Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams in her interview with Voices.com co-founder Stephanie Ciccarelli, "Getting the Most Out of Voice Over Marketplaces".  Learn about how you can leverage your membership to the fullest.  Find out what works, what's expected of you and also how you can strategically approach online casting sites as a tool to obtain work acting as your own agent.

Download Podcast Episode 89 »

Tags:

Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Stephanie Ciccarelli, Voices.com, Online Auditioning, Marketplace, Auditions, Blogs, Comments, Links, Community

Links from today's show:

Julie Williams
VoiceOver Chocolate
Julie Williams Voices.com Website
VOX Daily Voice Acting Blog at Voices.com
Online Voice Casting

Listen to another interview segment between Julie Williams and Stephanie Ciccarelli about marketing your voice talent online.

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams

Julie Williams
"Voice-Over Chocolate"

Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.

Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she's the voice of the video game "Stevie Learns Pool Safety." Samples of Julie's work can be heard at http://www.voice-overs.com.

Did you enjoy Julie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

---

Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams in her podcast lecture "Marketing Your Voice Online, Interview with Stephanie Ciccarelli of Voices.com". How in the world can you get people to pay attention to your voice when there are thousands of voice actors out there on the web? Discover some easy ways to promote yourself using the Internet that will help you rank higher in search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN and increase your visibility online.

Download Podcast Episode 73 »

Tags:

Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Stephanie Ciccarelli, Voices.com, Online Marketing, Self-promotion, Promotion, Blogs, Comments, Links, Community

Transcript of Marketing Your Voice Online

[Opening Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Julie Williams.

Julie Williams: Hi, my name is Julie Williams. Welcome to the podcast. In my recent audiobook, How to Make Money in Voiceovers even if you don't live in New York or LA, we talked about a lot of ways to market yourself and one of my favorite people to interview is Stephanie Ciccarelli of Voices.com because if you've been around this industry long, you know she is like the expert, the guru of online marketing and she has so much to share.

In a previous podcast, we talked about how to make the most out of voiceover market places so if you didn't hear that, be sure to go back and listen to that podcast and today, we're going to talk about how to market yourself online and how to drive your traffic specifically to your website. Okay, Stephanie, the million-dollar question. In the cacophony of voices in our currently global market place, how in the world do we get people to pay attention to us?

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Promote yourself as much as you can and this is a big one. It's kind of underrated but I'm always pushing it is to participate in the community because we found that people get work through very different ways, obviously, you know, the auditions is one way. Being found and contacted through your page is another but there are all sorts of opportunities for people to be found through maybe comments they've left. Self-promotion is very important and it's often the decisive factor in whether or not someone is able to get work though the market place.

Julie Williams: So when you say leave a comment, you're talking about you have your VOX Daily blog that comes out, how does it help a talent to leave a comment on that?

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Well, if they are leaving a comment, obviously they're contributing to the conversation and establish them as an authority but also, when you are commenting on the blog, you have the opportunity to link to your website and in the eyes of Google, the more links that you have, the more valuable and worthy the information on your website is especially if it's coming from authority site so if you're a voice actor and you want to find some way to increase inbound links going to your website, then I would strongly suggest commenting on the blogs either at Voices.com or any other winners of the community blog. There are a lot of blogs by voice actors so if you go and comment on any of those, Google will then see those links as being more valuable than say, you know, commenting on an unrelated area like cooking or something. Commenting is so important because not only does it help you with your search results, it also introduces you to other people but make sure that you're commenting the purpose of being social and make sure what you have to say is relevant and also, you know the last take-away is to comment on blogs that are liked blogs to your industry so you know VOX Daily, wherever else. Anywhere that there's a voice acting blog, those links are going to be weighted heavier.

Julie Williams: And that would increase search engine optimization for our own personal websites.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Yes.

Julie Williams: What about other avenues of increasing and I ask you this because you're the expert at it at Voices.com. You do such an incredible job with it.

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thank you.

Julie Williams: What are some other ways that a talent on their own can increase traffic to their sites?

Stephanie Ciccarelli: Well, as I had said before, commenting and leaving a link you know, for the search engines to find, little spiders go around all the time and they love fresh contents. Also, as you have suggested, having your own blog. Now that is very important. Actually blogs are probably the easiest ways to start getting indexed in the search engine because as I said Google loves that fresh content so it's going to look for it and the blog, because it has RSS Feeds is found really quickly and it updates regularly you know, if you're blogging, make sure you keep it regular. Blogs rank really well in the search engines so if you're interested in making your own website ranked higher, then I would suggest having a blog on your site and now, some people prefer to have one at blogger.com because then they don't have to host it and it's a lot easier to set up. There isn't really a lot of technical issues but if you really want to start building up your core site, then what you can do is install some blogging software on your website, maybe it's a subdomain, maybe it is your website, who knows but if you have a blog on there, then you keep it updated. It will definitely help with your search engine results.

