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I do enjoy the dust up of opinions caused by the discussion of Social Media and Social Networking and how to use it from a marketing perspective and from a user’s perspective.

There’s….

“The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread” Tribe

“The Social Media/Networking is a Total Time Suck” Tribe

“The Occasionally Dip My Toe in The Water” Tribe

…and the always popular

“Prove It To Me” Tribe

There is always a few with such strong opinions (usually negative) that I get a kick out of it. Make no mistake, I myself do not shy away from strong opinions while also knowing that when I issue absolutes, I risk a little egg on my face.

As usually, I’m always the odd man out as I belong to the…

“Social Media/Networking is a Part of My Overall Marketing Mix” Tribe

Ours is a small tribe made up of folks who actually write and live by a marketing plan that has objectives, goals, targeted audiences and measures against it.

Some in our tribe do not use Social Media at all…but they can still be in our Tribe and not the “Time Suck” tribe because they have reviewed – not unilaterally dismissed – Social Media tools and decided it doesn’t work for their marketing objectives.

Smart marketers, whatever their business, adapt and study a changing landscape. Today’s change includes understanding and usually adapting to having Social Media and Social Networking as a part of the marketing mix.

The Social Media marketing mix is like an old family recipe – you make up the ingredients and portions based on some basic assumptions. A cake will need things like flour, eggs, water etc., but you may decide to add a little bit more of this or that or bake for a shorter or longer time than is standard.

With Social Media and Social Networking – it’s like an internet cake. Basic ingredients include having a free account on the most popular Social Media outlets: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed. Again, it’s free – the worst that could happen is that you get some SEO love from your account if all you ever do is set up a basic informational profile.

Then, if you want to dig deeper, you can figure out how these services and others (like blogs, podcasts, video sharing) might or can benefit your marketing objectives. Because your time is valuable, part of how you assess the marketing value of these tools is to decide how much time you can and are willing to commit to their execution. Time is as much a marketing expense to a business as the actual layout of cash.

If the answer is yes – we/me should do this and I can do this – great, carry on. If the answer is no, it doesn’t fit with our objectives and budget (primarily time but also possibly money) – great, carry on. In both cases, you really studied what you need to know about the tools and compared them to your marketing objectives and made a smart business decision.

You were not simply dismissive!

It seems simple but that process is a fail for many small business people because their busy-ness (not their business) helps them to avoid learning new things and ultimately they seem resistant to change…they enjoy the comfort zone of the familiar.

To them I wish nothing but a comfortable and obviously unplanned snooze.

Tags: branding, commentary, facebook, internet, linkedin, marketing, social media, social networking, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I was pinged this morning (and I think we all know painful that can be – ba-dum-bump) by David Ciccarelli who, with his wife Stephanie, own Voices.com. David asked if I would review, post and comment on his annual “Report on The Voice Over Industry 2009”.

OK then, a review with some general perspective and information upfront.

• While I am not a fan of the pay-for-play voice over model upon which Voices.com, Voice 123 and others have built their business, I have stated that if I were to choose one service of that ilk it would be Voices.com because even before I knew the Ciccarellis personally, the customer service and responsiveness their Voices.com offered me when I was an early member was better than any competitor.
• This is at least the second if not third year David has done this report and I give him great credit for seeing an opening for information sharing and promotion of his own business and going for it.
• I also give him credit for daring to ask the opinion of a loud mouth putz like me ’cause he knows I pull no punches on industry issues or in reviews. He and I must ascribe to the same theory that some publicity is better than none at all.
• Over the years I have become friends with David and Stephanie and know them to be honest people whose opinions and talents I respect. Others in their business, not so much.

So enough preamble, on to the meat-

The 23 page report is more PowerPoint than e-book with each slide offering one or two nuggets of information ranging from various market overviews to drilldowns on pertinent business segments.

My likes:

• I like that David’s established an annual tome that summarizes the industry. It adds credibility to the business but to be taken seriously it needs some additional info (see dislikes).
• I have seen “state of the industry reports” or prognostications from Voices.com’s competitors and comparably this is the most credible and informative of all of them at this moment in time.
• Information like $4.05 for the ad word voice over on Google is good to know (a stupidly high price to pay when its competitors who do most of the clicking on such ads but let’s not kill the messenger here)
• I like the format for both conveying information and for its readability.

My dislikes:

• The content has only a few bits of information that I think are new or enlightening to the industry. To become a must read it has to reveal trends and statistics that offer more insight for voice talents and producers. That requires a great deal more research which this document does not have and it shows rather clearly.
• Some topics struck me as grossly self-serving: a report on Social Networks conveniently notes the growth of a Voice.com sponsored group on Facebook and the Time Spent Online chart had Voices.com’s site crushing Voice 123’s statistically and visually while also noting most industry players spend most of their time on Voices.com. This smacks a bit more like a sales presentation than a industry report.
• The salary statistics chart – probably the most important page for both talent and producers – had no quoted sources for the stated figures (which were much too broad) and was only one page (versus three pages on podcasting). This was a big miss.
• The Touch Graph tool wasn’t simplistic enough or easy enough to immediately digest key information (like a good graph should). As just one (possibly self-serving in keeping here with a developing theme) example this graph had the audio’connell web site listed on the web site graph on “voiceovers” and on the same graph an Oxford biography link to Peter O’Connell who I think is a professor or a Bishop but sure ain’t me (no, I do not believe there are any other Peter O’Connell voice overs but me). The graph was gimmicky and not informative.

In summary, I believe that this report reads more like a sophomore’s term paper rather than a senior thesis. What it can, should and I truly hope will be in the future is a report that has a lot more facts in it, much more pertinent data and more information to help talent and producers manage their businesses. It will take much more time and research from Voices.com to make this annual report a widely respected annual state of the industry. Today, the report is not yet there but there is a foundation of a good idea.

We need that “stuff” as well as the promise of what this report could someday be.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, facebook, google, internet, social media, voice 123, voice over podcast, voice talent, voiceover, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Facebook has been on my mind this weekend as certain audio’connell siblings have dipped their toe into the water, took a look around the platform, drank a bit of the Facebook kool-aid – whatever.

So in my early morning reading, I came across this fine and evolving tutorial on using Facebook from my friends at Social Media Universe – Global. Now, they don’t know they are my friends but as a subscriber, I feel I get to call them names and that’s the one I chose.

Anyway, if you want to learn about Facebook and its many uses under the radar, so that you can appear to be an instant expert to friends who won’t know your educational secret (as it that one of the more fun aspects of the web) this page may be of interest to you. No doubt there are other pages on the web like this but these guys get the attention here today.

And if you’d like to friend me up, here’s the place to start.

(Ed. Note – No, there will be no “go out and vote” posting today. After this ridiculous long and expensive 2 year election cycle (and yes, I made money off it) if you’re so out of it that you need a reminder from ME to get out and cast your vote, then you are probably too “out of it” to be trusted with such an important task anyway.)

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, facebook, social media, social networking by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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