social media and voice over
If you’re looking for expert advice in this post, you ain’t gonna find here today…nah.
Today you’ll just find some observations of how social media and voice over are intersecting and maybe some thoughts on if any of it is still useful.
How do you like Google+ so far? Have you hitched your wagon to that social media train yet?
Me? I’m not feelin’ it. I’ve tried….I’ve got circles and connections and posts, oh my. But so far it feels too much like work to keep up with another network. I’ve got lots of connections…many from people I have NOTHING in common with (I’ve been trying to do something different…learn from people outside my normal circle). But I’m not finding much of it interesting. Again…this could all just be me…for others it may be a panacea. And I’m not trying to insult the network…I don’t think it’s bad or difficult to use or anything. I just don’t find myself wanting to check it out.
Oddly, I’m feeling the same about Facebook. I certainly read it more often than Google+…and yes I get drawn into silly chats, and try and make funny comments that probably amuse me more than any other readers…but I also find myself internally cursing myself when I go on it for wasting my time. I feel I should be doing something either more productive or constructive. It’s almost like I can feel part of my brain melting away, never to be thought from again, when I’m on Facebook.
For the purposes of helping my business, I post blog post links on Facebook (and Google+ and Twitter and LinkedIn) just so I can bore a broader audience, but even this gets tricky (the post part is tricky, not the boring part…just think how bored you are right now after reading only THIS far and how easily I was able to manage to elicit that reaction from you).
On Facebook, there are personal profiles and “Like” pages, on LinkedIn and Yahoo there are Groups or Boards, on Twitter there are hash tags -all with the imagined purpose of allowing you to share your thoughts among the widest audience possible and with whom you share some common interest…in this case voiceover. Conceptually, that’s awesome but operationally…oy!
Well my friend, who is both talented and lovely and a great voice talent with whom I have shared a microphone on more than one occasion, Connie Terwilliger pointed out on a forum (it might have been FB but to show you how mind numbing it has all become, I can’t remember which forum) recently how she wished that all these groups would just merge because of both the duplication of information across multiple channels (and some people are artists at managing this, Paul Strikwerda being my idol on managing all these channels to get his message out) and just the sheer volume of channels to keep up with. I’m paraphrasing here and if I’ve inadvertently mis-quoted Connie, she will right my wrongness without malice (I hope).
What was interesting was that another friend, who is both talented and lovely and a great voice talent with whom I have never shared a microphone on any occasion, Terry Daniel made the observation, as one of a group’s moderators, that he wouldn’t want to merge his particular group because it’s a niche voice over group – many (but not all) newbies to the field of voice over join his group. OK, makes sense from his perspective too.
All I kept thinking was: more niches, more channels, more work.
But are there more readers? I bless those with the time to sift and digest the multitude of voiceover groups, posts, tweets and twhats…they hurt my head. I gotta work, it’s more relaxing.
Where do you stand on any of this? Is my brain just shutting down early? Or might we be approaching a turning point in people’s reaction to and interaction with social media…especially as it relates to voiceover?