Julie Williams: There are so many things that you can do to increase your search engine results and you may be doing some of them or a little bit of each of them or just one or two of them. Stephanie gets into detail about those in How to Make Money in Voiceovers even if you don't live in New York or LA and some of the things that she will talk about is how to drive search engines to your sites, press releases, how to write them, why to write them, how to use them effectively to get attention and social networking and the proper way to really get a lot more than fun out of using them.

Thanks for joining us on behalf of Voices.com and Voice-overs.com. I'm Julie Williams wishing you a prosperous voiceover career.

Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.

If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

[Closing Music]

Links from today's show:

Julie Williams
VoiceOver Chocolate
Julie Williams Voices.com Website
VOX Daily Voice Acting Blog at Voices.com
Online Voice Casting

Listen to another interview segment between Julie Williams and Stephanie Ciccarelli about how to get the most out of the voice over marketplace as was referenced in this podcast.

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams

Julie Williams
"Voice-Over Chocolate"

Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.

Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she's the voice of the video game "Stevie Learns Pool Safety." Samples of Julie's work can be heard at http://www.voice-overs.com.

Did you enjoy Julie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

---

Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams as she interviews graphic designer and branding consultant Jason Sikes of Village Green Studios in her podcast "Visual Branding for Voice Over Talents". Learn what it means to make your website stand out and how graphical differentiation will help you succeed in voice overs.

Download Podcast Episode 52 »

Tags:

Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Jason Sikes, Village Green Studios, Graphic Design, Website Design, Branding, Marketing

Transcript of Visual Branding for Voice Over Talents

[Opening Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Julie Williams.

Julie Williams: Hello, my name is Julie Williams and marketing and voiceover is so essential that I wanted to share with you today a segment of a much longer interview that I did with Jason Sikes for the soon to be released update of How to Make Money in Voiceovers even if you don't live in New York or L.A. In marketing, if you're not as professional or as out there as the next person, then your marketing isn't good enough. Last year, every single one of the nominees in the Best Branding Voicey Award category had their sights done by Jason Sikes of Village Green Studios so Jason is with us today because he's the expert on branding on your voiceover website. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Sikes: Hi, thank you.

Julie Williams: Hey, with hundreds of thousands of talent in the market place world wide, how does one talent stand out?

Jason Sikes: That is the million-dollar question.

Julie Williams: You know, the temptation is to have a microphone in your marketing stuff and yet you say not to do that. Why?

Jason Sikes: That is definitely one way to not stand out. I have seen so many sites that have used not just microphones but other industry iconography in their marketing materials, be it sound waves or a microphone or headphones or something like that. That it is just been overdone. It's tried, it's unoriginal. That's the message that you're putting out there about yourself to the people that see these things everyday.

Julie Williams: Okay, well then let's back up to the very beginning. I'm a talent, I come to you, what is your process in coming up with a concept for branding?

Jason Sikes: A lot of it depends on who the client is and where they come from and how much experience they have. An overwhelming majority of my clients happen to be new freshly-minted voiceover artists who have just graduated from a teacher, who are seeking agents and have a brand spanking-new demo in their hands. So a lot of times, I will be able to talk the instructor who worked with the talent to get some branding terms from them, you know, who is this person, what's their niche in the market place, what do they sound like, give me some descriptive terms to go off of.

That happens more times than not but there are other times where I have highly experienced voiceover actors that will come and want to do a re-branding or really branding for the - branding themselves for the very first time. In that case, I'll often try to get branding direction from their agent if they already have one, you know, who is your client here, how do you see them in the market place, how do you try to sell them and then come up with the brand that fits that.

Now in both of those scenarios and other scenarios, it's also very important for me to do two things. One, ask the talent how they view themselves in the market place and two, take a listen to the demo myself and see what I hear and hopefully, by gathering all of the information among all those different resources, there will be some sort of overlap and that's what I can go off of.

Julie Williams: What do you look for in the sound of a voice for branding?

Jason Sikes: When I am listening to a demo and trying to come up with branding terms, I listen to the demo, I let it roll, I close my eyes and just kind of start to grab images in my head of what that person sounds like, you know. Is this a sarcastic bomb? Is this someone I could see working out in the tool shed? A sports fisherman? It's just who I hear inside their demo.

