What do you need to do to get noticed? As you may have heard, half of the battle is just showing up. In order for your brand to show up, you need to know how to market yourself. Particularly online, marketing yourself includes investing some time and effort into building your web presence.

You can market yourself online in a variety of ways, including sharing your story and explaining to others how you can potentially work together. Networking is a way to expand your territory while making new friends. So many different businesses need voice-overs recorded, and they may not even realize how voice acting can help them. When you network with other people, you may be the first person they’ve ever met that does voice acting. As a result, getting your story down pat before you head out into the world of business networking is a must.

These days it’s not just about who you know, it’s about how many people you know that matters. Social media now plays such an important role in getting more friends — and thus more business prospects.

With social media, virtual friendships have increased the number of friends and potential networks you are connected to. You can have similar interests and business goals with those friends, which in turn allows you to share opportunities and successes in your voice acting career.

The three main social media sites that we suggest you use to market your voice acting include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn:

Facebook

Facebook (www.facebook.com) allows you to join groups, add friends, and incorporate applications into your profile to share content and help direct people to your website. You can include links from your profile to your own website and blog. The ability to post notes and update your status on the fly also gives you an opportunity to communicate to all your friends at once. Your profile can promote your voice and invite your clients to join. You can send out emails to your members easily to announce and share a new demo, talk about work you’ve recently completed, share your studio news, and more.

We suggest that if you want to keep business and personal separate that you create separate profiles — one for your personal self and one for your business. You can opt to create a Facebook page for your business that people can “like” and follow you on a professional basis. That isn’t to say that you can’t share personal things through your professional profile, but you can be more selective with what elements of your personal life you choose to share given the audience viewing the updates.

Twitter

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a channel that many techie social networking types have embraced as an alternative way to keep people up on what they’re doing. Twitter gives you the ability to sign up and provide a flow of personal updates while also allowing you to follow or subscribe to the Twitter update feeds of your family, friends, colleagues, or your favorite movers and shakers. For example, you could be on the lookout for people in the industry who share interesting things on their Twitter feeds. If you follow them, they may follow you back! Similarly, you may be followed by those who are interested in what you have to say, or in hiring you. When you use Twitter, you can share about recent work you’ve done or general things, like how to take care of your voice. You also direct followers to where they can hear interesting projects you have voiced, or where they can hire you, whether it be a service you use, or your own website. Twitter’s 140 characters forces you to get creative with concise calls to action and rapport building.

One of the more popular ways to classify a tweet is by using a hashtag (#) before a word. Doing so makes it easier for others with similar interests to find what you’re talking about. For example, a popular hashtag being used in the voice-over industry is #voiceover.

Remember that Twitter updates can be searchable on the Internet and also published in the public timeline. If you want to limit access to your updates, you need to check the box to “protect your updates” Twitter feed.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is one of the oldest social networking sites specific to professional networking. It focuses on facilitating the connection of service providers in a traditional manner. Why is LinkedIn great for voice actors? LinkedIn classifies nearly every aspect of what people do in their professional lives and makes it simple to connect with others in the industry of your choice or related industries. You can add friends and develop a network of other voice actors, producers, casting directors, and so forth. You can also observe a “six degrees of separation” type family tree of who knows who, how they know each other, and how you may also become acquainted with someone who is a friend of a friend by means of an introduction from a mutual friend.

Remember to avoid “social media burnout.” If you’re feeling overwhelmed by social media and social networking, you may find that maintaining too many profiles on social networks may become one more thing on your to-do list or the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Having several profiles on social media can also become addicting if you’re constantly updating, tweeting, or reading what others are doing instead of actually doing anything yourself. Social media has a lot of noise, so be careful and spend your time social networking wisely.

Making social media a part of your marketing strategy for your voice and your brand is smart; you can control the image you put out into the world, making sure that it aligns with your goals. As well, a little bit of thought will go a long way in determining how successful you are at marketing yourself on social platforms. Deciding exactly what your brand is, and what your goals are, is key. Planning how you will conduct yourself, the kind of content you will be posting, and what kind of rewards you hope to reap will guide your choices and overall success.

About The Authors

Stephanie Ciccarelli and David Ciccarelli are the founders of Voices.com, the largest global web hub for voice actors. Over the past nine years, Stephanie, David, and their team have grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. This article was originally published in Voice Acting For Dummies and has been republished with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Recording your voice-over demo is one of the biggest steps you can take professionally to move ahead in voice acting. Most people feel comfortable making a demo after they’ve gone through some training, and often work with a producer to help shape the best sample of their voice as possible. Last week, we discussed why demos are essential, and this week, we’re covering the things to consider when recording your demo.

Making a voice-over demo is a very personal, artistic, and technical process. You can go about doing this on your own, but we advise that you consider the possibilities of having a demo produced for you professionally. Your voice-over demo can be your ticket to success and often serves as the first impression of your voice to a prospective client.

Your demo takes a lot of careful planning and, ultimately, should cater to your strengths as a voice actor and producer. When recording your own demo, take into account some of our best tips. Whether you are looking to go the DIY route, or choose to invest in hiring a pro to help you, the following will help you prepare and shape a demo that will guarantee you success in your voice acting career:

Figure out what to record

Map out what parts of your demo you’re best equipped to handle on your own. Focus on the length of each spot, ways that you can quickly indicate where you may need to edit the session, and prepare for additional tracks, such as music or sound effects. You also want to pay attention to the ordering of each spot to ensure that it flows well from one spot to the next.

Produce specific elements

A demo has more to it than just your voice over recording. Tracks for music, sound effects, and additional voices can come in handy during post-production. If you consider yourself to be a technical individual, you will enjoy producing the demo and having fun with the bells and whistles. If not, you may want to partner with a studio or a friend who’s a proficient audio engineer to help you with the technical recording aspects.

You may even want to try creating your own sounds instead of relying on premade sound effects. As with all things, use good judgment when deciding whether you should purchase professional sound effects, music beds, and so on, versus creating them yourself.

Be careful about music selections

Music often sets the tone for a voice-over demo and helps to establish your personal branding style. But don’t let styles of music that have been shelved for too long give clients the wrong impression of your production or music selection skills.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the music sound retro in a bad way? Is the music from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or early 2000s?
• Are the sound effects in line with what you would expect to hear today?
• Are there cheesy synthesizers in the background?
• Does the music selection support the essence of the spot?
• Is the spot supposed to sound retro as in a parody spot or throwback?

There are exceptions to the rule where certain spots need to have an aged or vintage sound. You may find these sounds to apply to game show spots, old time radio drama, or the stereotypical announcer read from decades ago. In those instances, you can get away with using those elements because they support the spot in general and contribute to its authenticity and overall effectiveness.

As well, remember that, alternatively, music generally isn’t used in demos representative of audiobooks and narration. Other markets of voice-over work that don’t necessarily include music are interactive and talking toys. Typically it’s just the voice that’s required so as not to hinder someone’s ability to hear the message being delivered. Know when to add music, and when to steer clear of it.

Find royalty-free music

If you use music in your demo, royalty-free music is music that is sold relatively inexpensively, which can be licensed for use by people, such as freelance voice actors and producers for their productions. You can use this type of music in your productions without having to pay recurring fees (paying money each time the music is played). Music beds are great for using underneath your voice-over to accompany the read. You can purchase them either as a single track or as a package with variations on a theme. You can also purchase royalty-free sound effects to use in your demo.

As with anything, purchase the music from a trusted source with licensing agreements, which you can refer to and save for your records after purchase. Be sure to visit sites such as www.audiojungle.net and www.istockaudio.com for such resources.

