Monday, August 21, 12:15-1 pm
Couch Fame’s co-owners are experts in social media, adult marketing and self-promotion, and at EXPO 2023 they’ll offer exclusive advice for entertainers to help develop their online presence into something larger than life.
F
or the first time in almost a decade, EXPO is offering multiple seminars geared towards feature and “house” entertainers. The “For Entertainers Only” social media mangement seminar will provide performers with strategies in social media to boost the outreach of their personal brands with tips from the two professionals, Sammy Shayne and Bryan, co-owners of Couch Fame, an adult talent agency company.
Sammy began her career in marketing as the head of human relations. She then worked in adult entertainment for eight years, first as a cam girl herself, then the head of social media for cam4.com. Sammy subsequently headed Model Management and recruited for livejasmin.com, mostly managing social media for major adult brands.
Bryan’s background is in digital marketing. He has also managed social media campaigns for a variety of large mainstream brands, as well managed online communities since “before the World Wide Web,” he says.
Both Sammy and Bryan would say that, while social media promotion for clubs is a completely different world compared to the promotion of entertainers, the two can be complimentary.
“At this point in time, pornography is pretty easy to come by for free,” says Bryan. “In response to the crisis that this makes for in the adult world, in venues like Only Fans, Instagram, Snapchat and Patreon, people are monetizing the relationship itself, because while free porn is appealing, it’s a little bit lonely. And so by selling the relationship — by selling the idea that there’s a chance you’ll get to spend one-on-one time with this person — that’s way more monetizable for the performer than just saying, ‘Come see me naked on Thursday night.’ But if you’re the club, then you might say, ‘Come see the girls naked.’ You would say, for instance, ‘Not only do we have the big game showing, but the girls will be naked.’ That’s great marketing too, but it’s a different kind. One is event marketing; the other is a relationship.”
“What we recommend is to be on as many sites as possible, but tailor your content per app. You can gain a massive following that way. This may seem daunting, but all content can be repurposed.”
– Sammy Shayne, Co-Founder of Couch Fame
Regarding that ‘relationship,’ “every customer is a potential creeper,” continues Bryan, who acknowledges that there are reasons you would want to keep strangers out of your personal life. “But somehow, you have to make these people feel like they’re wanted, and this comes with ancillary benefits, too: not just getting them into the club, but one of these guys could go through your Amazon Wish List and spend $1,000 on you. If you don’t feel comfortable opening up about your own life, make something up. A pretty common white lie that we’ll tell people in social media interactions with adult entertainers is that they’re single, for example. You can make up an entire persona for yourself and put that out there if you’re not comfortable actually telling these people the details of your lives. The more you can make your customers feel included in your life, the more money you can make off of them.”
“An immediate tip that I would suggest for boosting your social media presence is to provide customers the illusion that they’re not only involved in your life, but that they’re having an impact on it,” adds Sammy. She suggests something as simple as “throwing a poll up with two different outfits, and saying, ‘I’m gonna wear the outfit that gets the most votes tonight. What should I wear?’ This is a very simple tactic to (a) get a lot of engagement on your social media; and (b) really encourage people to come out and see the winning outfit that they helped you choose.”
As to which social media apps are the most important for building your social media presence, Sammy notes, “These days, it’s really important to be on everything,” she says. “But if I had to pick one single platform, I would choose Twitter because you can get away with adult links on Twitter that you can’t on most apps.”
“And your target audience knows that that’s a place they can consume sexual content,” Bryan agrees. “That said, if you want to reach a bigger audience, Instagram is great and has reduced its moderation considerably. I was literally watching a GIF of a girl doing pull-ups buck-naked with a butt plug in on Instagram this morning. So you can get pretty raunchy on Instagram, if you want to reach a larger, more general audience — to inform them of how good looking you are and where they can find you.”
“That being said, the absolute most organic viral app is TikTok,” continues Sammy. “However, TikTok is an app that has a history of being completely against adult performers.”
“TikTok is the kind of app that would straight up ban you for finding out you’re an adult performer, regardless of content,” adds Bryan.
“What we recommend is to be on as many sites as possible, but tailor your content per app” says Sammy. “You can gain a massive following that way. This may seem daunting, but all content can be repurposed.”
“As a performer, you’re essentially a one-person business,” concludes Bryan. “And it’s important to note that it takes money to make money. I recommend paid marketing campaigns for this reason. You can’t dance forever, but you can have a personal brand built on a very large body of content and your ability to outreach. And that could last you the rest of your life, providing a passive income forever.
“And for the handful of people who grow their personal brand as a performer into a big brand that uses a lot of people, it’s very important to not make the relationships feel diluted,” Bryan concludes. “You have to quality control your own performer brand, just like General Mills quality controls their cereal, because nobody wants to figure out halfway through their private session that their favorite adult star who they think is slowly falling in love with them is actually some dude in India. And if you let that slip, you lose your money.”
For more information on CouchFame, visit couchfame.com and catch Sammy Shayne and Bryan at their “For Entertainers Only” social media seminar at EXPO 2023.