Julie Williams: Now Jason, you wrote an article in one of my very first voiceover insider magazines about branding and you used the example of somebody named Campbell and what they should and shouldn't do based on their sound. Would you share that information with us?

Jason Sikes: Sure. This is one of my pet peeves, people that mistake branding for a play on names. So if someone's name is Sarah Campbell, all too often, you will see them with the website that has a Campbell Soup can on it because they think that that - that's their idea of clever. Campbell soup can, my name is Campbell. You're going to remember me for that which is kind of true. You may remember Sarah Campbell as, "Oh yes, she's the one with the Campbell Soup can but along with the Campbell Soup can comes everything that the brand of Campbell Soup is which is wholesome, mom, recovering from a cold, all that kind of thing that when you think of soup, that's what you think of.

Now, if Sarah Campbell is those things, then maybe that might be the right way to go for her but chances are not, she's not. If Sarah Campbell is young and wild and vivacious, a lot of things that soup isn't, then that is the wrong way to go.

So my advice to everyone is budget for marketing yourself into this whole process. I know that you have spent a lot of money on lessons and you spent a lot of money on demo but if you budget this money in which is really the last step before going to market with yourself, then you're going to be a lot happier and chances are, more successful.

Julie Williams: I agree 100 percent. Okay, how can people contact you for more information?

Jason Sikes: They can check me out at my very own website, VillageGreenStudios.com.

Julie Williams: Thank you, Jason of Village Green Studios. I'm Julie Williams and if you would like to get a hold of me, you can go to www.Voice-overs.com.

Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.

If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

[Closing Music]

Links from today's show:

Julie Williams
VoiceOver Chocolate
Julie Williams Voices.com Website
Jason Sikes at Village Green Studios
Online Voice Casting

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams

Julie Williams
"Voice-Over Chocolate"

Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.

Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she's the voice of the video game "Stevie Learns Pool Safety." Samples of Julie's work can be heard at http://www.voice-overs.com.

Did you enjoy Julie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

---

Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams as she shares the results of a brief yet telling survey that reveals some startling data specific to how clients really feel about being approached by voice over talent, where they go to get their voice overs, how often they receive cards, gifts or promotional materials from voice talent and more.

Download Podcast Episode 25 »

Tags:

Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Client survey, voice actors jobs, voice talent jobs, marketing, promotional survey, Voices.com, voice over jobs

Transcript of Information You Need to Know : What 100 Clients Told Me

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Julie Williams.

Julie Williams: Hello, I'm Julie Williams. Recently, I surveyed a number of clients asking them some questions that I thought you and I could benefit from having answered. Now I surveyed a little over 100 clients, so the study was a very small sample. Probably not statistically significant and it's definitely an unscientific survey, but you just might find the answers enlightening. Before I tell you how they responded to some of the questions asked, here's a little about the respondents themselves.

They're all people who have higher voiceover talent, these particular voice seekers hire an equal number of male and female voice actors. Forty-two percent of them hire voice talents several times a month, and 85 percent of them say they are always on the look out for good voice talent. Most of them hire non-union talent which is not to say they don't also hire union talent, because some may be in a right to work state like Texas and they come from all over the United States. When telling what types of voiceover they typically cast, 41 percent said commercials, 33 percent said narrations, 16 percent said e-learning, and eight percent said other. This is who these answers came from.

Now here are a couple of questions, and how they answered them. The first thing I asked was..

How do you like to be approached by voice over talent?

The interesting thing is, not one person answered, "I don't like to be approached by voice talent". And that option was there. Only 14 percent answered, "Send me a demo in the mail, I'll listen to it". So maybe we can save a little money, and not send out so many CDs. Forty-two percent said they want talent to approach them by e-mailing a demo. That was a surprise to me because I don't want people to e-mail me a demo. I feel like it's rude to clutter someone's inbox with unsolicited demos and I always delete them. But 42 percent said that was okay. Not quite half , but it's still quite a respectable number.

Twenty-eight percent said talent should ask permission to email a demo. And that's what I'd recommend because it's not unsolicited then, and you'll keep this 28 percent and the 42 percent happy. That means between the two categories, 70 percent of voice seekers who responded to the survey want to receive your demo via e-mail these days. And 14 percent said to e-mail a link to your website to them.

Another question asked of these clients who hire voiceover talent was, when you need to hire a voiceover talent, what is the first thing you do?