Avoid dates and times

Dates and times, particularly as they concern cars, concert tours, and political campaigns, drastically limit the potential for your demo to endure. Marking a date will almost always give your demo a shorter shelf life, unless the date is referring to an historical event, such as the re-enactment of the Battle of 1812.

Generally, if a product is mentioned to be older than two years, try to edit out the date or leave the dates out altogether when recording initially. For instance, if you have a commercial read in your demo about a model of a car that was new in 2005, take some time to update that demo.

Check your work

Regardless of your producing skill and abilities, make sure you run your demo by a few seasoned sets of ears before sharing it with the world. Getting feedback to check your work in these ways is helpful:

• Ask your peers for their opinion. This option may be good if your peers have experience in the field. Plus, it’s free.
• Receive a demo review from a voice coach. This option is probably better, especially if the voice coach has a strong casting or agency background. These people have their fingers on the pulse of the industry and know what sounds good, what doesn’t, and how you can make your demo offering even better. You don’t want to send out demos that fail to meet contemporary standards or present a diluted version of you and your abilities.
• Join a voice-over forum or networking group. This option is also free, and you may find a thread that addresses demo reviews, specifically. In such cases, members are invited to share their demos to gain feedback through peer reviews. One caveat is that not everyone sharing an opinion is listening with the ears of a casting director or someone who genuinely wants to help you.

Budget your production money
Should you be working with a professional producer on a demo, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $1,000, or more, which may include a couple hours of rehearsal and coaching, a couple hours in the studio, and the producer’s private editing and production time. If someone is charging less than $600 to do your demo, be sure to take caution. Most demo producers advise you to look elsewhere because anyone charging less than $1,000 probably isn’t devoting enough time to give you a real professional demo that you can market.

If you’re recording your own demo, you need to have a proper studio set-up and the right software and editing tools to get the job done. You also need to find music that you can use, which has an associated cost, unless you’re able to compose and or perform your own music.

Also, think about your time as a factor in cost. How long do you anticipate spending on the process? Remember that it takes twice as long to edit a recording as it did to record it. Your time is valuable, so don’t forget to budget for it. The average cost of recording your own demo, when you factor in your time spent on copywriting, music, voice-over recording, editing, mixing, and mastering, can be up to $1,000.

If you’re going to take production seriously, set your sights on creating solid production value that takes your audience on a journey through varying sounds. Doing so will ensure a professional demo that will highlight your skills and experience, and that will get you the job.

About The Authors

Stephanie Ciccarelli and David Ciccarelli are the founders of Voices.com, the largest global web hub for voice actors. Over the past nine years, Stephanie, David, and their team have grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. This article was originally published in Voice Acting For Dummies and has been republished with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

In hopes of being hired for a job, many voice actors and musicians started out by giving live performances to give prospective customers a taste of what they can do. A pre-recorded demo serves as that taste, and in order to get voice-over work, you require a voice-over demo.

Your demo needs to be your best work to show prospective clients and potential agents what you can do. Furthermore, your recording must also be something you feel comfortable assigning your name to and marketing to the public, as your prospective clients can listen to it and evaluate your services firsthand. A voice-over demo is like your business card and resume all wrapped into one; it gives listeners an appreciation for what you’re able to do vocally and also provides a glimpse into how you can sound as the voice of their job.

Thanks to modern technology, you can submit your demo to prospective clients, and they can access it to listen to without you having to be present. You can listen to professional voice-over demos online at http://www.voices.com  to get an idea for what actors are using to promote themselves online to get work.

Having at least one voice-over demo is essential to promoting yourself as a voice actor. How will people know if they want to work with you unless they can hear your voice? As well, if one is good, more is better; creating a variety of voice-over demos rounds out your portfolio, showcasing the styles of voice acting that you can perform.

Even though a client may have a certain need and is looking for something specific to cast a voice for his project, having a few different types of voice-over demos online are there to represent the type of work you can do. Remember that just because the client is picky, it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t interested in you or don’t appreciate a good selection for future reference.

