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Who you are can make you famous!

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Adult Star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

Feature Friday Photo: The sexy and delectable April Hunter

These days, with everyone who has an Internet connection going online and being content creators, it is getting harder and harder for adult stars to set themselves apart. Finding a niche is vital to separating yourself from the crowd. If there were a magic formula to this, everyone would do it. The trick is to look inside yourself and find that thing that sets you apart and then essentially exploit it.

Finding your thing is the key to success in everything. You have to find what you are good at and then run with it.  The hardest part is committing to it, and taking the time to build your skills and proficiency in your natural talent.

In certain ways the Internet makes it easy to make yourself seem unique and different. A nice website, some good photography and a good copy editor and you can create the illusion of an interesting persona. However, social media busts this personal mythos.

When you use social media, you are actually talking to people. So even if you try to maintain an inventive personality, at some point your real self comes out.  Finding a niche that separates you from the pack needs to come from you.

Many people think this means you need to have a special skill or talent. But this is not true; a niche can be anything from the talkative sweet girl-next-door type whose main skill is chatting you up on Twitter, to the dominatrix who will only talk to you if you say please.  It can truly be anything, but make sure that it is really you.

This week’s Friday Photo features April Hunter.  She has found a niche that is true to herself and is blowing it up!  I was originally going to write a post about the power of YouTube for non-viral video marketing. But now you will have to wait until Monday to read that post. April inspired me to write about the importance of being true to yourself and distinguishing yourself through your own personal niche.

Adult star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

April has created a dynamic career based on her interests. Starting off as a dancer, she realized this was not enough; it wasn’t bringing her the career satisfaction or potential advancement she wanted. So she got into fitness modeling, then became a pro-wrestler.  Now as an adult star, she is all of it and more!

On Twitter she is a great tweep to chat with. Her content is funny and engaging. She shares great pics from her life, and is also really easy to talk to. Her site really shows her passions and her specialty.

In short, April has done an exceptional job of turning her interest into her niche and that niche into a career.

Make sure you visit April’s website: www.aprilhunter.com and chat her up on Twitter @AprilHunter

The takeaway: To set yourself apart, you need to be yourself.

Promote your porn on Twitter, promote your brand on LinkedIn.

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Veronica Vaughn LinkedIn Profile

Veronica Vaughn promotes herself as a business owner first and adult star second. Like Veronica, keep your social networks connected. Her LinkedIn is for networking but her linked Twitter account is for promotion.

LinkedIn is the largest business networking site.  It is where you go to post your resume, find jobs, meet people, make connections, create business alliances and have access to amazing business resources. This is not generally where you’d think of porn.  In fact, the public does not usually think of any adult star as being invested in business.  However,  the most successful porn stars have great business heads; that is why they are successful. .

LinkedIn has generally been the forbidden network in porn. Most people in the adult industry have not viewed LinkedIn as an adult friendly platform. This is true, it isn’t.  But it is not against people in the adult industry, it is against using the site as a promotion for porn.  In all fairness, it is against using the site as commercial promotion for any business.  The network is not actually about promoting business, it is about building business connections.

Much like Facebook, it is primarily a self monitoring community. If your profile is essentially spam, you risk being deleted. If you spam groups, your posts will be deleted and you may be removed from the group. If you are obviously engaging or promoting illegal activity, you will be deleted.  But if you are focusing on developing your business connections you will be fine.

LinkedIn is a place where adult stars can focus on the business side of their networking –  meeting producers, studios, agents, distributors, managers, etc.  LinkedIn groups are  your greatest resource.  There are groups for every possible topic. Interested in Social Media? Join the group Adult Social Media and keep on top of what is happening in social media in adult entertainment.

Join a group, read the discussion and then take part. The more you use the groups the more they will benefit you.  As you participate, you will meet people and expand your network.

Are you needing information? Ask the group.

Are you needing help? Ask the group.

Are you looking for business connections? Ask the group.

To network on LinkedIn you just need to position yourself as a business person.  Promote your porn on Twitter. Network your brand on LinkedIn.

Porn not Verified on Twitter?

Are you verified on Twitter? Does it matter? Is it important?

For some people getting verified on Twitter is extremely important. Twitter verification is essentially a big blue check mark that says you are the real deal! It is Twitter’s way of establishing authenticity behind a well know and public persona. It is used for public figures, ie. politicians, celebrities, rock stars, etc.

Jenna Jameson verified on Twitter

One issue that a lot of adult stars face is the inability to get verified. Maybe someone already claimed your name and won’t give it up, not doing anything with it, just cyber-squatting.  Maybe they claimed your name to spam.  Maybe they are just posing as you.

Your name is a brand. You have worked hard at getting name recognition and you should be able to reap the rewards, not some random person in cyber-space who doesn’t know you from Adam. What is even worse than someone squatting on your name is if they are spamming or misrepresenting you.  Are they damaging the good name you have built?  This is, of course, why Twitter started verifying to begin with.  But many people in the adult industry have had great difficulty getting verified, or getting Twitter to help them resolve issues of cyber-squatting or spam/misrepresentation.  And yes we speculate discrimination.

Pornstar Tweet felt strong about this issue as well and created their own verification system for the stars they list. They vet the stars on their list and with any they can without a doubt authenticate, the readily offer their own check mark. Though unfortunately their check mark only appears on the list on their site and doesn’t translate to the Twitter avatar.

However, Twitter not verifying is quickly becoming a mute point because they are no longer verifying accounts. Since the change to New Twitter, many verified accounts have even lost their prized check mark.  Though support@twitter does say they are restoring them to their rightful owners.

The change to new twitter seems to come with the promise of a change to the verification system.  Apparently the verification system was in its beta form and Twitter will be rolling out a new and improved system.  Maybe this new verification system will be more open to verifying adult stars who have worked hard for name recognition and deserve to have that little blue check mark!

Social Media & Sex: Adult Entertainment at Blogworld

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Pete Housley, Kelly Shibari, Nina Hartley and Jamye Waxman at BlogworldIt is safe to say that adult entertainment is under represented in social media.  However, that is better than not represented.  At Blogworld Expo 2010 among all the wonderful and informative panels on social media, blogging, public speaking, brand building and PR was an adult entertainment gem tucked away.

The seminar was NSFW: Exploring Porn and Social Media, with speakers Adria Richards, Jamye Waxman, Kelly Shibari, Nina Hartley and Pete Housley. Though most of you probably know, this panel made up a power house of social media in adult entertainment.

This should come as no surprise, but many traditional SM strategies were discussed as being the same in adult entertainment as they are in mainstream media.

  • Make sure you have a point of view you are always promoting, this helps establish a voice.
  • 80% conversation and 20% call to action
  • It is all about engagement

Adult entertainers are more discriminated against in social media than other public figures.  Pete Housley told a story of an adult star whose name was taken by someone else on Twitter.  The person who claimed the name was squatting with it and refused to give it up. The star had to assume a different twitter handle. Of course this means that the benefit of her brand recognition for her name is received by someone else.  She also tried to get her account verified by Twitter, so that her non-branded twitter handle would be acknowledged as the real adult star.  But because she is an adult star, Twitter did not address her issue.

Though Twitter does not specifically prevent adult entertainment from networking on their service, they won’t really go out of their way to help anyone out either.

What this means is that adult entertainers have to work harder and smarter to maneuver the social media sphere. Of course, if you have to think about and plan out a social media strategy then it is far more likely to be successful then they people who just wing it.

So maybe the inherent disadvantage will prove to be a marketing advantage in the long run? What do you think?