Exposure Blogging

(Me all dressed up to watch the Tony Awards... Am I the only one who does that?)

A couple of weeks ago, I went into NYC on business (to be trained in how to put gloves on customers at the jewelry/accessories store I'm working at). I happened to be in town the same day as a panel discussion on theatre blogging, which was led by the guy who is in charge of the New York Times theatre web page. I made some great contacts there, and one of them led to something awesome.

I have been in communication with the online managing editor for a notable theatre website (ETA: my brother recommended that I remove the name, so I have).

The company has a trade publication for actors. It used to be the magazine that every actor got, because it gave all sorts of information about upcoming auditions and gigs and people to contact and the like. But in this fancy technological day in age, the physical publication has sort of fallen to the wayside and is now hard to come by. And in its place, there's a glorious online version. You can subscribe to the site to get all the insider information, but you can access most of the stuff without that.

The Head Honcho of the online division of said company has read my grad school blog (thanks to a contact of mine from that panel discussion). He wrote, "Perhaps there is a way we can help your work get a wider audience."

Being the dutiful student that I am, I wrote to the head of my grad school program for his opinion on the matter. He wrote, and I quote, "Sounds great to me – go for it. Just keep the blog going! It’s been the best tool we’ve had for recruitment!". (And you thought I was kidding when I said my school loves me.)

I spoke to the online guy today. There's a blog that they have on their website that generally has about 6-8 contributing actors writing for it at a time. They generally write 300-400 word posts about 3-4 times per week. They'd like me to write for it.

Pros:
- Audience! My current blog has gotten about 15,000 hits in its first year. Their blog gets 250,000-300,000 hits per month.
- Exposure. Huge for an actor.
- Prestige. If I ever want to write about acting (or teach/coach) in the future, this is a great thing to have on my résumé (I'd call myself an "online columnist" instead of a blogger, of course).
- Link-backs. I can put the link to my grad school blog (or my brand new web page... which I won't link to here, but it's AngelaLastName.com if you know my last name. It's not impressive yet, but I established it this weekend to lock up the domain... and I'll make it nicer later) at the end of every post I do.
- Awesomeness. THIS IS SO FREAKING COOL!

Cons:
- Lack of personal branding. I'd only be a contributing blogger, so it's not really the same level of personal gain that I get from writing my own blog... So I know that I won't be giving that up.
- Length. 300-400 words is not exactly my style. If you haven't noticed, I tend to be a bit wordier than that.
- Responsibility. I'm going to be taking a full load of classes AND be in a season of theatre rehearsals/performances AND be keeping up my regular blog (as the head of my program has told me he wants me to) AND be Skyping with my long-distance boyfriend nightly... Writing 3-4 posts a week might be slightly unrealistic.
- Content. They don't want the posts for their site to be like the ones on mine. They want exclusive, original content. Which means that in addition to all the rest of the stuff I'm doing this year, I'd have to come up with 3-4 creative and interesting post IDEAS each week.

When he proposed this, I mentioned my hectic schedule and said that I didn't know if 3-4 posts a week was realistic. I said that 1-2 posts a week would be better for me. He said that he'd have to think about it, as generally they think it builds a better fan base to have more regular of posts from each author. He also said that it would be okay to have mixed media (aka I can put up pictures or videos, or embed YouTube videos I think are interesting) and just basically add commentary. He said that frequency is more important than length. So that would be a lot less stressful...

I told him in that case, I might be able to do 2-3 posts a week.

As I was getting off the phone with him, he said, "Oh, I forgot! We have another option!"

On a different (harder to get to) part of the site, there's an "Advice" blog that frankly doesn't appear to advise much at all. He said that for that, it's mostly just guest bloggers. It would be in the style of a first person essay about a given experience, telling a whole story about something. It would be 1200-1500 words in length, and it'd only be once a month or once every couple of months.

Pros:
- Less frequent. Dude, I can totally do a post a month. Easy!
- Length. 1200-1500 words? Piece of cake. During NaNoWriMo I was writing 1,667 words a day! And it'll give me more of a chance to write like myself than a measly 300-400 would.
- Credibility. How awesome would it be to say I was writing a monthly ADVICE COLUMN for this site? Totally makes me sound like a pro.

Cons:
- Less exposure. I'd still get to do the link backs, but this is on a hard to find part of their site. I'd already read (and subscribed to) the other actor-written blog, but I had no idea that this one even existed.
- Less excitement. Not nearly as cool as being a regular columnist.


The way I left it with the guy was that I'd think about it, and we'd be in touch. I'm not going back to school for another month, so we have time.

I don't know if there'd be any monetary compensation, but I don't even really care. I'd be getting paid in exposure, which is still really stellar. It's especially great because my brother is trying to help me set up selling ad space on my grad school blog, as I've been contacted by two different legitimate-looking companies in the last couple of weeks who want to buy ad space from me (and you thought I was kidding when I said I'm famous).

Anyway. I just wanted to share this part of my journey with you all. Let me know if you have any thoughts on what I should do. I could use some advice.



May you be exposed in all of the right ways (and none of the improper ones).

~A~



P.S. For the sake of comparison, I just copied and pasted all of the above into Microsoft word (Note: pre-edits). It was 1,177 words long. And it took me about 20 minutes to write it. Just food for thought. (ETA: Post edits it is 1,170 words long)