Social Chaos with Tom Dheere

In this insightful episode of the Real BOSSES series, Anne Ganguzza and Tom Dheere delve into the unpredictable landscape of social media and its implications for entrepreneurs. As platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok face increasing political and operational challenges and changes, The BOSSES discuss the importance of adapting business strategies to ensure continued success. They share actionable insights on how to diversify marketing efforts and build resilient communities, emphasizing the significance of maintaining control over one’s audience through robust mailing lists and finding alternate platforms. 00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Let's create your next demo together. As an award-winning demo producer, I'll work closely with you to craft a demo reel that showcases your unique talents and strengths. My personalized approach is going to ensure that your demo stands out from the crowd and gets you booked. Book a free 20-minute consult today and get started at anneganguzza.com.  00:28 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey, everyone.  00:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Welcome to the VO Boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Real Boss series. I'm here with my good friend, Tom Dheere. Hey, Tom, how are you?  00:55 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I am good, how are you?  00:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I'm doing good, but I'll tell you what. Social media is kind of a mess lately, isn't it?  01:04 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Oh my God, yeah it, oh my God, yeah. Oh my God, to say the least, it has been insane the past couple of weeks.  01:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, TikTok shutting down people fleeing off platforms. It's been insane and I think something that, as business owners, we've used for years right to promote our businesses is now somewhat becoming unstable and unpredictable, and I think we should chat about this. What can we do to kind of counteract?  01:31 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) that that's a great question. Well, I will say that literally this morning on Facebook, I saw two friends of mine who run Facebook voiceover groups who basically posted the same exact post, which was we know a lot of you are leaving Facebook right now. It's gotten very politically charged, it's gotten very toxic. You've all mentioned that how your feeds are changing and it's just getting really, really weird. And they both did the same thing in that they said we will continue to be loving and supporting of all voice actors, regardless of your affiliation, regardless of what's going on in the outside world. And there was a chorus of support and concern at the same time.  02:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I think the community that we feel that we've established on these platforms is, and now the platforms are unstable or toxic. And so now our community because we work independently and our community has been online for all these years and now, all of a sudden, it's just become a place where maybe not everybody wants to hang out anymore.  02:28 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, there's four platforms which everybody seems to be sharing the most concern about Facebook, instagram, because those are both owned by the same company Meta Twitter, now known as X, which has been a point of concern for a couple of years now, since it was purchased. As X, which has been a point of concern for a couple of years now since it was purchased, and, like you just said, tiktok, because of the concerns that have been expressed and the affiliation that it has and the fact that it went down for less than 24 hours and then it was rescued.  02:57 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It was like a mass hysteria. Well, you know what else? It wasn't just TikTok, it was anything owned by TikTok, which I was aware, but I kind of forgot. I use CapCut, which is the video editing program, and I spent a considerable amount of time like learning it and all of a sudden my CapCut was gone and I'm like, oh no, I guess I need a new video app.  03:15 It was kind of good in a way, so that we all could step back and say, all right, let's not put the proverbial all our eggs in one basket, like we've always been saying about pay-to-plays. Right, you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket with pay-to-plays. That can't be your only way to make income, and social media may not be the only way that we can have community. So let's talk, tom, about how we might be able to incorporate community and also incorporate. Let's say how are we going to market to our potential clients? What can we do to create a sense of community? And I mean my first idea that comes to mind is let's go back to old school, right? Let's create a mailing list, right? That's something that we own. We're not dependent upon a social media platform that we don't own. We own our own lists.  03:59 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, when it comes to that, both social media and curating lists of potential, current and past clients both fall in the bucket of self-marketing. Having a social media presence, creating a sense of community, trying to interact with clients potentially that's a form of indirect or passive marketing. And then curating lists of clients cold calls, cold emails, newsletters those are all forms of direct or active marketing strategies. So both of them have their merits. But to your point, if the four, at least the four social media platforms that we just talked about, are unstable on both a cultural view, political, socioeconomic, logistical and technological view, because one of them was taken down and then went back up and goodness knows how many millions of dollars was potentially lost by the TikTok users who monetize? Yeah, absolutely.  04:54 So, this is creating uncertainty in the market, so looking for more stable practices is a very good idea. So, if you have been able to cultivate any relationships with any potential or current or past clients through social media platforms and I'm not just talking about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, which are the four that seem to be the most worrisome or in flux right now- Well, they're the largest.  05:18 They are also, interestingly enough, the largest, and Facebook's been around since what? 2004? Tiktok's pretty new and Twitter's been around since around 2008,. 9, 10. And Instagram is a few years after that, so some of these have been around for quite some time.  05:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, let's not forget about our old friend YouTube, which right now doesn't appear to be affected so much.  05:37 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) YouTube seems to be relatively stable and actually YouTube has been growing quite steadily.  05:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Youtube is the number one streaming platform. I think that that can be an option for people who are looking for community or trying to establish a community. I mean, really, what do you need to establish a community? There's community number one, just community for ourselves, right, because I need my colleagues. I need to be able to communicate with my colleagues and just kind of like just say hey, how's it going, or what are you doing, or just that kind of like at the water cooler sort of thing. And then we also need the community of where can we put ourselves out there, where can we promote and market our materials, if the online community is now threatened?  06:17 I think, I mean, I know, for many years, you know, social media has always been quote unquote, free, right, always been free, and the Internet's been free. And now, all of a sudden, there's a potential to maybe it not being there or free, or we don't know really what's going to happen. So we need to come up with our plan B. I think it's always important that, as business owners, we have a plan B or we have an alternate plan, so that we're not throwing all our eggs in one basket, right? What can that be, tom?  06:45 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) All right, so I have many answers.  06:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I have many answers and ideas.  06:48 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Me too. Okay. So because there's a difference between fostering or being part of a community of fellow voice actors on a social media platform and looking to network with potential clients. Yes, despite all the weird that's been going on, linkedin is still the number one social media platform to be connecting with and developing relationships with clients.  07:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Except it's got spammy lately.  07:12 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's gotten very spammy and I've seen a lot more politics on my LinkedIn feed.  07:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, but still it's better.  07:19 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's better. It may be a short-term consequence, it may re-stabilize I'm not sure, but LinkedIn is the number one source for that Twitter was a pretty good source for that too.  07:29 Yes, because also everybody knows that LinkedIn is the professional social media platform, whereas Facebook is the social. It's literally called the social network. It's a social platform. You can be social on a professional platform and you can be professional on a social platform. But all of these different social media platforms were designed with a specific intent in mind. Instagram was all about photos, and now it turned into video as well to compete with everybody else, and then YouTube made shorts to compete with Instagram reels and they're all watered down and they can all do all of those things, but what the thrust of it is?  08:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Before I forget, I do want to like throw in another social media platform that can generate community on a more professional level and that would be Substack.  08:08 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yes, that's definitely one.  08:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's kind of like here. If you want to sign up and subscribe to my newsletter on a professional basis, there is Substack and I think that might be gaining popularity as well.  08:17 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Slack is another one that is gaining popularity. I have not ventured into Substack or Slack, but the one that I have been exploring lately when it comes to community is Discord.  08:29 Yep, absolutely what's interesting about Discord is what separates it from all of the other social media platforms is it doesn't have a feed. It doesn't have this torrential river of content that you can doom scroll through. For those of you who aren't familiar with Discord, discord has what are called servers. Think of them as like Facebook groups, except that they are generally invite only, though many of them have a public invite where they publicly promote a link or a QR code where you can scan and then you can potentially get admitted into that Discord server. There's usually a number of questions that you need to answer and a code of conduct that you need to adhere to before you'll be admitted into that individual server, and there are a ton of voiceover-related Discord servers. Many of the voiceover groups that you find on Facebook and all of the organizations that you're familiar with in voiceover groups that you find on Facebook and all of the organizations that you're familiar with in voiceover circles, have a Discord server, and within those servers are little threads or sub-servers.  09:33 Sub-threads yeah, Sub-threads where you can talk about whatever subject matter.  09:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Then it becomes like the old school Usenet. Oh my God, I'm showing my age. Do you know what I mean? Because people post about topics. It's like a forum yeah it becomes like a forum which Usenet? Do you know Usenet?  09:50 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Or am I even showing my age with you? Yeah, that was way back when I am showing my age with you.  09:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's Usenet back in the day, oh my goodness, yeah. Topic-based.  09:56 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Discord definitely has a. It's also got a bunch of emojis and badges and avatars and all these things that you can do with it.  10:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I would say for communities. If you're looking for a community, feel that the Facebook groups if you don't want to be on Facebook anymore at all or you're disliking things about Facebook, in particular, discord for community, I think is a really good way to go. And I think people are just kind of waiting it out a little bit at this moment in time, because Facebook really was for many, many, many years. It was a great community gatherer, and so I think that people are just kind of sitting back, waiting and seeing, or they're fleeing. Some people are going over to Blue Sky, but then again people will say that that is also politically motivated, and so really it just becomes like where are you going to go and where are you going to find the groups? And I think it's one of these things, tom, that we have to just kind of wait and see a little bit. But I would say, professionally, if you want to create that community, start gathering your own mailing list of your current clients and get something going on your website that invites people to subscribe to your email list, and that way you will always have a way to professionally market to that list or communicate with that list. And then, when it comes to community, like colleague and that type of group, I have a wait and see.  11:12 I've kind of have my accounts on all different platforms and I'm just going to join them all and see where I feel that people are kind of migrating to. I know that for me, I've done a lot of work creating groups. I have a VOPs group that has thousands of members. I have business pages on Facebook that have thousands of members and followers. In reality, I have to look at that and say, well, it's possible that my groups have been disbanded and in a way, this is a time where I feel like I can kind of clean up in a way and so things that have grown, maybe possibly stagnant over time, where maybe people are members but maybe they're not engaged members. You know, maybe it's time to really just sit back, take a look, see where things go and really try to engage a quality community right, not necessarily a quantity, remember before it was all like, oh my God, well, I have 90,000 people on my Facebook group, but are they all engaged?  