Thoughts on Marketing Your Brand Across Social Media

I did not major in marketing. I didn't even minor in business. However, I still wanted to share my thoughts on a cohesive aesthetic across online mediums. (Blogger, youtube, and actor website).

Actors, much as we may resist thinking of ourselves this way, are a product in a self-owned small business. I want my product to have a specific look that can be easily identified. I'm trying to brand myself across different media. The way that I'm accomplishing this goal is pretty basic; consistency in colors and images.

My biggest tie in across mediums is the color scheme. I chose blues and whites. I chose blue because it makes my eyes pop. Seriously, that's the reason I chose that scheme.

I also have my profile picture consistent across most mediums. Further, I designed my logo and used it on both my website and my youtube channel. I deliberately didn't use the logo on this blog because I didn't think it was appropriate. Self-promotion is an added plus of having this blog. However, its content is not centered on me. It's about the business, process, etc. of acting and the city of Chicago.

Here are some screen captures of various online presences:

Website Screen-capture

Blog Screen Capture

Youtube Screen-capture

A note on my twitter:
If you've visited my Twitter you'll notice that the only thing that it has in common with the other mediums is my profile picture. Other than that, it's a crazy colorful comic book type tiled background. I love it. It's quirky, it's eye catching, and it's me. Is it bad that it isn't consistent with the other mediums? I don't know. Does my concern for cohesiveness outweigh how much I like its look? No.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on consistency across mediums. Does it matter? Am I completely full of it? Etc.

How to Memorize a Monologue

I have an audition coming up. It requires two monologues. Most of the auditions I've done recently have been cold reads (which I love), so I've been out of the memorization game for a while and don’t have any monologues appropriate for the play. Thus, memorization time.

I break memorization down into a series of steps.

First, I take a piece of text, line by line, and build upon each sentence (or phrase if it’s a long one). This way, I review what I previously I learned every time that I add a new sentence.

For example, let’s say that I’m learning “Hey diddle diddle,” the nursery rhyme. First, I would learn “Hey diddle diddle.” I would then add “The Cat and the fiddle.” So my review would be “Hey diddle diddle. The Cat and the fiddle.” Then I would learn the next phrase, and so on, until I've built the foundation of the monologue one phrase at a time, always reviewing what has come before.

Next, if I’m lucky and someone happens to be around, I will ask them to read the monologue as I recite it. I am stickler for each word being correct. The author wrote it that way, and my task as an actor is to bring the author’s words to life. I don’t like to cheat by adding in extra “that's” or “umms.” If I’m wrong, I have them stop me, and I start from the beginning of the monologue, even if I got the very last word of the piece incorrect. Make sure your friend is patient, it can be quite irritating. 

Third, I write the monologue out, by hand. This really helps cement the words for me.

Then, if I can, I review the monologue right before I go to sleep. It is literally the last thing I do before turning off my light.

Finally, I start working on character. Not to say that my ideas haven’t begun to creep in already, but I don’t actively pursue it until I have the words solid. 

People differ, especially on the last step. Further, for me, in actual play rehearsal, character starts to form a lot earlier than my memorization. This is just how I approach monologues. 

One more thing, READ READ READ the play, book, etc. 

Phantom of the Opera at Albert Hall

I happen to adore overwrought, melodramatic, emotionally manipulative pieces of theatre. Given this proclivity, it’s no wonder that my favorite musicals include Phantom, Les Mis, and Jekyl and Hyde (I’ve only ever seen the David Hasselhoff version if that tells you anything). Give me dark corners and dark deeds set to a minor key, and I’m a very happy girl.

I have no idea how I missed the fact that there was a recording of the Phantom of the Opera at Albert Hall. I found it by accident while flipping through Netflix. It. Was. Awesome.

Maybe the production was so amazing to me because when I've seen the show I've always been too far away to really notice any subtleties in the actors’ performances. Or, maybe it’s because no one performs Erik like Ramin Karimloo.

I've never really liked the Phantom, as a character, all that much. He’s obsessive, controlling, and a murderer to boot. Watching Karimloo, I saw a humanity that I’d not associated with Erik. I’ll give a couple of examples for illustration.

My absolute favorite part of this production was in “Point of No Return.” The Phantom is posing as Don Juan, sitting at the tavern table. Christine runs her hands up his arms, or some such, and his hands shake. That’s it. Shaking Hands. Desire, longing, and a loss of control in minuscule body movements.  Beautiful.

Also, the inner emotional life behind his eyes the entire show. Even when he’s still there is a lot going on. He imbued his performance with a vulnerability that I haven’t seen in the role. It reminds me of why I love theatre. 

Watch it.

Photo Credit: glasgowtheatreblog.blogspot.com 

Resources: How to Design and Code an Actor Website

I read the columns on Backstage rather regularly. One such piece, by Taryn Southern, gives a list of ten online tools that an actor should be using. You can read that article by clicking here. Unsurprisingly, one of those was a website. The author warns, in another article, that you shouldn't do this solo if you don't have any web skills. Well...there's no time like the present and you can learn anything on the internet.

If you're on this blog because you're interested in acting, let me tell you that frugality is going to be essential. With that in mind, I've put in lots and lots of hours of sweat equity into this most recent project. Namely, I've been mocking up an actor website in Photoshop Elements 5 and then painstakingly coding it in pure HTML and CSS. (Caveat: For the contact form I used php in addition to HTML and CSS).

I've never done this. Ever. The closest I've come to coding was copying and pasting the embed code from youtube into blogger. This is a completely different animal. But, as I mentioned above, you can learn almost anything on the internet.

When I've got my site up and running I'll share that. For now, here's a screen capture of the site running locally on Chrome. I ended up really liking how it turned out. Hopefully, everything will go well when I upload it to a server. I'll probably do another post on how I chose my web host and the process of changing it over so that it will run online.

After the picture, you'll find some of the resources I used. I pulled from all over the internet, and I know I'm leaving things out, but I hope it will help get you started.

My self-designed and coded Actor Website

Most basic: I used Notepad ++'s online demo to code the entire thing.

The resources I kept going back to were: Lifehacker;  CSS-tricks; and W3Schools.

Photoshop Mockup (I used Elements version 5 and it still worked, you're just going to have more work-arounds if you're using an older form of photoshop.)
CSS-tricks

Where to code
Notepad ++ Demo

Basic HTML
Lifehacker
CSS-tricks (a video about converting your mockup to both HTML and CSS)

Basic CSS
Lifehacker

Putting it together
Lifehacker

Embedding Video in HTML
HTML Goodies

Downloading PDF HTML Code (for resumes)
Whirlpool Forum

Creating a Contact Form (I'm not sure if mine works yet because it needs to be tested online)
Tangled in Design

These are the basics to get you started. If you think of something specific that you want to do, just google it. There are lots of resources out there that will get your design from photoshop to the internet.

One note: Don't forget to test your site across browsers. Mine worked perfectly in Chrome, almost perfectly in IE, and not at all in Firefox and Safari. The issue was relative path vs. absolute path in the HTML. Chrome and IE recognized my absolute paths but the others didn't. I sent out a cry for help via Facebook and one of my friends solved the problem for me. Thus, don't be afraid to ask for help!

Kicking this Off

I've started this blog to not only document my life as an actor in Chicago, from apartment hunting all the way to, hopefully, booking, but also to share what I learn along the way. I'll be posting about everything I can think of including but not limited to: website design, marketing, business, acting methods, favorite performances, film reviews, living in Chicago, etc.

Thanks for stopping by, this thing is going to get rolling rather quickly. I'm apartment hunting at the end of the month. Stick with me and we'll see how this goes.