embarrassed, humbled or jealous?

I learned one thing about the internet early on – unless you are a savant at making viral videos, you had better be good at promoting yourself cause as much as they might like you, others will never promote you as well as you can promote yourself.

Well, I must change my opinion of that, having now been distilled through the Voices.com PR machine. Others, it turns out, can promote you as well as you can promote yourself…in this case, better.

Hubris or ego or savvy marketer (I’ve been accused of all three), I was never really comfortable with having to directly promote myself as much as the internet dictated I would have to, if I was to help my business. I did it (and do it) strictly because it does help my presence on the web – period. But it is awkward to do it – that’s truly how it feels to me. I offer that as background.

So fast forward to recent times, having been hounded (maybe just “asked” a number of times) for a few years by Stephanie Ciccarelli at Voices.com to do a podcast for them, I sent her “The First 15 Seconds” (about voice talents should approach their voice over auditions) before Christmas, 2010. Stephanie published my podcast the first week of January, 2011.

Then their public relations flood gates opened. It was torrential and impressive.

First Voices.com was kind enough to say in their release “Peter K. O’Connell is one of North America’s top voice over coaches and voice talents.”

As God as my witness, I never, ever recall claiming that in any of the stuff I’ve written about my work ever (send me a document I wrote if you can prove otherwise and I’ll admit my mistake…cause I don’t think I did so). I think Voices.com wrote that on their own (thank you for your kind words, folks). I’m also thinking all the really good voice over teachers are pretty pissed at me right now for soiling their talent pool…but I didn’t say that, Voices.com did.

Then I was sorting through some of my normal Google Alerts to see what if anyone is saying about me, my business or my industry. There I realized that Voices.com flushed their press release about my podcast through every public relations pipe the web has!

Truly, I thought I had this web promo thing worked out but now I see I am a pathetic rookie compared to these crazy (in a good way) Canadians (I can say that because I am part Canadian, which explains my affinity for Tim Horton’s donuts).

So thanks to Stephanie and her team for the plugs and good on them for their web marketing machine. If you’re going to go – go all out or go home!

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