Cahootify: Are you missing out on the next BIG thing?

Whether you’re an aspiring Tarantino, an actor with a big dream, or creative individual looking to expand their professional horizons then you’ve got to hear all about Pete Francomb’s latest and greatest social media platform “Cahootify!”

Cahootify is an online project portfolio that allows you to demonstrate your ability and potential across the World Wide Web, allowing you to branch out to new customers and possible future co-workers. This freelance website allows you to showcase your original work, whilst ensuring you get fully credited and commended for the things you have produced or worked with as part of a team.

Within this website, you are given the opportunity to present work that you have created and even include your name in any other projects online that you have been a part of, whether this is directing and filming, or even costume design. This is great for your online persona as it gives you the ability to display work you feel could gain you particular success and one that presents your talents well.

By creating an online portfolio with Cahootify, the people who admire your work can easily find you making you more accessible thus giving you a greater potential of work. This applies to much more than just the consumers, but is also particularly beneficial to those who wish to request to work with you or hire you as part of their production team. Anyone interested in your work can quite easily click on your online persona through Cahootify, and be presented with your own online portfolio.

When learning about Cahootify, I began to consider how different and unique this company was in comparison to other websites we already have access to. I found myself particularly intrigued that this company was very similar to the website ‘LinkedIn’. A platform that lets you “Manage your professional identity…build and engage with your professional network…access knowledge, insights and opportunities.” Therefore I began to question the differences between the two of these social networking’s. Cahootify allows its users to create portfolios of work, which is ideal for those who want to become a cog in the film, media and entertainment industry. In comparison to this, LinkedIn is not designed to display these projects but to create and exhibit your professional profile, such as your hobbies, your previous work history and your academic achievements. However, they both aim in helping your working recruitment opportunities and the ways in which your professional domains can be demonstrated online. Therefore to gain the most of both of these websites, it would be resourceful to use them both alongside each other to encourage professional and practical responses.

So, is Cahootify a social media platform or an online community? What if I told you it could be both? Well, according to Rosemary O’Neill, “Social networks tend to recommend specific peer-to-peer connections… and communities bring together a cohesive group.” Therefore Cahootify brings both of these admirable factors together to create a platform that is both dimensional and experimental, but certainly one that works and is successful.

Personally, I feel that a good online presence is the key to most of your success online. Usually, the bigger and more popular you are, the greater the chance for you to gain opportunities for work and recruitment. In my opinion, the way you go about marketing yourself online is almost as important as the content you have created and are willing to present. So, social media is one of the biggest and most successful ways to market something online, and there are several ways in which an individual just like yourself can do this. Twitter tends to be one of the more popular ways individuals go about marketing themselves and their work. This is due to the folksonomy of the hashtag. (I have created a more detailed blog post about the folksonomies and taxonomies of Twitter if you’re not too sure about what this is! You can find it by clicking here.) This is likely to be due to the opportunities it raises through the chance of finding new connections with people who aren’t following you but people who are actively seeking out those with similar interests or people who are also promoting their own work. For example, you may Tweet something along the lines of…

and people who look under the hashtag “#IndependentFilmMaker” may find your work and seek out your professional profile. Therefore this online marketing strategy can not only help to promote your work but also be used to help communications between project members and their consumers.

So, why is Cahootify an important platform for me when I already have the likes of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook to demonstrate my work?

This is a question I found myself wondering after hearing all about this platform and the way it works, and the truth is, because it help to gather and collate a community of people who each express similar passions and qualities you may be looking for when recruiting staff or when displaying your work! This online platform is excellent for those who wish to find people with the corresponding needs to their requirements, and the best part is, it’s all in one place!

So, by using social media such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn you can engage traffic towards your Cahootify profile!

If there is one thing that I feel potentially hinders the ultimate success of this website is the lack of hierarchy among its users. This is understandably a matter of opinion, however I feel it would be best to be able to differentiate the ‘amateurs’ from the ‘experts’ to allow people to critically devise who they would like to hire or who they would like to work alongside. I feel that personally, being an ‘amateur’ in the world of film production, I would feel uncomfortable and insecure attaching myself to a project with people who would be considered ‘experts’, and vice versa. However this might not always be the case as we all have to start somewhere in order to become an expert. Therefore this notion of hierarchy could work in allowing people to branch out and gain experience by following or requesting to shadow or work alongside a person who is already considered a well-established and an already developed film/entertainment professional, as this would allow individuals to gain experience and learn from those whose footsteps they wish to follow.

All in all, I personally believe that Cahootify is an excellent way for new and independent media creatives to seek out positions of work through displaying their talents online to the right people at the right time. Not only does this create work for them, but it makes it easier for those who wish to scout talent and for those who are looking for work. I certainly will be using this to expand my portfolio of work in attempt to find other creatives at my level and join them in creating future projects, whilst also taking the time to browse through the work of other people to both inspire and enrich my knowledge of the film industry and what I could be capable of.

So what are you waiting for? Hit Cahootify, create an online profile and find the world of entertainment at your fingertips! There’s a whole platform of opportunities just waiting for you to explore them!

You could also let me know what you think about the website by Tweeting me or leaving a comment on this post!