02 Feb Building Your Social Network the Right Way

Improve Your Social Networking Skills

by Brian Abbey

As a producer and entrepreneur who often hires contract talent, I see a lot of people going about self-promotion the wrong way. I get dozens of unsolicited friend requests from strangers on Facebook, often actors and freelancers eager to make connections that are rarely accompanied by any sort of introduction or communication. Over the years, I have added many people who I have worked with to my Facebook friends list – mostly those with whom I have developed a rapport. A few times I have also accepted requests from people I don’t know or haven’t worked with. Occasionally those connections take it a step further and send promotional information to me, usually without any introduction or comment about why they are sending me something unsolicited but occasionally I also see it done right.

I recently had back to back experiences on the same day, one such self-promoter doing it the wrong way, and the second was done quite well. In the first instance, the person who had sent me an unsolicited friend request followed it up by sending a promo link to a film he had worked on without any personal note at all. I offered some constructive feedback and suggested that his message felt spammy, and that a note would have been appreciated. He immediately became defensive and tried to call me out for not having messaged him in response to his unsolicited friend request. See the exchange below:

Needless to say, his message was not well received, but this is not out of the ordinary. I often get unsolicited links to products or portfolios or friend requests without so much as a hello. What they fail to realize is that they are building weak links in their network that do them more harm than good. I now know of this person, and will certainly never hire them, even if they are amazing to work with on set, because their message was completely devoid of any self-awareness or social etiquette.

In the second instance, a new connection that I had not met personally named Laurel Craddock (whose permission I have to share her name and message) reached out to me who had obviously looked at my work and sent me a personalized invitation to an event she was hosting. Laurel puts on styled shoots for Dream Day Weddings and Events, and by the looks of it does a great job. When I responded, she engaged in a way that was warm and professional by offering to sit down one on one and show me something that would blow me away. Her message was offering value to me by keying in on something that she believed would be of interest and be valuable to me, and while I politely declined, she impressed me enough to want to share her message with others.