me. People who follow thousands of Twitter users hoping for reciprocal follows aren’t proving to anyone that they have a fanbase. They’re proving they can get followers by following first. That’s not the same thing.

To me, the most offensive part of the article you sent is this bit:

I believe that an actor’s social media stats (the number of Facebook friends, Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections, along with the overall frequency of social media activity) are as important as their headshot, resumé, and demo reel. Agents and managers need to start including their clients’ social stats on resumés. This is as true for writers, directors, producers, and actors as it is for cinematographers, production designers, grips, and other crew members.

I actually thought the author was joking. Seriously. I was waiting for a punchline to come after that section. Nope.

Sure, your fanbase is important — especially when you are an actor of a certain level — and I would never have so strongly encouraged self-producing all these years if it weren’t for the fact that there are people who are engineering tier jumps for themselves via direct marketing to their fans. But to suggest that information about an actor’s social connections belongs on a resumé is ridiculous. To suggest that a grip’s number of fans belongs on a resumé? Are you kidding me?

I understand getting enthusiastic about our opportunities to tier jump and finding new ways to crack the same old nut, but this all just seems like a new strain of Actor Mind Taffy to me. No thank you.

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Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001338.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.