When it comes to technology, I am not an early adopter like, say Dave Courvoisier. This is especially true for me with internet technology.

I was late to Firefox as a browser and I only kind of embrace things like Gotomeeting.com as just two examples.

As a business owner though, I know that I need to at least have a passing understanding of the purpose of some this technology because many of my voice over clients have it or will begin using it.

While we all don’t need to necessarily be internet technology experts in the eyes of our clients, we shouldn’t appear technologically inferior either.

So you may have seen on the web talk of something called Google Wave, you may have even gotten an invitation to participate in it (yeah, it’s currently an “invite” thing but its not that crazy exclusive).

I don’t understand Google Wave very much…maybe because I haven’t used it. But because it’s Google it has a better than average chance of being universally adopted by people I work with. So I need to try and understand it…and you should probably try to learn about it to.

So far, the best explanation of Google Wave that I have found so far was written by Gina Trapani over at Life Hacker. It’s a kind of an FAQ that helped me understand the business applications of Google Wave a bit more and I hope it will help you too.

Look, if it was easy, anybody could do it. Open your brain a bit and let some stuff in this post seep in. It may help.

Tags: commentary, internet, technology, voiceover advice by peter o'connell voiceover
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I am well aware that this may be of interest to no one but me or it may encourage you to take a well-times critical eye to your own web site; it was time to clean up audioconnell.com

Let it be said up front that the clean up was on account of (bad english alert) stuff that I put on the site in the first place. Was I wrong then? Probably not…the web is an evolving place and our job as business owners is to stay on top of the changes for our site. What made sense then may not make sense now. Plus, refreshing a brand or at least tweaking it on occasion (note that) is not a bad thing.

My point is with the growth of the International Voice Talents, Voice Over Workshop and even the female voices, the site can revert back to its original platform – promoting my voice over business. The plan I developed when I started those businesses was to build on my web equity and that would mean sacrificing a little of my own voice over business to do that. Well, I got ‘er done enough for those two as they are up and running on their own; it was time to update the web site and I did…and will….forever.

I realize that my graphic abilities are not the best so the representation above may not look as beautiful as the site does on your browser but this is for demonstration purposes only. So here’s a rundown of the cleaning and polishing (maybe they will offer you some helpful ideas as well):

A. This is the first part of the changes involving the navigation of the site. It used to say male voice demos – which were all mine. Now it has my name on there which is clearer for the visitors (over 1,400 of you unique folks last month and I thank you). The other part was clarifying how to book/hire me…sort of asking for the order, if you will. This involved looking at some of the content on the site already and reordering it within the navigation.

B. This part involved cutting out some navigation stuff that was old or unnecessary. Just as a couple of quick examples: I dropped the client login button (I email an FTP address to clients which is easier and simpler) and dropped the voice over workshop link (people use www.voworkshop.com now). Much cleaner.

C. This is a bit of the pizazz and razzle dazzle . First, this spot used to have a variety of old mic pictures which were nice but used up important web real estate…bye bye mics. Hello audio’connell’s secondary logo (the “ao” logo as opposed to the full “audio’connell word mark logo with the microphone which is on the left of the site). Most social media pals are very familiar with this icon as is anyone who remembers the story of my favicon. BUT also I added some client logos up there on a rotating basis just to gently let people know some of the folks I’ve worked with. The cool fade process is done by adding pixie dust (and that stuff’s expensive!)

D. A break with lower case tradition, in just this one instance. We’ll see how that goes.

E. Pulled out about three demos here having everything to do with money. Thank you God it’s been an OK year for business and I’ve been making money in my core areas of commercial and narration. But message on hold sounds the same everywhere and podcasting is not an area where many folks focus on quality or expenditure…of any kind. So buh bye.

F. As mentioned earlier, a little branding paint has been applied to the site and this text area was a key place to convey this message. Plus it’s not a bad thing to freshen up the text for the bots occasionally.

G. A key part of my marketing effort is to get out a press release every month and yet I fall behind. Not because I don’t have stuff to write about but rather I don’t make the time to get the writing done. So there are two fresh press releases on the home page.

Just so we’re clear, this post isn’t meant as an ode to me but rather as a pot stirrer for you and your web site. Certainly if things are going exceedingly well, I am not encouraging you to screw with your formula. But a reflective and maybe even critical eye could help you see things on your site that need a little improvement. And there was no heavy lifting involved in this process.

Your thoughts?

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, search engine marketing, social media by peter o'connell voiceover
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In doing a little Google Analytics review (which I haven’t done in a while) I noticed that my frequently asked questions page is one of the more popular pages on my web site. Who knew?! (Google analytics, evidently).

This could be for a couple of reasons:

A. Clients are learning about how I can help them and what my business terms are (which is why I have the page)

Or

B. Other voice talents are reading the page trying to learn about how to present themselves to their clients on their web sites

For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll hope for the former and ignore the latter.

So here’s what I would like from you: please look at my FAQ page and give me YOUR ideas for what OTHER questions I could answer for clients about my business that they might find helpful. You can also advise if you think some questions/answers should be changed or omitted.

Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated because as I get older, I know just how much I don’t know.

Thanks!

Tags: commentary, internet, voiceover advice by peter o'connell voiceover
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The reason I ask this question is that I just enjoyed a nice three day weekend, pretty much away from the computer. This AM, opening up my Google reader, I see over 900 blog posts and over fifty of them are in the voiceover category.

What is it we think we all have to say? And I include me in there too.

It’s a vicious circle, mind you. You should have a blog to be an active participant in social media (and SEO/SEM) and everybody has the right to share whatever they like. Equally true, we can all subscribe and unsubscribe to any blog at any time (except this blog, you can check in anytime you like, but you can never leave).

With all this content, what are we all contributing to? And how many people are not just reading (Feedburner +) but understanding? Are we communicating or are we just spewing? Because more important to social media than the tool (a blog) is the content…saying something of relevance.

A blog writer has to assume that their posts resonate with someone if they have even one subscriber (and by the way, not for nothing, I mean it when I say thank you for subscribing). But when I think about 900 posts over three days multiplied times content on radio, television, newspaper, Facebook et al multiplied times international content….my head literally spins a bit.

Today I will hit “mark all as read” on my Google Reader very often and likely erase some quality content that I cannot make room for. I must move on.

Am I simply oversubscribed or overwhelmed? Have these thoughts ever occurred to you? How do you deal with all this communication, all this noise? Do you tune in more or totally tune out? Any tricks you care to share?

Tags: blogs, commentary, facebook, google, internet, newspapers, technology by peter o'connell voiceover
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Some software products developed for computers mandatory – an operating system like Windows lets your computer do stuff.

Other stuff isn’t mandatory but helpful and there’s stuff that’s sorta helpful but cool.

You’ll have to decide where the free download “Fences” falls for you. The premise is that Fences organizes and hides all the icons on your desktop until you want them. They’re invisible until you double click the desktop at which top they magically appear, organized in the format that you customize to your own needs.

Helpful? Maybe. Cool, oh I think so but then I’m still amazed when somebody pulls a quarter out of my ear…my standards aren’t always as high as others. I’m using it and I think its fun (and no, I get no spiff for the endorsement.)

What so you think? Mandatory, helpful or cool?

Tags: commentary, internet, technology by peter o'connell voiceover
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Some folks may already know this but I didn’t.

If you like, when you open your internet browser, you can have it open to more than one home page at one time at start-up.

Depending on your browser (and I think this trick only works with the VERY latest versions of most popular web browsers), you can usually set your opening home page under “Preferences” or “Options”. Then in the bar where you type in the address of what you would like to have as your home page, you add the trick.

On your computer, in your symbols area (usually found in the drop down window of Word and its heading “Insert”) is a vertical straight line symbol that is not an “l”. I’ll show you here but your computer might not have its own equivalent as mine does; the symbol is | .

So the trick is to put your first favorite home page (as an example, Google) then that | symbol (and I don’t know its proper name , if you do, please share with the class) and then the next web address (as an example, audio’connell Voice Over Talent).

So in your homepage set up bar you would type http://www.google.com | http://www.audioconnell.com . When you hit save, close your browser and open it again, there should be two tabs that open up in that order to the pages you set. I think you can probably do 3-4 of those start up web addresses in your start up.

Now for the conundrum.

I set my tabs recently to open on each of the most popular search engines (as ranked by Hitwise: Google, Yahoo, Bing (the progeny of a recent search merger agreement between MSN and Yahoo although Yahoo.com still exists), and Ask.com. The reason for this arrangement is I’m trying to just randomly check some of my search placements on these sites as a bit of an experiment – the web is my main business pipeline (it’s the store, if you will) so it’s important.

The challenge that I’ve seen recently, always known about and have in common with everyone with cares about SEO and SEM is that there is no consistency in how search engines rank sites in order of importance. 3 search engines, 3 different ranking systems and usually three varying placements depending on key words, links, etc.

As just a user of these search engines, one likely cares not a fig about what comes up, assuming their search contains the most reputable, qualified providers of service/product/information that they’ll need. They check the front page, maybe the second and move on.

As a business trying to get their message out there, it’s a bit of a challenge. The important word in this next sentence is “supposedly”: Google is supposedly more key word based in their search algorithm while Bing is supposedly more links based. Ask.com strikes me as very Google-ish in my algorithmic naiveté and Yahoo is Bing so who the heck is Yahoo and I am the Walrus, koo-koo-ka-chew!

I get that if all the search engines searched the same way, there probably wouldn’t be need for so many; even WITH their various search methodologies, there probably isn’t a need for so many. So I do what most folks do and default to Google. But it still bugs me that I have to be so many things to so many search engines.

This last sentence reads back to me as a bit of a whine. That’s not good.

Unless it puts me at the #1 position for the keyword “whine”, which would be fine especially if I get search points for rhyme; to end this post now I think it’s time.

Tags: bing, commentary, internet, silliness, yahoo by peter o'connell voiceover
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