All the world is fascinated with Facebook Company pages and I get that….Facebook is a popular service but it just feels to me Facebook and it’s company page has the long term business impact of neighborhood kids hosting a lemonade stand and neighbors dropping by to buy a cup which they may or may not drink (the O’Connell children will be hosting a lemonade stand today, BTW).

Facebook isn’t the best social media place to do my business.

But clearly, LinkedIn has not only every VO talent in the world (oy!) but advertising decision makers, producers, casting companies and business people who seem to me more likely to consider using my services.

So my question is this: do you have your LinkedIn Company Page set up?

And of course, you’re welcome to follow my LinkedIn page. 🙂

Tags: commentary, facebook, linkedin, marketing, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
3 Comments »

I’ve been spying on you.

I know, I know, it’s not polite but I did it for your own good.

See I was going through my LinkedIn database, culling out voice talents for a client email blast I was doing.

I noticed something odd about the LinkedIn listings of voice over talents — many (but not all) seemed to forget that LinkedIn is both a social network AND a search engine tool.

By search engine tool, I mean that your listing and text on LinkedIn are listed and impact your search results on all major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing!

So why does your job title on LinkedIn say “owner”?

Or “freelancer”?

Or “president”?

You may be all those things and maybe they are listed on your business cards and letterhead but on the web, those titles don’t help you much.

If you are a ‘voice-over talent’, or ‘voice talent’ or ‘voice actor’, those terms have value on the web because very often (but not always), that’s how prospects search the web for folks like us. It’s a little thing but for organic web search, it can mean a lot.

My simple point is this: with Linked In I think voice-over talents would be wise to be very keyword specific (and thoughtful) as they write their profile. Certainly, personality should come through in your writing — LinkedIn copy shouldn’t be robotic just to please search engines. But I’m just suggesting a little more thought be put into the words you include in your LinkedIn profile.

With LinkedIn being so incredibly business-centric (thus many of your prospects likely search for vendors or information on the site) the right content on your profile can initiate a profitable connection.

There are likely millions of ‘president’ and ‘owner’ job titles on LinkedIn; there are also lots of people who have been in ‘commercials’. But on LinkedIn, they are not as many ‘voice actors’ or ‘commercial voice talents’ and that could make a big difference for you.

So when WAS the last time you reviewed and refreshed your LinkedIn profile? Maybe now?

I hope this helps.

Tags: linkedin, marketing, search engine marketing, social networking by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
6 Comments »

Dear LinkedIn,

How kind of you to contact me, your loyal member (your words not mine) to offer me in your email two free months of LinkedIn Premium!

Thank you!

Um, but wait, it seems for this FREE opportunity you want me to give you a credit card number. Specifically MY credit card number. This confuses me.

See, in my country, free is actually free meaning no financial transaction takes place. If the service is free then no money or credit card is needed.

I have the card and I could pay the fee but I don’t know whether I see the value. This is why I’d be willing to try it for free for 2 months.

I’m assuming you want to take my card information so that after the 60 days of free use is over, on the 61st day you can begin charging my card the $40/month LinkedIn premium fee. I say assumed because after you asked for the card, I stopped the process.

I had a credibility gut check on you, LinkedIn. I started to doubt you…I never thought that way about you before.

As a “loyal member” (remember?), couldn’t we trust each other enough that you would pull the plug on the free option on Day 61 unless I contact you (LinkedIn) and said sign me up?

Come on, we’ve been together going on 8 years. I’m loyal, you said it yourself. What’s the need for a free trial with credit card?

That credit card number thing sounds a bit too siding salesman or used car salesman to me. It seems well beneath what I perceive (perceived) the LinkedIn brand to be about.

But hey, LinkedIn, you have over 187 million members (I’m not sure how many of them are “loyal” like me) so you must know what you are doing.

I’m going to pass on the introduction to your so called free trial for your LinkedIn Premium service right now. It just doesn’t feel very premium to me.

And to be honest, neither does your brand at the moment.

Your loyal member,
– Peter

Tags: linkedin, networking, social media, social networking, social networks and links by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

A few weeks ago, I started getting email notices from LinkedIn that some people had endorsed me. A lot of people. I have received LinkedIn endorsements before (and thank you) but clearly something was up.