12:03 - Intro (Announcement) Yeah.  12:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So I think now's the time to really start building that community that know, like and trust you, and I feel like that's not just for sales, that's also for people that you interact with on a day-to-day basis. Like Tom, you and I like you're my know, like and trust and I would be like Tom, I want to be where you are so that we can continue our relationship right. So I feel like that's an important criteria for any group that I migrate to or that I create, and then it becomes a build process again.  12:30 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Yeah, I agree. So, bosses, if you've been listening to what Anne's been saying, she's making two extremely important points. One is do not be dependent on any one social media platform for community or for establishing and maintaining relationships with clients. Those are two different things that you can do on all of these social media platforms and the advice of going through all of your social media platforms and keeping track of where all your potential, current and past clients are on all these social media platforms. Make sure that you have all their contact information and get them into your CRM, which is a VO boss conversation that we had very, very recently.  13:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That was the acronym. Party the acronym party. So check out that episode.  13:19 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Absolutely Use that CRM, because it's also a way to cultivate relationships with all of your clients. It's also a way to cultivate relationships with your fellow voice actors. There's nothing stopping you from sending out a newsletter to fellow voice actors, not to tell them about whatever voiceover you've done recently, which they may or may not be interested in, but just talk about concerns or topics of interest to you that may be of interest to them as well. You could also do that through blogging, because your blog posts can have different audiences. You can have blog posts where the audience is your voice seekers and you can have one where your audience is voice actors. To find another way to create a non-social media dependent community and culture.  14:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I think the vlog might be making a comeback. I mean, I think it was always a thing right. But I think a blog I mean I do a Teachable Moment every week and I do shorts every week those are videos that I put out to the community and that can also be part of my blog. There's a lot of those that are part of my blog as well, so people can subscribe to that blog and you can talk about whatever topic floats your boat, floats your passion, and I think that more of the social communities like TikTok and again, you know TikTok is up for now, but again, if you're using it to monetize or using it to try to really sell, just be careful that you're not putting all the eggs in one basket. And so I just say, if you've got good video content right, you can now maybe put that on multiple platforms, right, or the platforms that you feel are right to gain the audience that you want. So just know that your video it turns out to be stuff that you own.  14:51 Stuff that you create is stuff that you own. So if you create videos, put them in a place where you have control over them. Put them on your website, put them in a blog, put them on YouTube if you have a YouTube channel. But if YouTube were to blow up tomorrow, you've got your own server, you've got your own web server that you can put your videos on, and so creating that content that is distinctly something that is owned by you gives you more semblance of control in regards to promoting your services, promoting your voice, promoting your product out there and also fostering a sense of community, even though it may not be engaging, but you can have people like subscribe to your blog, create comments, have engaging comments back and forth.  15:29 And again, there's lots of different places. There's Zoom workspace, there's Slack. There's lots of places where you can have video meetups and create that community there as well, and that's something to think about is to have a Q&A or have a water cooler, like, basically, there's that Zoom water cooler, that's out there, and so how are you going to promote that community water cooler? Well, that can be through a list, a mailing list that you own, or you can continue to put posts out on social media, and again, it just don't depend on that social media to be your one and only way to communicate with your potential clients or your colleagues.  16:05 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) There's also, if you remember, clubhouse and how popular that was during COVID, that became a real great place where a great sense of community that may come back.  16:14 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) This is exactly why.  16:15 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) I'm bringing it up, anne is that Clubhouse may be a place to go back to, because there's no social media feed. There's really not much of a space for flaming trolling spamming.  16:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Interesting thought there, because I've done a Thursday VIP room Voices in Podcasting room and we actually were thinking about going away from it, doing Zoom live streaming, zoom on Facebook, which is just another way of doing it. But you're right, clubhouse could be making a comeback.  16:42 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) Well, video, and I'm sure the reason was you know as well as I do is that video has more of a potential for engagement on a human level and on an algorithmic level than pure audio or just photos or just text.  16:55 So yeah, it makes a lot of sense to be on Zoom, but, like for voice actors, sure On Clubhouse. That seems like a really natural fit. There's one other social media platform that I wanted to mention, and that's Reddit. I've had a Reddit account for a few years now, but I just recently decided to start getting in there and seeing what's going on, and it has its level of weirdness, like any other.  