Sometime ago a voiceover friend gave me a tip on how to monitor craigslist.org through my Google reader. He threatened me with certain harm if I dared share this tip with anyone and, as I promised I wouldn’t, I won’t.

You have Google, you don’t need me.

I wanted to monitor craigslist.org because I was always hearing about voice over jobs on the site. If you’ve been on the site you know you’d have to click through every city and some drill down menus before you get to listings. This, to me, was an unworthy time suck.

So with the unmentioned tool, I can now receive these postings into my reader. The only problem being that for the past two to three months, the jobs posted have either been low to no pay or geographically prejudicial.

Therefore, for me, craigslist.org went from being a time suck to time waste. That’s like going from bad to worse.

If craigslist.org is going to be a cheap floozy of a classified ad site, so be it. On it, you can find crappy voice talent jobs, many other lousy jobs, hookers (allegedly), murders (allegedly) and antiques ((allegedly)).

Clearly, based on the web site’s success, there is a market for this schlock. But it comes across as being less than a bargain and more like an on line junk yard with the occasional treasure found.

Am I being an elitist? Is this just me being bitter about crappy voice jobs on craigslist.org? Did I go in expecting too much?

It’s just that I saw such potential for the site and it makes me feel a bit disappointed. We should all want to aspire to buy more than cheap crap on line, shouldn’t we?

Tags: advertising, commentary, internet, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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NOTE: this was supposed to publish two days ago and I thought it had. Obviously this is WordPress’ fault because I NEVER make mistakes! Stupid WordPress!

The nicest man (and one of the most talented) in voice over has updated his brand.

Bob Souer has unveiled his new web site and blog (likely the most widely read in the business) which now boldly proclaims him to be a “Professional Story Teller”. A more accurate description couldn’t have been created by Shakespeare himself.

Please stop by and have a look around. Now doubt he’ll be adding new pieces in the days and weeks to come but no one deserves the kudos more than Bob. Great job!

Tags: branding, commentary, internet, logo design, marketing, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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As a courtesy, I’ll say upfront that if you’ve no idea what Twitter is or is all about then this contest I’m about to reference regarding CNN and the actor Ashton Kutcher probably won’t interest you. If you like topical stories or information about social media, it might.

Oprah’s name and that of Britney Spears will come up too. Oh, so NOW you ARE interested!

The deal is that Kutcher challenged CNN and Ted Turner to a race of sorts: be the first person or organization (as CNN is a thing not a person within the noun family) to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Late Thursday night, early Friday morning, Kutcher beat CNN to the 1 million followers mark. Britney Spears tried to ride this race’s coat tails and evidently came in third without so much as breaking a sweat.

As new people are obviously joining Twitter at a staggering rate with no followers, with my 280 followers currently, I did not come in in last place in the Twitter follower race. Phew! You can find me @audioconnell.

Kutcher has promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets if he won. And when he won he showed up a donation check for $100,000 to be donated to the “Malaria No More”‘ fund. That’s nice.

Hitching her wagon to the Twitter train, Oprah announced she opened up a Twitter account and got 30,000+ followers before her first post which is supposed to come during a taping of her show Friday. Bet she sets the record for fastest to reach 1,000,000 followers. I also expect to see the Twitter Fail Whale a whole lot in the coming days.

What does this all mean?

Do these millions of new followers some of whom have to be joining Twitter for the first time have any idea why they are following these folks let alone what the service is and how it can be used? Using Twitter is not rocket science but I sure feel strongly that some of these people now joining Twitter are doing it because Ashton, Oprah or Britney said to and that’s where it will end for many of them.

It feels like one of those cross roads moments or possibly the perfect storm for Twitter. Tons of free publicity from a famous movie star, an international cable news organization and the most popular broadcaster and trendsetter in U.S. daytime television; to get just one of those parties to support them, most companies would be thrilled.

But Twitter is supposed to be about community. One follows other Twitter users because they think there will be interesting discussion based on content, the “name” or the “brand” matters little if nothing interesting is tweeted.

Some of my 280 followers don’t get that. They want to sell me something and think I’ll immediately follow them if they follow me. I don’t. I check their profile and only if it interests me do I follow them. I feel they are not in it for the “community” attitude of Twitter and therefore seem disingenuous to me. If I want a commercial, I’ll watch TV.

What will all these new users mean to social media as these new users get their first taste of it through Twitter and the links that often accompany tweets? Probably broader acceptance if these new users go on to follow more than just Britney, Oprah and Ashton (after all, if Britney, Oprah and Ashton lose interest and tweet less frequently, their followers will have less and less to follow).

Through the links in tweets I’ve been exposed to some interesting resources in social media, marketing, advertising, voice over and my local community that I would not have otherwise found. I’ve also followed some of the people on Twitter because of their content and they offer even more content. That is useful to me. I’ve no real idea if I’m saying anything of use to others…I guess I hope I am but I’m also not losing sleep over it.