If you have been on LinkedIn at all, you’ve probably seen or more likely received recommendations or endorsements from people who want to publicly compliment you on the work you do or have done for them. They would write something professionally kind, note three things that you excel at and then you would receive the notification. It’s a lot like a personal reference with someone writing it but with LinkedIn, you’d have the opportunity to approve, request and amendment and publish.

But I was suddenly getting so many! Had I gone viral? What did I do?

Well it seems that LinkedIn, bowing to the Facebook “Like” phenomenon, had changed from the more thoughtful recommendations of old to a quick hit kind of “like” button.

Let me be clear–I am completely and utterly grateful for anyone who would take time out of their day in even a superficial social media way to say something nice about me. And I am glad to do the same for others who are deserving (oh yes, I’ve had people actually ask me to endorse them on LinkedIn in the old format–that was a unique situation at times).

But as grateful as I am (and I am) I liked the old LinkedIn recommendation system better. And it’s truly not because I don’t like change.

It took more time and thought for someone to write out a LinkedIn recommendation in the old format and so to me, what was written about me and what I read on other people’s pages carried more weight and was more important. It had a bit of gravitas.

Now, it seems to me to be just a bit frivolous and not as professional. And to me, LinkedIn’s point of difference versus any other social media channel was its professionalism. The people at Sambla seem to agree, you can read their post in Swedish which essentially says the same thing here.

What do you think? Am I overthinking this or were you thinking the same thing?

Tags: commentary, linkedin, social media, social networking by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
8 Comments »

After all these years on LinkedIn, I STILL get generic connection requests. That’s just lazy.

I thought it was just me who thought this showed little creativity and a bit of bad manners but after reading a blog post from Amber MacArthur, it’s clear this is not something that bugs just me.

And Amber Mac points out a few other mistakes people make on LinkedIn that you might find familiar.

Tags: commentary, linkedin by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

I met Natalie Stanfield Thomas at Faffcon 2 but I knew of her work before then.

She’s a wonderfully creative voice talent who brings alot of life experience to her voice over work and it make her audio great.

We were talking one day (as we New York State neighbors often do) and she mentioned how she felt how she was upset with herself and her faux communication skills. She said she’d been using social media as a way to communicate with her friends and family more than actually speaking with them.

I said you’ve got a blog post in that idea and you need to write it. She finally did. Here is my friend Natalie Stanfield Thomas:

In the past six months, I’ve witnessed the birth of my friends’ grandchildren on one side of the country and children of another within days of each other on the other side of the country, I’ve been there to offer support when a marriage fell apart a continent away, crashed a wedding and reception I didn’t even know about until some friends told me, gave moral support to a friend who was dealing with a child with emotional/behavioral struggles, cheered from the sidelines while another friend launched her book deal, drooled over the latest cuisines and tastings some of my cohorts saw fit to share, and witnessed countless career-making deals be made between friends in the entertainment industry.

I did all of this, and never left my desk, in fact, for the most part many of these exchanges occurred without any real human contact at all. I had all of these interchanges with my close personal friends and family members, through Facebook and Twitter.

It suddenly occurred to me that I have been lulled into the false sense that I was actually cultivating my relationships.

It was so astonishing, as a matter of fact, that one of my friends remarked in an email exchange that he too had just realized that since we often comment on one another’s pictures or status updates on Facebook, he had not realized until that very moment, in that very email, that this was the first intentional contact we’d had with one another in SIX MONTHS.

Our job is communication, it’s what we’re supposed to be good at, so why then am I sitting here making a ‘to do’ list of intentionality?

I am reminding myself that PERSONAL contact with the people important to me, friends and clients is something I have to cultivate. The electronic media that makes networking so simple, also has an insidious side. It has the ability to afford a false sense of connectivity, to make you believe you are staying involved, when in reality you are on auto pilot. Remember, the only time you can coast is when you are going down hill. So I’m awake now and pedaling forward. I’m making personal contact with the people I interact with in my social media.

So how about you?

When was the last time you had a real conversation with the people in your network? Think about it, and do me a favor will you? If you see yourself in any of this, don’t ‘tweet’,’plus’ or ‘like’ it until you’ve first called someone and told them about it.

Tags: commentary, facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »