Out with Facebook. In with Stage 32.
I always have and always will be a strong supporter of Stage 32. It's the best online meeting place for people in the Film and TV industry and to this day Stage 32 has amassed over 500,000 members who are accessible to anyone who wants to ask them for advice or reach out to them and hire them for a project. It's just awesome.
Just think about how much time you spend on Facebook or LinkedIn, now answer this question - how much work have you gotten out of these two social media sites? If the answer is "none" or "very little", think what kind of opportunities you might have if you replace all of your high school buddies with industry creatives, and your high school buddies' parents (yes they are also reading what you're writing) with the producers and other executives. How do you like your odds now? Onward.
The thing I love the most about Stage 32 networking is the Introduce Yourself lounge. Every 3rd weekend of the month an event takes place where everyone on the site is asked to introduce themselves to everyone else. A lot of people do just that and call it a day. You don't realize what kind of opportunities you are missing out on if you do that.
Don't just say "here I am" and leave! If everybody did that, there would be hundreds of such posts each day and no one would benefit from it. If you have already introduced yourself, go ahead and read other people who have done so to this point. It might be insanely time consuming to go all the way back to the first lounge post, but read the last 20 - 50 posts, see if you can benefit from starting a conversation with any of these people. See if you can offer them something. If anyone can benefit, it might be worth it just to reply. If not, hey, reply anyway, maybe someone else is watching the lounge at the time that might want to say hi to you.
Interact! Help others, answer questions and provide feedback. In return you will get gratitude and possibly others returning the favor. It's the basic rules of karma. If you don't, you might be missing out.