I’ve also un-followed people whose content didn’t interest me after a while or those folks who offer nothing more than 140 characters of self-aggrandizing commercials. It’s a bit of a balancing act to gain the content that you want and don’t want on Twitter while not allowing it to be a complete time suck.

I guess as a crossroads moment, it’s an evolution for the service itself and for social media. Sometimes it takes famous peoples’ involvement to help the general public be aware or take the time to learn about new products or services like Twitter and Social Media. As there are no rules per se with Social Media, how these many millions of new users will drive the service is an unknown.

Twitter probably won’t be the same after all this and I guess that’s as it should be.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, branding, commentary, commercials, community, internet, social media, social networking, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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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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Last December, I was elected to the board of directors of Media Communications Association – International (MCA-I). MCA-I members are over 700 media communication professionals around the world who provide the vital connection between the creative methods and technology. This describes me and about 70% of my client base.

I joined the association in August after having spoken about the group with Connie Terwilliger – a friend, a wonderful professional voice talent and herself a past-president of MCA-I.

There are 25 chapters across the country with another 150 members like me who are (as I call it) unchapterized. As far as I know I AM the Buffalo chapter.

That’s right. I serve on an international board of directors of an association to which the only meetings I have attended have been virtual (except now I’ve personally been to a leaders meeting in New Orleans). Why would I do such a thing?

Well yes I am crazy but that has nothing to do with this! 😉

The business of media in which I have been a professional (read: paid) practitioner since 1982 is a virtual business. Certainly in-person meetings take place often but fully 80% – 90% of my customers I’ve never met. If one is going to run a global business like mine (which “sounds” a lot more impressive than it is) you quickly have to come to grips with that business reality.

So belonging to an association in which my interaction is either phone or web-based is not at all problematic. And all the other benefits of belonging to a professional association (save for the in-person meetings) still apply….and that INCLUDES programming, education, cost-saving programs and networking (think Facebook and Linked-In as to one way that might work). And if your city HAS a chapter in it, all the better for you!

As I am also the MCA-I Membership chair, I am not above offering this infomercial for YOU to join MCA-I too…especially since I’ve created a membership recruitment drive now through April 30, 2009 and if you list my name on your on-line membership application as the referring member, I would enjoy the bragging rights! I can’t win any of the prizes as I oversee the promotion.

And very seriously, if you have any questions about membership, please call me at +01 716 572 1800 and I will be glad to speak with you about it – no matter where in the world you are…though remember I am only uni-lingual.

Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, mca-i, media, peter o'connell, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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While an idea that has come to my mind is not original in the blogosphere, it is original to my blog as I have never invited guest bloggers to participate here with their thoughts. While comments and discussion are more than welcome always, I just never organized guest blog posts before.

Now that’s changing.

Those of you involved with voice over may have opinions on our industry that you’d like to flesh out a bit further. But you may not want to blog regularly or even have your own blog…so use my soapbox for a moment. I may act like I never get off it but I am truly interested in your opinions.

Here is what I am proposing and inviting any of you to participate in on voxmarketising.com’s latest experiment

• I will present a topic for anyone to submit their blog post on within a set time frame (likely a week).
• Depending on the response (hopefully not crickets) I’ll post them with your by-line etc. NOTE: If I think your post has no merit or is poorly written…I won’t post it. Know that now and don’t be mad/sad with me later. My house, my rules (just practicing that line for when my kids get bigger)
• Please keep your length to about 500 words or less if possible.
• Please include a one to two line infomercial about you, your company name, web site and something interesting about yourself so that I can include that as an “author’s information” tag at the end of the post.
• Be polite etc., if you’re rude or slanderous (or even rude and slanderous etc.) I won’t publish you. (again, my house, my rules)
• Make sure you properly credit any sources, especially if you include any audio or video clips (obviously include their embedded code etc)
• As it’s my blog I reserve the right to append your post for grammar, length or any other reason as I see fit. No I don’t intend to screw with your intent and if you don’t like my changes you may ask me to take down your post and I will. (MYMR)

Now here’s a cool twist (or what I think is a cool twist). Again based on responses, what I hope to do is take a few of the authors on the topic, Skype them and do a round table recording where they can chat (debate?) the topic with points from their posts. The give and take would make a cool VMT interview for my podcast….with added exposure for the participants.

>>> My first topic?

If you were advising someone at any point in their VO career how to produce a terrific commercial voice over demo – what would you tell them are the top 5 elements that they need to include in that demo and why?

This idea may be a resounding success or a dismal failure but I believe you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

Email your posts to me at peter at audioconnell dot com and let’s enjoy the ride together! Thanks.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, internet, podcast, podcasting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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