My friend and bilingual voiceover talent Liz deNesnera recently achieved one of her written goals from Faffcon 3 which was to redesign her web site and rebrand her company.

Take a look for yourself but I think she did a very nice job.

Yeah OK, I get that a new Twitter background is NOT that exciting a topic for a blog, what with everybody using TweetDeck and the like; nobody ever sees one’s Twitter home page.

Well somebody might and if you click on my page you’ll see it now.

Why is it important? Well I had my last Twitter background page designed JUST before Twitter switched to a new page layout (bast—-!). So I went a year ignoring the ill fitting background page just to spite Twitter.

Twitter called me recently and asked if I would update my background page and apologized for changing the page layout right after I’d gotten the design done.

So being the forgiving type, I said sure and now alls right with the world.

Please Tweet to everyone about this exciting news. Why? Because you can!

There are two or three voiceover coaches who post so much on Facebook, Voiceover Universe and Twitter et al about their latest seminars in Tupelo, Mississippi or where ever that I’ve simply unfriended them. Social media for them is an endless informercial, I guess.

Oy.

Evidently so many voice talents have sooo much new business – based on all the Facebinkedinwitter posts I read from them – that there may be no voice over jobs left for me (or you for that matter) so we all should just quit. It’s like an accountant in April posting “I just completed another tax return!” Um, pal, that what you’re supposed to do.

The debate over the best microphone has become so intense that two voiceover talents will duel to the death tomorrow morning– their weapons of choice will be a Neumann TLM 103 and a Sennheiser 416. It begs the question if two voice over talents die in the forest, who will announce it?

And it will surprise you to learn that voxmarketising is NOT the only blog on the topic of voiceover – at last count there were 14 billion voice over blogs, all of them debating whether breaths should or should not be edited out of narrations.

Obviously I’m being silly but the truth is: in the voiceover business, we talk a lot.

When it’s not on mic, it’s on line.

The trouble is we’re ALL talking about the same things…over and over. And I think I’m getting burnt out.

That’s a bad thing because while I thought I was contributing to the conversation, I wondering now if I’ve simply been contributing to the noise.

Paul Strikwerda, my Double Dutch voiceover friend, recently wrote about this issue, which I have been bandying about in my head for a while. He’s felt tad bored by what he’s read.

My concern is not that I’m bored (I know how to fix that – change the channel, hit the off switch) but rather that I’m the one being boring. I’ve actually cut back a bit on my social media and blogging because I didn’t feel I had anything interesting to contribute. I’m not sure “my perspective” is always enough.

Thinking about it that way made me feel a little better because at least I was thinking before typing. I think when it comes to Social Media, that’s not done a lot (and it’s not an issue exclusive to voice over talents, believe me). I’ve also been guilty as charged so don’t think I’m casting aspersions (so please, no emails from aspersions looking for voice work).

It seems we’re now all (and that “all” was a lot smaller when I started in Social Media) talking about the same voice over topics and from where I sit (just one man’s opinion here) the individual perspectives don’t always seem unique enough or even thought-provoking…and again, myself included.

I know we all just want to be heard and we all enjoy freedom of expression and that’s great. I don’t want it stifled but shouldn’t we all consider a little self-editing? Just a little?

I don’t know about you but I do NOT want to be the “oh not THAT guy again” brand. The line between frequency and obnoxious gets thin fast in social media; brands are now suffering (and not reaping).

SEO and marketing opportunities available through Social Media are so enticing (based on cost) that I think we all forget sometimes that for Social Media to be effective, we have to be maybe less frequent but certainly more interesting. And that’s not always easy.

Nor should it be.

What do you think? Or are you even paying attention anymore?

I caught online in “The Atlantic” a report from The American Customer Satisfaction Index (no, I didn’t know there was such a thing either) rating the least liked companies in America. You can find the report here. I could add my two cents on the report (as I am a customer of more than a few of the hated) but a more intriguing question came into my mind.

What if my company had appeared on the list? Or for that matter, your company?

One would assume, probably rightly so, that we as large companies might have some inkling of trouble long before a report like the Atlantic’s came out. But you and I don’t own multi-billion dollar companies with teams of marketing and PR geniuses to tell us these things, do we?

It’s just us. All alone. Not sure if we’re beloved, hated or even worse – ignored.

The best advice I can offer is simply this: communicate. And, no I don’t do this nearly enough either.

Communicate doesn’t mean sell. Eblasts about your latest voiceover project don’t count.

At the end of the day, people do business with friends. And while you can’t make friends with every client you have based on geography or chemistry, you can at least show interest. Make a call on the phone or best in person.

Say hi, ask about a project you worked on…is it going well etc. You can mention that if they have any future work etc., but don’t make it a selling call. You need to look up some breaking client news or some salient topic that can begin your conversation.

Which means you’ve got some work to do before you pick up the phone, don’t you?

Yup, but I’m guessing it will be time very well spent.

So word came down on Twitter today (isn’t that where all news comes from that isn’t already on Facebook…what newspaper?!!) that heritage AM station WBEN/Buffalo was going to be simulcast on another station in the Entercom cluster, WLKK-FM (107.7). The Lake, as the station was known, hadn’t really moved the needle among listeners or advertisers.

