Clubhouse Recap: The Working Voice Actor and Reels

In Friday’s session of The Working Voice Actor on Clubhouse with George Nowik, Roshelle Simpson & Megan Selke, the topic was reels. Do you make them? What platform do you use? What kind of hashtags do you use, and how many? What’s been the response to your reels so far?

Personally, I had nothing to contribute to this discussion because I have not tried anything like this. Someone early on in the conversation said something like, “Explain this to me like I’m a grandma who doesn’t understand this at all, but also explain it like I’m 3.” That’s the category that I fall into regarding reels, or, the short videos that appear on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube (as Shorts), and perhaps some other places? Like I said, I’m all like reels what ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A few things that I learned:

• Keep it short: 7-15 seconds seems to be the ideal length that the algorithms will push out.
• Our attention span is about 8 seconds, according to recent research that was mentioned in the discussion.
• If you create a video on TikTok, for example, do not try to post it elsewhere if it has a TikTok logo on it because that other platform will not like it.
• Don’t use too many hashtags.

One point that everyone agreed on is to make content because you enjoy doing it. If you’re forcing yourself to do something just for the sake of having something to post, that’s going to show. So just go for it and have fun!

And on that note, the mods issued a challenge for the week: create a reel, post it, and see what happens! Tag George, Roshelle, and Megan, and try to use the hashtag #theworkingvoiceactor so we can all find it and enjoy it.

Thank you to George, Roshelle, and Megan for organizing this space, and thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion! I’m looking forward to the next one, and I hope to see you there: Fridays on Clubhouse at 9am PST/noon EST.