Twenty five percent said, "I call a talent or an agent that I already know." Twenty five percent said, "I search the internet to find a voice talent to contact directly." And 50 percent said, I post the job on an online talent site, referring to sites like Voices.com.

The next question post was, how often do voice actors send you gifts or cards? These would include thank you gifts and cards, promotional postcards and holiday gifts and cards.

Twenty five percent of the clients said, they never got cards or gifts from voice over talent, promoting themselves or thanking them for work. Sixty two percent said, they occasionally got gifts or cards from voice talent, promoting themselves or thanking them for work. And 12 percent said, they sometimes get gifts thanking them for large jobs.

A follow-up question dealt with the recipient's response to what was sent. Each category was rated on a scale of one to five, with one being, I have a very negative response to receiving this item. Two being negative, three - neutral, four - positive, and five - a very positive response to receiving this item.

The average response to these clients when receiving marketing postcards or e-mails was a 3.4, neutral to positive. The average response these clients have when receiving thank you postcards or e-mails was 4.1, positive. The average response they had when receiving thank you gifts like food baskets and wine, was a 4.3, more positive.

Again, this is average so some probably had a very positive response and some may have been more toward neutral.

The average response these clients said they have when receiving specialty advertising items, like a mug with your mug on it or a mouse pad or whatever as you promote yourself to them was a 3.4, neutral to positive. The same response they had if you sent a postcard or an e-mail, marketing yourself.

The average response they have if you send special gifts to them like food baskets or wine during the holidays, was 4.0, positive. But the average response if you send specialty items like the mug with your mug on it, or a mouse pad with your website on it as a holiday gift, not quite as well received, a 3.7.

Notice that it is higher than if you send those items at other times of the year. I guess they're thinking is, you know, at least they thought of me. But not as high as sending holiday gifts that don't appear to have an agenda.

I know that it's really hard to grasp these numbers in a podcast. With surveys like this, it's good to be able to sit down and look at the data, and see it in graph form and sift through the information. If you wanna see some of these information in graph form, it's all in the December issue of the Voice Over Insider, which is the new name for the vZine. It is a free monthly online magazine for voiceover talent and it's full of valuable information for talent every single month. And if you'd like to download the December issue, you can get it at http://voice-overs.com/DecemberVoiceOverInsider.pdf and you can sign up to receive a link to it each month at www.voice-overs.com

I hope this information has been valuable to you. Again, it's not scientific, it's not statistically significant, but it gives you a little idea of what some clients are saying about you sending marketing items and other gifts to them.

Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the voiceover experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.

If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com.

To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

Links from today's show:

Julie Williams
VoiceOver Chocolate
Julie Williams Voices.com Website
Online Voice Casting

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams

Julie Williams
"Voice-Over Chocolate"

Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.

Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she's the voice of the video game "Stevie Learns Pool Safety." Samples of Julie's work can be heard at http://www.voice-overs.com.

Enjoyed Julie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

---

Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams of Voice-overs.com as she explores "Coloring Words". By learning how to color your words you'll be able to authentically sell a product or service with your voice.

Download Podcast Episode 02 »

Tags

Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Coloring Words, Proven Voice-Over Techniques, Adjectives, Selling, Vocal Exercises, Voices.com, Jobs.

Links from today's show

Julie Williams
Julie Williams Voices.com Website
Online Voice Casting
Listen to Voice Over Experts on YouTube
Julie Williams : Coloring Words

Transcript of "Coloring Words"

[music intro]

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voice Over Experts brought to you by www.voices.com, the number-one voice over marketplace. Voice Over Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voice over.

Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voice-over talent.

It's never been easier to learn, perform and succeed from the privacy of your own home and at your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

This week, www.voices.com is pleased to present Julie Williams.

Julie Williams: Hello, I'm Julie Williams. I periodically, when time permits, check out some of the voice-over forums on the Internet and it's very interesting what talent are saying there.

First of all, I want to caution you: A lot of people giving advice on forums don't have a clue what they're talking about, so before you act on their advice, be sure to check them out. Do a search on them and see that they are truly are working talent.

That said, I'm surprised by some of their responses to online lead services, like www.voices.com. Here's an example of one I might read:

Voice one says, "I've been on such-and-such's service, and I'm not getting any work at all."

And voice two goes, "That's just because there's thousands of people on there."

And voice one says, "Yeah, I know. I think I'll switch to 'competitive lead service.' Maybe I'll do better there."

And voice three says, "I'm happy. I made my $200 back."

There you go-three people who don't know what they're talking about.

