Will 2015 be the year your Voice Over career takes off?

Happy New Year!

We always come out of the end of year holiday period feeling refreshed, re-energized, optimistic and ready for a cracker of a year.

So, if you’ve been giving your career some attention, then you may have some ideas about where you need to put the focus.

But you don’t need to create a long list of to-do’s that never get done.

Work out what needs to be done that will bring you the most happiness and satisfaction.  After all, no matter what we’re doing, we want to feel good.

Here are three suggestions to help you get inspired about your voice over career.

1 What Just Happened?

I always believe it’s helpful to review the year that was.

So, look at last year, work out what went well and what didn’t, then make some simple adjustments to the way you work this year.

Review the best voice over work you did last year – if you don’t have a copy of that work, get copies.

You need to make a habit of collecting the jobs you do, for several reasons:

• You need material for demos,
• You can use single tracks to market your talents to clients
• You need to be able to review the work you’ve done, to track your growth and improvements, and
• You need to analyse the kind of work you’re being cast for, and market to those who are looking for you.

Speaking of which…

2 Can Everyone Find You?

If you have a personal website, brilliant!  If you don’t, then you need to seriously put it on your list.

I’d been living with an outdated website that I couldn’t content manage and was determined I’d get a new website created last year – I’m already reaping rewards!

And to think, I had a website upgrade on my to-do list for three years. Duh! Abbbbeeeee!

It cost me just over $700, was built from a template that I bought for under $50 and uses WordPress as its content management system.

So, I’m in control of all the content and can change anything, anytime – I add and remove demos, images and shots.

Here’s a link to my site to have a look at what can be affordably achieved.

If you do have a website, you might like to do a bit of work on updating it.

Check your website copy to see if the samples you have there clearly reflect what kind of jobs you get cast for.

You might also like to get some help with an SEO professional to adjust your key word settings so you can capture the right kind of attention from those looking for your voice type or special skill.

Make sure you get someone who really knows what they’re doing. 

You might have to spend a couple of hundred bucks for a consultation, but it’ll be money well spent.

Proof is the most important aspect of positioning yourself with a website – only make claims about your talents and abilities that you can then prove with samples of your work.

Review the samples on your website and your demos as well.

If there’s work on your demo that you’re not being cast for, it could be because:

a)    That kind of work is not being done right now

b)    The territory is well covered by others

c)    Your samples of that style are not engaging enough, or

d)    You just plain suck at it.

Sometimes, the best thing we can be is our own ‘devils advocate’.

Okay, so you love doing ‘crazy funny cartoon voices’, you fancy yourself as ‘sultry and sexy’ or you’re the next big ‘voice of god’.

The truth is, voice over it not necessarily about what you’d like to be doing.

It’s about what you’d be cast doing – you need to understand what you do best and then position yourself well to take advantage of your wealth of useable talents.

If you’re a little lost in this area and wish you knew what you’d be great at, find a good mainstream coach who can help you find out.  Get them to help you choose samples for your demo or website that reflect your marketable style.

Yup, having an up-to-date, really-working-for-you website is an absolute, definite must.

In fact here’s the link to Chris Finnegan at WP CoPilot who did my website and was fabulous to work with.

3 Friends In High Places?

Whenever you do a job that you know has been well received, see if you can get the client, the studio engineer or the casting person to give you a testimonial about how great you were to work with. 

Make it short, 60-80 words is plenty.

Ask for a headshot and include a link to their website – what client doesn’t like a link?

If you have a list of clients and industry contacts, dust it off, check that the contacts are still live and relevant, and make a plan for sending something to someone on that list every day.

Perhaps you’ll even send more than one – but make sure all your communications are personal. No one really likes a generic or ‘dear everybody’ email!

If you need to research the studio or client and what they do, or have done, and who their clients are – do that.

Voice over is a career that relies on one person, you, to make it a success.

It won’t happen by magic – but it will happen with focused, smart thinking, really knowing what it is you have to offer, and how to position yourself to optimize your talents.

Happy VoiceOvering in 2015!