Tanya Kersey | Hollywood Career Strategist | Hollywood Career Coach | Entertainment Industry Consultant | Hollywood Career Resources

Net­work­ing has taken on a whole new mean­ing in the Inter­net age. Between the dig­i­tal media sites (blogs and Twit­ter), social net­work­ing sites (Face­book, Ning, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc.) and con­tent shar­ing sites (YouTube, Flickr, Stum­ble­Upon, Digg, Deli­cious, etc.), you can make major inroads into net­work­ing in Hol­ly­wood. Find­ing agents, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, cast­ing direc­tors and other pro­fes­sion­als online to net­work with isn’t dif­fi­cult, but what you do after you iden­tify a poten­tial friend is where I see many prob­lems aris­ing. I have become so frus­trated by the lack of com­mon sense far too many peo­ple use on Face­book that I had to rant.

Here are some tips on how to net­work on Face­book (FB) with­out piss­ing every­one off, based on my per­sonal expe­ri­ences and obser­va­tions:

1. Don’t ask a per­son what they do. Read their pro­file! It dri­ves me nuts when some­one I don’t know ini­ti­ates a chat with “what do you do” or “I see you’re in the enter­tain­ment indus­try, what do you do.” Uggghhh! My feel­ing is, if you haven’t taken the time to find out who I am, and I don’t know who you are, why am I going to spend my pre­cious time telling you who I am? I’m not! I usu­ally un-friend those peo­ple real fast.

2. If you’re putting in a friends request, be sure to include a brief 1-line mes­sage that iden­ti­fies you. Most peo­ple are not going to take the time to go to your pro­file to see if they want to add you or not, its far eas­ier to ignore the friend request. I am near­ing 5,000 friends so I’m very care­ful about who I add. If I don’t rec­og­nize the name and they don’t send a mes­sage that iden­ti­fies who they are, I ignore the friend request. A film­maker recently sent me the per­fect mes­sage: “I’m an indie-filmmaker look­ing to net­work with cre­ative & pro­fes­sional peo­ple.” I accepted his friend request imme­di­ately!

3. Many peo­ple will click on mutual friends if they are not famil­iar with who you are — its quick and easy to do. If you’re a man and all you have is female friends, news alert: that’s not cool and yes, we get it. I def­i­nitely don’t add them. LOL.

4. Make sure that you include clear and con­cise infor­ma­tion on who you are in your pro­file. That’s what its there for! In the small box below your pic­ture you should state who you are and if need be, what you want or need in terms of online net­work­ing. That is what will drive oth­ers to add you as a friend. This is where you mar­ket and sell your­self on FB. I can’t tell you how many pro­files I’ve seen where there is noth­ing on the entire pro­file that says film­maker, actor, writer, what have you. They list their day job but don’t iden­tify them­selves in terms of their enter­tain­ment indus­try title.

5. Don’t hit some­one up on chat and say any­thing cliche like, “I want to net­work with you.” Don’t use a line like that with any­body any­where ever. I mean it. When some­one does that, I remove them as friends because it just takes too much energy to deal with naivete. What is my response to that sup­posed to be from some­one I don’t even know? Think about it. If you’re going to hit up some­one who doesn’t know you, be smart. Do your home­work. Know some­thing about them. Engage them so they will con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion. It’s always a safe bet to com­pli­ment them on their recent film, TV project or record. Peo­ple always love flat­tery.

6. Don’t ask new online friends for favors or intro­duc­tions or any­thing that costs time or money. It dri­ves me nuts when some­one I don’t know sends me a mes­sage ask­ing me to intro­duce them to agents, financiers, etc. or even worse, asks me how they can get their film pro­duced or dis­trib­uted. Huh?

7. Build the rela­tion­ship by inter­act­ing online. Post com­ments to sta­tus updates & engage in con­ver­sa­tions. I’ve got­ten to know so many peo­ple because of their repeated posts on my page. Build an online rap­port based on com­mon inter­ests, com­mon ground. I’ve devel­oped rela­tion­ships with peo­ple based on our mutual love for foot­ball, body­build­ing & fig­ure, Mafia Wars, pol­i­tics, etc. I haven’t devel­oped many rela­tion­ships based on some­one just being in the enter­tain­ment indus­try because I know they just want some­thing. Most peo­ple in the indus­try that you are going to want to net­work with deal with “Hol­ly­wood” all day. They often come onto Face­book to relax and social­ize on a non-business basis. So build rela­tion­ships through the back door — its eas­ier than through the front.

There’s so much I can talk about on this topic. And I plan to … Look for my upcom­ing free tele­sem­i­nar later this month on Online Net­work­ing Strate­gies where I’ll dis­cuss all the major online sites and how to build suc­cess­ful online rela­tion­ships that you can take offline.