- In this video,
we're going to talk about voiceover websites.
(upbeat music)
Especially when you're starting out,
it can be quite tricky to work out
exactly what you should be putting on a website
and whether or not a website
is even necessary in the first place.
I mean, to start off with, if you're an actor,
then you might already have a website.
In which case, creating a voiceover section for it
where you have your demos and a little bit about you,
your recording space, and maybe your clients
is probably a good place to start from.
I kind of came to it slightly differently
because of my branding, for my voiceover stuff.
And especially when I started out,
because I worked in the corporate sector,
I wanted to make my acting website
and my voiceover website quite separate.
So they are two separate sites
but they are interlinked to each other.
So you can switch in between.
But I thought what might be useful
is for me to just quickly go over my website
as it currently stands in the first quarter of 2021,
and explain some of my decisions,
and why I prioritize certain things,
and why I skip other things as well,
not just so that I can come across as a know it all
because I certainly don't.
But so that you can look at other voiceover websites,
do a bit of a compare and contrast
and then make your own decisions.
So, starting off with the homepage and here is my face.
And yes, I mean, essentially I'm not gonna go
too deep into the whole branding thing.
But one thing that I would say is that
it's quite central to be memorable,
as memorable as possible.
Obviously, a picture of yourself
goes a long way in doing that.
It gives you a certain identity as a result.
What makes you unique is yourself.
And obviously, there are quite a few people
who will, especially if they work in animation or anime,
will have a illustration or a cartoon version of themselves,
which can also work to a certain degree,
but I still think it can run the risk
of looking a bit generic.
What makes it you?
Obviously, for me, I also double down
on my own British brand with the tea cup
and the color scheme as well,
is something that I wanted to kind of really think about.
In terms of the colors, I think it's very important
to think about what your favorite colors are, essentially,
things that represent you, but also excite you.
So I think this website looks quite cool
and that's one of the reasons why I'm sharing it.
And hopefully you should be excited
about your website as well.
So this image here incorporates the color scheme.
It also has the tea cup, which is a bit of a motif
to the whole English British RP brand
in which I'm kind of selling as well,
which is important, but kind of regardless, it's memorable.
I will always be the guy with the tea cup,
and even on all of my email correspondent,
it's something that I incorporate in there,
makes me hopefully a bit more memorable
than just another face
or just another animated image of some kind.
And then when we kind of scroll down,
also noting that I have made a little sort of logo.
First and foremost,
I would think on your voiceover website
has to be your demos.
They have to be front and center
because they really are your calling card.
The aim should always be to get whoever visits your website,
to get them listening to your voice as soon as possible.
So having them here very easily available
in a variety of different genres,
and also making the tracks downloadable
can be incredibly important.
And the reason why I do that really,
especially is that first of all,
in terms of with the actual voiceover correspondence
that I have, rather than asking people permission
to send them MP3s which they may not want anyway
because it might fill up their inbox really, really quickly.
Instead, if you make it downloadable,
then that's what you can reference
as an offering in your email correspondence instead,
so that they actually have the choice
if they wanna download the demos,
or if they just want to save your web address
for future reference, either all,
you don't second guess what their ordering system is,
you just give them the options.
So do make sure that they're all downloadable here as well.
And then I have a little bit about me.
So for this section, which is basically an explanation
about what the British RP, Received Pronunciation brand is,
but it could just as easily be about you.
I then kind of go on a little bit
about where I actually have experience
in all of the different kind of sections that I do.
Again, not necessarily revelatory in any way
but sometimes I think it's very important
to go, do you do audio books or don't you do audio books?
Do you specialize in animation?
What is a specialism that you have, if any?
And then have a reference to some nominations and awards
which is always kind of nice,
and then having had the demo aspect of it,
the audio demo aspect of it.
What I then incorporated is a visual voiceover demo.
And this goes on to a much broader point which I make
which is that you should try
and track down portfolio pieces, visual portfolio pieces,
actual finished products,
featuring your voice as soon as possible,
because I mean, essentially,
it can be a much more engaging experience
as well as proving that your voice
has actually been incorporated
into some real life campaigns in some way.
But having that visual aspect,
especially when a lot of the people
that you're gonna be reaching out to are gonna be dealing
in visual mediums that require voiceover as well.
Well, that's gonna be speaking much more to them
than just having the audio track.
It's not something that I make downloadable,
except if it was on request,
but I still think it's nice to have.
I mean, all of this stuff here is hosted on YouTube.