Having a variety of demos for prospective clients to hear is beneficial to you in many ways, not the least of which is that your voice-overs can appear in more searches when those clients are seeking a very specific sound or kind of voice sample when working on an online marketplace site, such as www.elance.com or www.voices.com.

If you post your demos on a voice-acting marketplace site, you can attract customers to your demo through the search results by using as many accurate, descriptive words as possible in your text to explain what your voice-over demo is about. As well, we suggest you start with three or four demos that best highlight your skills. You can add more as you go along.

As a beginner, you may only have tried a couple different styles of voice acting and may be most comfortable making a few short sample-reads of material you found in the public domain or wrote yourself. Do not be afraid to create your portfolio of demos using such material- everyone starts somewhere! As well, remember, if you post on your own website, you still need to make sure you include a detailed description.

Recording demos helps you to discover your unique abilities and leverage opportunities for your voice to shine. The voice is a flexible instrument that lends itself to many purposes and applications. Being able to release yourself from preconceived notions or pigeonholes can only be good for you and your brand.

About The Authors

Stephanie Ciccarelli and David Ciccarelli are the founders of Voices.com, the largest global web hub for voice actors. Over the past nine years, Stephanie, David, and their team have grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. This article was originally published in Voice Acting For Dummies and has been republished with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

People have told you that you have a great voice, right? Someone has probably suggested that you should be on radio, be the voice on a movie trailer, or use your storytelling skills to narrate audiobooks. Even if you don’t have an acting or broadcasting background, you’re fairly confident that your voice has what it takes to do voice-overs.

What exactly, though, makes a voice right for voice acting? Everyone has a voice, but only some people have the necessary skills and traits needed for voice-over work.

Just because you have been talking all your life doesn’t mean that voice acting will come naturally to you. Voice acting is an art, and truly, it is acting. Although most voice work is recorded in the privacy of a studio away from the glare of the cameras, a voice-over can serve as a performance for the hundreds – if not thousands – of people who will receive the message you are giving voice to.

Before you make a decision to go into voice acting, you have to take a close look at yourself and determine whether the business is right for you. Decades ago, if you were to get into the business of voice acting, you either had to be born in a studio, raised behind a microphone, or have a relative in the business (that, or be very, very persistent, not unlike today). Times have changed. Now voice acting is all about the acting.

Your Mom may think you have a beautiful voice, but unless your Mom is the casting director or producer, she can’t land you the job.

Ask yourself these questions to see whether this business is right for you:

*  Do you know how to use your voice for voice acting? Although most people think that voice acting is all about the voice, the truth of the matter is that it’s more about how you use your voice. For instance, you may be born with a booming, announcer voice, but if you don’t know how to use it effectively or know how to act, your naturally sonorous voice won’t get you anywhere.

*  Do you embrace technology? This question is important, especially if you freelance. Being a freelance voice-over actor means that you need to have the skills to operate all the studio equipment as well as provide a convincing performance. Some people in the industry can help you get familiar with your equipment and show you how to put it to good use.

*  Do you have marketing know-how? The voice acting industry, like all entertainment and media fields, is teeming with talented people. So how do you get noticed? Successful voice actors are savvy marketers. Marketing the services you provide as a voice actor is critical; people won’t know what you do or why they should hire you unless you tell them.

*  Do you think running your own business is risky? Most entrepreneurs enjoy the thrill of risk. Whether you have an agent or you’re freelancing, you are running your own business — you’re an entrepreneur. Part of running your own business is accepting and being prepared to take some risks.

So, after asking yourself these questions, do you have what it takes? Your skills, abilities, interests, personality, and temperament all play a vital role in the career path you choose. The good news is that many career self-assessment tools are available in case you need some extra help. These tools test your compatibility with a variety of industries and potential career paths, and you can develop any of the industry-specific skills you don’t already possess by seeking out training in the industry.

