Feb 25, 2025
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
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