Vimeo is also an option,
although I don't think with Vimeo
that you really need that high, high quality,
you just want something to load up consistently and quickly.
YouTube is quite a universal solution to that.
So that's what I use as well.
And again, we're kind of scrolling.
Notice the reason that I have a homepage
that scrolls with all of the pertinent information on it is,
I mean, it's essentially because the vast majority of people
will be actually, well, not the vast majority,
but a good few are gonna be actually coming across this
on their phones.
And so therefore there are points to be made about,
where increasingly, the people like to scroll
as opposed to click on links.
And again, we're trying to make this process
as frictionless as possible.
So if all of the pertinent information
is just by then scrolling down to find it,
then all the better.
We then come to the kind of the jazzy bit,
the clients include section,
which hopefully shows a bit of my kind of range.
And obviously that's a nice thing to say.
And then I think this is a really kind of a core aspect
to my website as well, which is reasons
that they should work with me specifically.
So it's again, taking the issues, the problems,
the obstacles that my potential clients may have
and making me a resource as a solution to that
so that I'm client centric
as opposed to this is why I sound so great
and this is why you should work for me
which is essentially what I'm saying.
So the super fast turnaround,
being able to do a free demo out of remote direction,
none of this information is revelatory,
the vast majority of home studio, voiceover talent
will offer all of this,
but it's making things clear, concise,
so they know absolutely what I do
and don't offer and have very clear criteria to it
which I think is invaluable.
And then towards the end, I do offer up a little bit about
my own kind of background,
how I got into acting and then into voiceover as well,
which I think is a nice kind of optional extra.
I don't think it's the type of content
that you would necessarily choose to lead with
because essentially you're in business.
And obviously it depends again,
in the genre that you're operating in.
But I would say for the vast majority of people,
it might not be something that they're interested in,
but for those people that do,
in terms of an about me section,
I think it's nice to have it
on that first page.
So then they can get a bit more of an idea of who I am,
where I come from, what my likes are, that kind of thing.
And that bit of personality, again,
hopefully it makes me a bit more memorable.
And again, you'll see that these images,
these different brand images
is something that I've incorporated all the way through
but also the color schemes, the grays, the blues,
and the whites are kind of what tie the site together.
And then at the end of every page that I have,
I have a call-to-action 'cause essentially
what do I want them to do is to get in touch.
So it's either to contact me or it's to listen to my demos.
We've already had a couple of call-to-action
on that main page about listening to my demos.
So that seems pretty straightforward.
And then at the end is where I put my social media links
at the bottom of the screen,
and the reason why I do as opposed to integrating
my social channel more directly into this
is that as soon as you do something like that,
there's the risk that people may click
on Facebook or Twitter or what have you,
and actually go off my website,
in which case it's much more tricky to get them back
because they'll see notifications
or they'll see a cat video or something.
And yeah, I mean, why would you want to?
So that's the main core aspect,
but then I also do have some different sections
that I've kind of built out.
So I have got a how it works section
for those people who maybe don't use voiceover
on a consistent basis or they've dealt directly
through an agent or something else.
So I explain exactly what the process of working with me
looks like to a novice, including FAQ's as well.
So hopefully I've covered most of the basis there.
I do have a blog, which I started initially
as a kind of exercise in search engine optimization.
Everybody said, oh, get a blog.
And sometimes it was useful to me to kind of literally
work out my own thoughts and that kind of stuff.
Nice to share, again, a bit of my personality.
And the reason that people say including a blog is good
is because if you regularly update it,
then you may rank higher in SEO.
Now, I replace this mainly with my YouTube videos
as I make them occasionally as well instead.
It seems to have a similar function
a bit more organically as well,
but it's not a crucial part to it.
Then really there's the, my portfolio section.
And this is something that's probably changed the most
in terms of my whole voiceover offering, generally speaking.
Beforehand I had just a separate page
with essentially all of the video work that I could find
with use of my voice.
And that was a nightmare essentially to upload
in terms of it took ages to load up
which was problematic because people wouldn't wait around
for it to do so, but still,
it's nice to have all of the different video examples
of all the other kind of that you do.
So instead, what I decided to do
was incorporate some feedback
that I got from a great website designer called Karin Barth,
who works specifically on websites for voice actors.
And she suggested creating more pages,
which kind of goes against the whole scrolling,
is what the majority of us do now kind of feedback,
but the idea of creating more pages,
because then if you have more pages
for Google to crawl through,
then that is a way of pushing up your SEO.
