Today’s tip touches on a bit of a controversial area… aesthetics. Surely your face doesn’t matter when you’re in radio? Well, weirdly enough, it does.
Do you have a decent photo on your voiceover site? People with photos get 5 times as many hits as those without! Don’t have a cheap-looking, homemade photo from the 1980s either. Get a fancy, black and white, professional one.
There are a number of things for you to do to increase your chances of success in the voiceover industry, but the most important of all is the quality of your demo.
You can promote yourself as much as you like - but at the end of the day, it comes down to your demo. You are competing with some extremely talented people out there.
An “OK” demo is simply not good enough.
As a voiceover, you need to constantly market yourself. Or find ways and places to advertise on. All successful businesses advertise to attract new customers. You should do the same to get voice jobs. Even if you have an agent. I’ve already said this, but it stays true: the more people you have promoting you, the better.
So, trawl the web and register on as many directories as possible and also put your name/demo out there in the real world. You need to treat your VO work as a business and set an advertising budget.
Never underestimate the power of H2O!
The larynx works best when it is moist, like the inside of your mouth, so drink plenty of water, daily. 6 to 8 large glasses of water a day are usually recommended, especially for a voiceover. The thin mucus that lubricates your vocal folds (and your nose, throat and chest) depend on the water content of the body.
Without plenty of water it becomes thick and sticky. The vocal folds may become dryer and stiffer making them more vulnerable to damage through excessive or inefficient voice use. The sticky mucus can also cause irritation leading to coughing or throat clearing which may further damage the vocal folds.
And there’s nothing worse than trying to get a smooth read from a voiceover when they sound like the Sahara.
Here’s another important tip regarding time / timekeeping / punctuality. Time = Money in the advertising world, so arrive 10 minutes early to every single gig.
You want to make a good impression. Especially since there’s a room full of clients / sound engineers / producers / copywriters / account directors waiting just for you. It also shows that you’re taking the job seriously -which prevents clients from feeling like they’re being ripped off by some airheady inconsiderate thespian. Besides, you can spend the time meeting new contacts & dishing out the old business card.
Remember, a happy client = repeat business in the voiceover world.
Today’s tip for voiceovers concerns urgency.
If you get a message that someone is trying to book you for a gig, don’t wait a single minute. Call back immediately! It may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t.
Ad agencies are usually up against very tight deadlines, and if you take too long getting back to them, they’ll simply book a voiceover who is answering their phone.
Remember - just one or two new clients per year can mean loads of repeat £££ over time.
Today’s tip touches on a bit of a controversial area… aesthetics. Surely your face doesn’t matter when you’re in radio? Well, weirdly enough, it does.
Make sure you have a decent photo on your business cards, and online profiles. People with photos get 5 times as many hits as those without! Don’t have a cheap-looking, homemade photo from the 1980s either. Get a fancy, black and white, professional one.
The big loud voiceover-y voiceover guy is like a white rhino. He’s not extinct yet. But he’s a couple of bullets away.
Having started Piehole almost 3 years ago we’ve definitely noticed a trend developing that is moving away from that smooth-as-honey, slightly-fake-sounding, too-polished, style of VO. A fondness is developing for the more natural-sounding VO, specifically when it comes to commercial voiceovers. Even if natural sounds a bit unpolished and even slightly awkward - that’s more “real”.
Doesn’t mean to say that the super-polished VO is a complete thing of the past. There’s still plenty of work to go around for all styles. For now.
Hopefully you get your voiceover demo!
This post is about making sure your embarrassing videos and photos from the past don’t beat your demo to the top of the google rankings.
One thing you can do to improve your google rating is to “favourite” your professional webpages - whether that be your Piehole page, or your myspace, facebook or wherever you decide to put your voice demo. You can do this by creating a Del.icious or a Dig link. You might need to register with these sites if you haven’t already done so.
The second thing you can do is… get all your friends to also “favourite” you - your mum and dad included.
Try to list your professional link on as many web pages as possible - where you’re commenting on actors forums or such stuff. Basically, try to get your name and voice on as many places as you can on the internet.
Sending out CDs, printing postcards, direct mailers all cost a wad of cash. But voiceovers have to promote themselves somehow. There’s a couple of ways you can promote yourself in a memorable way - for free.
One way of doing this is to offer copywriters or producers in ad agencies tickets to one of your acting gigs. Simply pick up the phone, or drop an email, asking if they’d like a pair of tickets to your show. Ask if they’d like you to put them on the guest list. This is a good way for them to see your amazing acting talent, and of course, it’s a more civilised form of bribery. To find out how to create a database of copywriters and producers, there’s a big fat article about it in our ebook.