Let's start with voice number three. "I'm happy I made my money back"? Why settle for that? I wouldn't be happy if I just made my $200 back.

I'm happy because my first job from www.voices.com - the first week I was one www.voices.com - paid me $1, 800. My friend Jennifer's first job there paid $400 and my friend, Larry, gets jobs off of www.voices.com all of the time, but all of us are getting jobs there all of the time.

Don't just try one site and, if it doesn't work, get on another. Why limit yourself? Get on every site you can. If we can do it, you can, and I'm going to tell you one way to increase your chances.

My mom told me this saying once: If you refuse to admit your faults, you give up your power to change.

I'm sorry to tell you that, if you've been on www.voices.com for a while and you haven't gotten any work, it's not because there are thousands of people on there.

There may be thousands of people on there and not every one will get a job, but it's not because of the number of people that are on there; it's because of the number of people on there that are better at what they do than you are.

The good news is that you can do something about it. In my proven voice-over techniques workshop, I teach a number of specific techniques that help you make copy come alive, and I'm going to share one with you today.

I believe this technique, while it's so simple, is probably the most effective way to make you read colorful. And it's appropriate called "coloring words."

Coloring words is so simple; I want you to do this with me right where you are. Say the word, making it sounds like what it's saying. To do this, you're going to have to feel what you're saying and the listener will feel what you're saying, too. That brings copy alive.

So, I'll give you a word. You say it, feeling it while you say, and then I'll say it, feeling it while I say it.

The word is "tiny." Go ahead. Tiny. You make your voice get higher in that tiny pitch because you feel what you're saying.

How about the next word: "exhausting." Exhausting. You put air into that: I'm exhausted.

Here's another one for you: "long." It was a long day.

How about "fresh"? Yep, you put a lot of air in it. Fresh. They use only fresh ingredients.

Here's another word for you: precisely. Precisely. You make it feel precise.

How about "hot"? This is another airy one. Hot.

Now say the word "cold". Cold.

Now, granted, those were easy words to color but I really wanted you to get the concept of coloring words because, if you'll apply this technique to your copy, your reads will come alive like a colorful parrot in front of a black-and-white background.

Any time you see a word like the ones we just practiced with, always color it. It's typically, of course, the adjectives that you're going to be coloring, and those are the words that sell. They sell the product to the end user and they sell you to the advertiser, all because they'll feel what you're saying.

So, when you first glance at your copy, decide which words you'll color. It won't be hard to find the right ones. Then circle them. Don't just hit them harder or say them louder, unless that's how you would color them, if that's what the word demands that you do. Just color them. Feel what you're saying.

See, it's not about the voice. It's about what you do with your voice, which is good news because not everybody was born with a good voice. But everybody is able to learn to use what they have and create magic when they read copy.

It does take training and practice, though. You can't play the Philharmonic without lessons from someone who's pretty good and even the San Antonio Spurs would not have won the championship, despite all of the talent on the team, if they didn't practice.

Get some training so you can develop your unique style and learn some techniques that will set you apart from everyone else at auditions.

It doesn't guarantee that you're going to get a specific job, but I'm telling you, you will see a difference in the responses you're getting from leads. You'll see a difference in your bottom line.

[music continues]

Julie-Ann: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this www.voices.com podcast, visit the Voice Over Experts show notes at podcast.voices.com/voiceoverexperts.

Remember to stay subscribed. If you're a first-time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes podcast directory or by visiting podcasts.voices.com.

To start your voice-over career online, go to www.voices.com and register for a voice-talent membership today.

[music]

Your Instructor this week

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams

Julie Williams
"Voice-Over Chocolate"

Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.

Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she's the voice of the video game "Stevie Learns Pool Safety." Samples of Julie's work can be heard at http://www.voice-overs.com.

"I love how the industry has changed over the years," Julie says. "Most of my work is recorded right in my home studio."

Owner of Voice-Overs.Com, Julie Williams has taught hundreds of people how to refine their craft in VO. Author of How To Make Money in Voice-Overs Even If You Don't Live in NY or LA, and Proven Voice-Over Techniques, Julie periodically teaches workshops as well.

"Voice-Over is not about the voice itself," says Williams, "It's about acting with your voice, and that's a skill that can be taught."

When not doing voice-overs, the single mom spends time with her teenage son, continues to hone her skills as a third degree black belt in taekwondo, and trains for long bike rides. She'll ride from Seattle to Portland in July. Julie is also heard daily by four million listeners over the airwaves of K-Love and Air1 Radio Networks.

Enjoyed Julie's episode? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

---