In all of my research and understanding about the industry, actors contacting agents, managers, and casting directors through social media does not typically produce a great outcome. It usually ends with the Industry Professional angry that someone tried to get in touch with them in an unsolicited manner and it typically results in an actor with their feelings hurt or feeling like it’ll never be safe for them to contact another agent, manager, or casting director ever again. These are both not very positive outcomes, and I thought that I might be of some help to someone if I weigh in on the subject, so here it goes!

     Just because you have been able to find a casting director, agent, or a manager online, it doesn’t mean that you should be contacting them. This especially holds true if they are a person that has a private account, no friends in common with you, or asks specifically to not be contacted. If someone says that they specifically do not want unsolicited material then you should not be sending them anything, period. There is no reason to justify sending unsolicited material to someone who does not want it and this borders on being rude to the person.

     Finding someone on social media and asking them to be your friend is fine if you have met them in person or you have mutual friends. This is pretty much true for any social scene where you may be considering adding a new friend on Facebook, following someone on Instagram or whatever it is you are doing. Making sure you are coming across to people you meet and would like to befriend as someone who is friendly, likeable, and trustworthy is hopefully important to you in your daily life and that is what you should be trying to achieve when you are making connections in the industry.

     Making sure that you are not imposing on someone too much, especially when they specifically ask for no submissions, is very important in this industry. You want to make sure that agents and managers want to help you and starting off your relationship in a way that automatically makes them upset is not great. Making sure you are sending your material in a way that they are okay with, and ensuring you are not crossing any boundaries they specifically do not want to be crossed is very important and something that you have to be doing if you want to make friends in this industry.

     Hopefully this clears up some of the ideas people have about contacting industry professionals online. It is not always the best idea because you never know what the agent, manager, or casting director is all right with. Regardless, that doesn’t mean that they should be rude to you about it, but just know that you should be weary of this before contacting one of them online.