17:20 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Again like a Usenet. Sorry, I'm showing my age again. It's like it's a forum.  17:24 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) It's got a forum Usenet kind of feel to it but like any subject matter, personal or professional, that you can think of is there and there's a group of dedicated and a lot of them very social and often supportive people that are talking about any given subject.  17:42 So I've been spending a lot of time on there and, just as a quick side note, just a couple of interesting things that have happened on. There is one there was a high school student who was required to interview a voice actor for a paper that they had to write. So I volunteered and they sent me the questions, answered the questions and they got an A.  18:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I love that you helped someone get an A Tom.  18:02 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That's great, yeah Now is that going to help my voiceover career? No, no, but that's a good thing, but it's being a part of the community. The other quick example is and I can't say much is that a journalist went on a subreddit who needed to interview certain kind of people to write an article about a particular subject, and I was right for it. So I messaged them and, as a result and DA much.  18:23 And as a result, we had it was a Zoom or a Google Meet meeting for about a half hour, asked me a bunch of questions and in the past week or so they followed up with a bunch of follow-up questions. They wanted to flesh out parts of the conversation and confirm some details and stuff like that, and I think the article comes out next week, so I'll be happy to talk about it then and promote it, because it's a very very, let's just say.  18:50 it's a topic that's extremely relevant to the voiceover community and has been for a couple of years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. But I wouldn't have gotten that without being on a social media platform and availing myself to what could just come my way, and it's going to turn into a nationally published article from a reputable news organization.  19:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Excellent. Now the other thing is yes, we're talking about the social media chaos and what we can do about it. Now the other thing, too, is, if you're finding that social media has become to the point where, if you're doom scrolling and it is doom scrolling and it is becoming mentally difficult right to read things on it, then I would say, for your own mental health, step back, take a break. It's not a critical part of you know. You have your circle of friends. I have, like Tom, I can get in touch with you in lots of other ways other than social media if I have to. So, really, guys, when it comes to your health and the health of your business, if you need to step back absolutely. It's not the be all end all.  19:49 Social media is not the be all end all to your business. It is a method that we have used for many years to promote ourselves. And I remember gosh, back in the day when social media was just becoming popular and there was Instagram and Facebook, and then it was like, oh my God, we can actually like, advertise our businesses on here. And that wasn't so long ago, or maybe it just seems like time has flown by, but I remember back in 2004 or five or six, and doing like a class on, like social media and how to advertise your business. And so 20 years has gone by, it's evolved, it's turned into a very different animal, and so I think, think again, very similar to how technologies evolve and things happen. We need to evolve with the time. So if you need to step back, absolutely for your health, absolutely step back.  20:38 I honestly don't think that it's going to be the destruction of your business unless you have monetized on a platform that is closing down or is one of those platforms that is now you, you know, in chaos, and so really try to diversify.  20:50 Think about how you can keep in contact with your current clients, how you can reach out to other clients, and again, I'm going to just say the good old school, like create a list for yourself. There's not one website software out there that doesn't have a way where you can invite people to become part of your list and you just have a checkbox that says I agree to allow you to send emails and people give you permission, and that becomes, I think, one of the best tools that you have, right for, let's say, maybe a professional way of marketing yourself and also a way of becoming closer to your community of professionals so that your business can stay afloat and with colleagues right. Gather those colleagues close to you. Already now there's multiple. I mean, we all do have phones, we all do have homes, we might live near each other, we all have ways to text and stay in communities together and, I think, don't rely on anyone. Get yourself prepared to not depend on any one method of acquiring clients or communicating with your colleagues at large.  21:58 - Tom Dheere (Co-host) That makes so much sense. I'll leave everybody with one thing Think about why you're on social media. Because it just kind of showed up and everybody just started using it. And nobody took a class or read a manual, they just started messing around on there. So if you're on social media for community and the communities are failing you in one social media platform, go to a different one. If you're going there to look for clients and develop relationships with them, if the social media platforms that you've been on aren't conducive for that they never were or they aren't anymore go to a different social media platform. If you are on social media for purely non-voiceover reasons you're just there to be entertained, amused or inspired or educated, and those aren't working anymore go to different ones. If you're doing it, you just find yourself going like this on your phone and none of those motivations are there. That means the really awful psychology, algorithmic things have got their clutches in you. Yeah, get off. Read a book, take a walk, go have coffee with a friend.  22:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to end that, tom. Thank you so much. Yeah, bosses, be safe and be healthy with social media. All right, great conversation, tom. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have a great week and connect up with us in multiple ways. Tom and I are available and we have email addresses. You can even email us and you can, for sure, just keep listening to our podcast. So you guys have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye.  23:31 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguzza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. 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