How to Use Social Media as a Working Actor
Last week on AuraGram Live, Taylor spoke with Sarah Pribis, a talented actor, host and content creator based out of New York City. In addition to her credits on Bravo's Dirty John and The Ellen Show, Sarah is prominent on TikTok and Instagram. We asked all about her experiences utilizing the apps to grow as an actor, writer and performer!
Taylor: Can you tell us why you started making social media content?
Sarah: Going back a little bit, I was hosting a show around 7 or 8 years ago. I was hosting a show 5 days a week. I got that job on Backstage. Fun fact: Self submissions are the key to me getting some of the coolest jobs that I’ve had. You don’t know it a lot of the times when you are submitting for those things, that they are going to turn out to be something awesome. So you kind of have to take that chance. The show had a lot of eyeballs on it. We were getting millions of views, and I was so frustrated because they wouldn’t tag my social media. So I reached out to a friend of mine who was a rising influencer at the time, and I asked, ‘Hey, what do you recommend doing?’ He was like, ‘I would build a channel so if these people go looking for you, because they do have your name, that you’re showing them who you are.’ So I really dove into comedy sketches. I would write and film and work with actor friends of mine. I posted those to social media. And they took a lot of work, but they were really fun for me at the time. Then, I booked HQ Trivia while I was still hosting at this show, and it was so perfect because when I started hosting HQ and it started to take off, my social was linked. They would go to my page, they would see I had a body of work and it would give them a reason to follow me. So I think it really did help me build my audience faster. You want to give people a reason to come back to your content.
Taylor: What advice do you have for someone who is interested in making content?
Sarah: If you’re trying to make content for the first time, or you’re trying to figure out how to use TikTok or something like that - It gets easier. It really does. I have it down to a science now. It does take some work, and sometimes I’ll keep a content bank of ideas that I can go back to when I don’t have anything spur of the moment. I think consistency is really important. Just kinda having a goal of, ‘This is how many videos I want to make.’ But don’t put so much pressure on yourself! Be patient, it takes time. Truly, with anything else, it just gets easier. Depending on the kind of video, I can shoot three videos in ten minutes if I need to. It’s pretty crazy.
Taylor: For an industry where we always wait around, there’s so much of us giving our best and then we wait. But if you can simultaneously be making something, it feels reassuring. It feels less existential.
Sarah: Listen, we don’t know what’s going to be the avenue that gets us to the next level of our career. So for me, I’m going to try all of the avenues. I don’t know if it’s going to be that I go in for a traditional casting through an agent, I get the role, and maybe that’s it. And maybe I didn’t need to do all this other stuff. But maybe I get a role because of all this content that I’ve put out on social media. Or maybe somebody’s like, ‘I see this girl, and she actually reminds me of the lead that I want to cast in this thing that I’m making.’ Or maybe it’s the pilot that I wrote. You just don’t know what it is. There’s so little that you have control over in this industry, it feels nice to be able to do something.
Edited for clarity. Watch the full interview here.