So now WBEN will be heard on AM 930 and FM 107.7 – with this news came what seems to be a new logo. Variations of the old WBEN logo have been around for a decade or more.

The new logo – if it is indeed the final version – is bad. Vague city scapes and big call letters (meant to infer how the station covers or engulfs the city with its coverage) never work. They also reproduce badly in newspaper ads and on the web.

I listen to the station and I don’t have to look at the logo so I suppose I shouldn’t care – except it’s a logo and I notice these things. You’d hope a station group as big as Entercom would have a bit more graphic moxie to produce (or even steal from another one of their stations in another market) a logo better than this one.

Maybe this new logo is just a draft.

Kinda like this one I whipped up pretty fast:

I’ve been a bit lax in my logo reviews of late (and I know you find this upsetting) so here’s a very cool update for those of you of the golf persuasion (like me).

The Ryder Cup is a long standing bi annual golf tournament featuring the top golfers from the United States versus the top players from Europe. Its a long weekend full of some great golf.

And there may be no sport more dependent on logos given all the golf shirts and baseball caps sporting thousands of golf related logos. The Ryder Cup really is the sport’s Oscars and this updated tournament logo fits that bill perfectly.

I really enjoy the tournament and I think this new logo is a home run. But I’d love to get your impression as well. Are you more fond or not so fond of it?

OK then smarty pants, identify what THING these logos were placed on?

The current Comedy Central logo versus the proposed Comedy Central logo as of January 1, 2011

The unfair thing about printed network logos, like the versions above showing how the Comedy Central logo is expected to change on January 1, 2011, is that motion graphics can give you lots of visually interesting choices that a flat logo can’t.

But in my opinion (and really, isn’t that the only one that matters a logo needs to hold its own when it is flat, on paper because that will be one of its uses.

This new logo for Comedy Central falls flat alright, it’s bad. It’s one of those logos that make you look at it and say “somebody got paid for that?!” and then ask “I wonder how much somebody got paid to design that?!” In either case, it is not a complimentary question.

Upside down C’s, an inverted word? Really?

Maybe this a joke…a really great joke. That’s GOT to be the reason because this can’t be a real logo for a national cable channel.

Go ahead, tell me how wrong I am in my assessment of this design. Where’s the mirth? Where’s the vibrancy? What about this logo is visually arresting or interesting? Help me here.

I can’t remember when I first signed up with Voices.com but I think it was 2004….pretty early into their creation. I tried it for a couple of years and then went back to my free listing. I wonder if they will be starting an old timers or founding members club soon? 6 years is like 60 years in web years.

All along the way, the company has always worked hard on their customer service. And über-web geek David Ciccarelli (co-owner of the company with his wife Stephanie) has always tweaked and improved the site.

But alas, the software program they were using had conniption fits if I tried to use an apostrophe in my last name or my company name on a title page (some computers and web browsers even today show a diamond with a question mark where apostophes should go…makes me think no Irishmen or Italians were involved at the start of the internet). David himself some years ago tried a work around with me on that challenge but no go with that software version.

Instead of O’Connell, it might be listed as the very inelegant OConnell or even worse Oconnell (ugh!). And did you ever watch somebody try to pronounce audioconnell? As audio’connell they seem to have a better time with it. Certainly not end-of-the-world stuff, all this, but it still makes you wonder whose alphabet and symbols these early web lords were using when they started the interweb? Oy!

Well I was on the Voices.com site recently and low and behold I saw some O’Connells WITH apostrophes in their names! As I am not a paid subscriber I wouldn’t expect to know of any such updates when ever they happened (maybe they themselves missed that minor update tweak) but I did get on the phone to Voices.com make sure I could make the update with no problems.

I had the good fortune to speak with Scott at Voices.com who (true to company form) was very helpful in making sure there wouldn’t be any computer glitches. He could not have been nicer.

So NOW when you search Peter O’Connell on Voices.com I’m the first listing. When you search O’Connell on Voices.com I am the LAST listing (although I am ((puff, puff)) the most often listened to of all the Voices.com O’Connells) but I think my last place listing there is because mine’s just a free listing which is understandable.

I even tried using the K. as in Peter K. O’Connell in the listing change with Scott, which is what I use professionally, but we went back to just Peter O’Connell in the page title because the upgraded software evidently didn’t like middle initials or periods and dropped my search results way down in both types of searches.

Whoa is the poor period! Flummoxed is the lonely middle initial! What ARE the Peter K. O’Connells, the Michael J. Fox’s and other short, middle aged voice actors to do?!

Work around it like we always do! But at least I got my apostrophe. Alls right with the world.

Evidently great minds think alike…and sometimes so do I!

It seems to be marketing and branding review time in VO land.

I think you’ve probably seen my post on redesigning my business cards. I didn’t believe it would garner that much interest but John Florian now has it up on Voiceover Xtra!

“So I got that goin’ for me…which is nice.”

But I was not the only person redoing their voice over business cards.

My pal Connie Terwilliger also posted about updating her business cards too, making a point to leave space on the backside so people could write notes if they like (ah, white space is going to be so “in” in 2011).

Then I caught a post by the lovely and talented Anthony Mendez who just did a blog about the nicely done refresh on his logo.

Anybody else out there cleaning up their branding act for the new year?