No other topic at WoVOCon II captured my interest like this one. This last weekend, I probably spent 5 hours in 3 separate sessions that had to do with marketing…and I still don’t get it.
“Marketing” is like this mysterious black box that takes all your time and then returns…well…in my case…very little. Oh sure! I know… all of you are so busy every day that you hate the inside of your booth. You can barely find time to eat between the ISDN sessions. The demands of clients, and the endless calls for more of your voice have you regularly replacing circuits in your Avalon pre-amp!
So ASIDE from the I’m-so-busy-I-never-sit-down Bill DeWees, the I-can’t-keep-up-with-the-work Doug Turkel, and the I’m-constantly-in-sessions Melissa Moats…there’s the rest of us who are still searching for that holy grail of predicaments… namely: you’re so busy servicing regular clients that your time spent marketing is minimal. You only occasionally have to search for the odd replacement client to fill a gap that just opened up in your 10-hour-recording-day schedule.
I kid…but seriously, learning successful freelance marketing makes the last 30 years of news anchoring seem like a walk in the park.
That’s why I steered this week’s WoVOChat topic in the direction of marketing.
It’s a terribly vast and complicated topic with a universe of resources, materials, and ideas constantly being produced. The clever offer of marketing help is probably the #1 scam in history. I know one hour of tweeting will not nearly cover the issue, but I want to take a stab at some essentials.
For help with all this, I’ve asked two extremely capable WoVO Pro members, and successful voice-actors in their own right: Amy Farris, and Christi Bowen to be our guests. Interestingly, our savvy moderator — Pamela Muldoon — is also a content marketing maven as well as a WoVO pro. So, we got that going for us. I’ll be along as host, chiming in with some social media marketing comments.
We’re doing the chat tomorrow, Wednesday, March 22nd at noon Pacific. It lasts an hour, and boy, that hour goes quickly!
Search for the hashtag #WoVOCon, and similarly be sure to put #wovocon on everything you post that day.
Below are the questions we’ll use as a guideline for the hour:
1) Define marketing. What exactly is it?
2) What are some effective methods of marketing for voice actors?
3) How much time should I be spending on marketing vs. all the other hats I have to wear as a voice-actor?
4) How can I find content producers to market myself to?
5) How can you avoid “spammy” marketing?
6) Where should social media fit into your marketing plan
7) What do you think is a good frequency of contact when marketing by type?
8) What are some ways to tap the power of LinkedIn?
9) What do you consider marketing no-nos?
10) What are some good tips for a pitch letter?
CourVO
