Yes, Actors Need Their Own Website, Here's Why
Control. Your job as an actor is equal parts talent development, equal parts marketing. One aspect crucial to marketing your acting product is how you control your brand - on and offline.
Offline you want to control how you show up in rooms with your peers and prospective employers. You'll show up as your best self while networking, ready to talk about your work and your goals as an actor. This is exactly what you want to replicate online. Create a the place where your audience can walk away with a satisfying impression of you and your work, and a way to reach you with inquiries or opportunities.
Social media alone isn't enough. As an independent producer, if I find you on Instagram, for example, you have a great look for a role I'm casting, maybe a short clip of a role you've recently played and I'm interested in learning more about your experience as an actor, the first thing I'll do is look for a link to a website (not Facebook, not YouTube, not Twitter) in your bio. If I don't find that, I'll head to Google and search your name. If you have an up to date IMDb profile, I'll be able to see your work and possibly contact you if I have an IMDb Pro account. If not, I'll keep searching. I'm looking for a place where I can find a bio, reel, resume, and contact information. What often happens with Caribbean actors I'm interested in is that I find nothing. No reel or agent contact, no direct email address, nada. So I move on.
Opportunities missed aside, you want to control how casting directors, agents and independent producers see you online. They are your audience here, not your fans. Your actor's website is marketing material, all your assets in one place.
Read: Why Treating Your Acting Career Like a Business is the Key to Being Discovered
A website is an investment into your goal to get more work as an actor, not an expense. It allows you to be discoverable and build trust with your audience through content. Give it the time and energy it needs to sell your acting product, but be strategic in how you develop it, and how it evolves. To start, you'll want to buy a custom domain, email address and professional photos, embedded video and well written copy for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
If you're comfortable building your own website, I recommend using Squarespace for its easy drag and drop features and cleanly designed templates, no coding experience required. Hiring an agency or designer to build your site should come with a lot of communication and planning before committing to using a service.