So I thought, okay,
that's one way that I could improve my SEO, which is great,
but how else can I justify making these pages,
loads of different separate pages?
And so I thought I'd divide them by genre
which obviously is useful first and foremost
when I'm reaching out to people
if I'm reaching out to someone who works in e-learning,
if there's a specific e-learning page for them
or someone who works in gaming
or specializes in mocap production,
then I've got a specific page that I can direct to them.
And then I can actually literally tailor it specifically
to that audience a bit more, first of all,
by using a couple of key phrases, but even,
in terms of iterating on my brand,
having a kind of eight bit digitized version
of my main brand image as a kind of a reef
to show that there's basically a core voiceover, this one,
sometimes in a t-shirt,
sometimes dressed in my brand colors.
But then having a little bit of fun with it
and that I work in different genres.
And then really what I've done is on one side,
on the right-hand side, I've taken in my demo in black
which is already readily available on the homepage.
I've literally broken it down track by track
because occasionally there might be a specific type of,
or a specific track on one of my demos that they really like
and they can download that independently
rather than having to download the whole reel.
So that's one reason as a justification
for having the separate page for the genre.
And then also on the left-hand side,
I'm able to give an explanation of my experience
in that particular niche,
people that I've worked with, again, coaches
and other great practitioners
who I've worked with in that particular area as well,
and the certain skill sets I can emphasize
that have helped me in gaming or e-learning or in
commercial narration, all of these types of things.
And then at the end as well, again,
this is where I can actually stick the additional video work
which I won't have space to put on in my homepage,
but here instead, I do,
I've got my video game show reel here
and then a couple of trailers as well.
So again, it's a place to where I've been able
to put my additional content.
Then after all of these sections,
which as you can see pretty much work the same way
all the way through from commercial to corporate,
which again work as links and all of them are,
naturallyrp.co.uk/gaming.
So they all kind of make a logical sense.
They've all been named appropriately.
Although I've mentioned SEO a couple of times,
it's not something that I go super kind of
crazy powerful on because I'm directing people here myself
through my email correspondents
rather than relying on search engines,
but still working with someone like Karin Barth.
It can be invaluable because she'll make sure
that you are using certain keywords at certain times,
that the header that you use is in the right format
so that it's read most effectively.
If you've got all of this content here
then you might as well order it as effectively as possible.
So you do get the odd person, just randomly contact you
having found you on Google, every little bit helps.
And then as I said before,
I've got my acting website connected to this.
So this is all interlinked,
completely separate sections here,
but it's a whole different kind of thing.
I've got the coaching section as well,
and then also the contact.
So again, it's about selling yourself
very concisely and clearly,
all of the key information here,
the option of a form,
if they want to use a form instead, my representation.
But as you'll see with the majority of these
and also with every single one of these portfolio pages,
they'll end with those images, which I think is effective.
So yeah, that is essentially what I think
should go in a voiceover website.
Obviously branding is a long-term thing.
And kind of one thing I would say is that obviously
you wanna put your best foot forward,
but I would say, feel free to just kind of start out
with a really basic site,
even if you've got just one demo,
putting that front and center.
If you can make it downloadable, great.
If you can't, then don't worry about that, either,
just so it exists and having either your name
or a clear strong brand name that's memorable
is kind of really core,
but making it so that it is a kind of clear link into itself
so that the people that you're contacting
don't need to comb through lots of different things
to find the information that they need,
it's there and you've made it easy for them.
And then you can think about
adding some of this information
into your course when you want to.
But essentially just having a space,
and reserving your domain and all of those kinds of things.
That's the important thing to do to start off with.
And then contact people with that.
Don't be afraid to do that.
As long as your demos are quite good,
you shouldn't be reserved in doing that
to share the capacity for work that you do.
And then from that, as you improve your website
and your online presence, if you feel that you need to,
if you feel that it's actually getting you more work
or could get you more work in any kind of way,
then you can use that as something that you can illustrate
in your followup correspondence.
So part of your narrative in terms of growing
as a voiceover artist generally
will be the improvement in your brand
and the improvement in your website,
and online presence as a result.
So that gives you extra reasons
to follow up with these people.
Yeah, so I hope that that's been a useful insight
into some of my thought processes behind my website.
If you have any questions,
then please do feel free to comment below.
If you enjoyed the video, then please do like and subscribe
and do let people know that this exists.
Thanks so much for taking the time to check this out
and see you next time.