About The Authors

Stephanie Ciccarelli and David Ciccarelli are the founders of Voices.com, the largest global web hub for voice actors. Over the past nine years, Stephanie, David, and their team have grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. This article was originally published in Voice Acting For Dummies and has been republished with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

You’ve dabbled a little bit in voice acting and decided you want to pursue it more as a career, or perhaps you’ve worked in the voice-acting field for several years and you want to take your abilities to the next level. Either way, it’s a good idea to examine the basics of voice acting to ensure that your next move is a successful one.

Voice acting is an amazing way to put to use something you already have — your voice. Great voice acting is about knowing how to best use your voice and interpretive skills to deliver a well-crafted message. More than just mere talk, voice acting is the art of taking the written word and skillfully translating it into a persuasive spoken message that encourages a listening audience to not only hear what you’re saying, but also to act on it in some way. Voice acting is designed to educate, inform, or entertain.

When taking the next step in the voice over industry, keep the following in mind:

• Voice Prep: Preparing and taking care of your voice are essential keys to voice acting because you rely heavily on your voice to work. Preparing your voice includes everything from warming up to ensuring you don’t abuse it by yelling, screaming, or smoking.
• Your Role: As a voice actor, you play a unique role in a production, whether it be the role of the narrator, announcer, spokesperson, or instructor. These different roles help get the message to the listener, and each has its own characteristics.
• The Script: By reading the script, you can discover a lot about the characters you’ll be voicing. When you read, you need to think like a detective and look for clues that will aid you in developing characters and creating unique voices for them. As a voice actor, your job is to bring characters and scripts to life. The more information you have, the more believable your reads, and the greater your performance.
• Your Demo: Your demo shows people what you can do with your voice and is a tool used for marketing yourself. Most people start with a commercial demo to showcase their ability to read for commercials you would hear on television or radio. You can use demos as promotion vehicles on your website or to accompany your profile on a voice acting marketplace website. You can also send them to talent agents or clients you want to introduce yourself to.
• The Audition: No matter whether you’re auditioning online or in person, clients expect proper etiquette, which means knowing to warm up your voice, prepare your read, follow directions, and being able to interpret copy.

Remember that being a voice actor isn’t just about sounding pretty. Your voice is merely an instrument used to communicate effectively and breathe life into a story. Being a voice actor includes the business of meeting the needs of a client, and making sure that your product is up to snuff. Keep the basics in mind as you put together your tool box, and you will be able to build an extraordinary career for yourself.

About The Authors

 Stephanie Ciccarelli and David Ciccarelli are the founders of Voices.com, the largest global web hub for voice actors. Over the past nine years, Stephanie, David, and their team have grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. This article was originally published in Voice Acting For Dummies and has been republished with permission from John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Voice acting is a unique career where the actor’s voice can be heard worldwide — in commercials, audiobooks, animated movies, documentaries, telephone systems and much, much more. But where do you start?

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Like all Dummies books, this book is full of useful and practical information on getting started and being successful doing voice-overs.  It’s also fun and easy to read.

With contributions from over two dozens industry veterans, agents, recording engineers and audio producers, you’ll be learning from the experts who do voice-overs each and every day for the largest organizations on the planet.  In short, you’re in good hands.

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Is it all about the voice, or is there something more?

In the hard copy edition of Voice Acting For Dummies, you will explore the basics of voice acting, get to know your voice and gain an appreciation for the importance of voice-overs, a voice actor’s role and interpreting scripts to find your unique voice in the industry.

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Read and then share the 12 Trends for Voice Acting, a document detailing observations on industry trends from the perspective of the voice over marketplace. We hope you enjoy this gift and that it proves useful to you in the days and months ahead.

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Recording Your First Demo? This One is For You! Your demo is a crucial tool in your marketing mix. How do you make an amazing voice over demo? Discover what it takes to promote your voice and acting skills while uncovering the basic truths about what works and what doesn’t.

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