- In this video, we're gonna talk about
content ideas for communication.
(soft music)
This video is essentially a sequel
to one of my earlier videos called The Art of Following Up,
which was really just about making sure that everything,
all the correspondence that you have with a potential lead,
a prospect or a client is client-centric,
so that rather than focusing on yourself
and what you can offer,
though that's important
in terms of your voiceover offering, essentially,
and how fast your turnover time is
and where your expertise is,
is to make sure that it's content
that serves the particular problem areas
that your clients may have,
the importance and the value of this.
But I just wanted to kind of like add that
because a lot of people
still kind of seem to hit that wall of,
"I don't know what to be following up with."
You reach out with that initial cold call
or that initial email or that DM, maybe.
And maybe you find something really impressive about
your potential lead's work that you can reference
to show that you're engaged
and then you offer your services.
And as long as you frame that as an offering
of a resource, as opposed to, "Have you got a job for me?
Please hire me, I need the money to pay my mortgage,"
so you don't come across as desperate,
that's an essential first step.
But with the follow-ups,
lots of people just kind of get stumped
and it's so integral to be able to continue to follow up.
So, first of all, we've got to acknowledge
perfection paralysis, again.
Another thing that I've talked about previously,
which is like, just because you might not have
all of your ducks in the row
and perfectly polished to murder the metaphor,
doesn't mean that you shouldn't still be doing it,
in terms of follow-up ideas,
the most basic follow-up ideas that you have.
If you're following up to someone
who hasn't responded to you, is your portfolio of work,
whether or not that's your demos,
individual tracks on those demos,
or ideally, bits of your work in different genres,
showing different aspects of your vocal performance,
as long as they're still relevant
to the person that you're reaching out to.
There's no point in sending a sample of an audiobook
to someone who only deals in promo reads, essentially,
but still the principle is if you've got five different,
five different demos,
or ideally five different visual portfolio pieces
that you think are your best, and differing in contrast,
then those can be your first five, six pieces
of follow-up correspondence.
So that you've got that as a kind of base level.
Now operating on the next level above that,
I like to recommend that
you've got this competing narrative of like,
"Oh, I'm never quite perfect enough
in order to be able to reach out in the first place."
Turn that problem into the solution,
so that every time you do make an adjustment
to something that you felt was less good,
that you've improved upon,
like a new demo, like some new branding,
like a whole new website,
like a whole new email signature, whatever,
you can use that as a very light excuse
to get back in contact.
So if it is like, "Yes, my website
has had a complete rebrand,"
or "I've added in a testimonial section,"
or, you know, "I've recorded this new demo."
This is again, another thing that you can do
to augment that initial kind of spine of follow-ups,
which were to do with, you know, the content and the work
and the projects that you're creating with,
now, you can augment that with certain improvements.
And because you're dealing with people,
you're reaching out to people who are creative,
it's possible that you could ask their opinion
on these things from a visual aspect, for example.
You could ask them, "What did you think?"
And with all of this stuff,
you're not asking with an expectation
that they can give you,
that they want to give you a detailed kind of feedback,
but it's about asking their professional opinion
about stuff which would be within their skill set,
within their remit anyway,
and creating a form of a dialogue
in terms of around a personal brand
or around building a portfolio
or around building the testimonial section,
you know, from business owner to business owner.
And then I think the third tier of this
is really about thinking of things
that have nothing to do with voiceover, originally anyway.
So all the other aspects of you,
not to do with your job now, brainstorm them all
because these are, again, aspects of you
which are gonna make you much more interesting
and individual, funnily enough.
And then think about how these different things
might be able to provide insights into your work,
which you could share either as a blog post
or as video content or, you know, as a post on social media,
something like that.
So for example, if you have a previous job
in an administration role
or in a completely different artistic role,
are there any of those kinds of insights
from your work there previously
that you could now reflect on
in terms of your day-to-day operations in voiceover
that you would like to share,
or dealing with clients, et cetera.
I made a video about theatre producing
and what it taught me about running my own business
and quite a lot of people that,
quite a lot of leads that follow up
seem to respond to that because it's showing a bit more
about my life outside voiceover,
that I'm not just purely thinking about voiceover
and sealing the deal and booking those jobs
and all of that kind of thing.
There's a bit more to me as a person.
And it's something that I'm really passionate about
is the producing of theatre work
with a theatre company that I take a lot of pride
in helping facilitate.
So that kind of adds an extra different personal dimension,
but you still make it relevant to the creative process,
the process of production,
to potentially similar pain points that your clients
or your prospects or your leads might have.
I think identifying what those potential pain points are,
whether or not that's to do with timeframe,
whether or not that's to do with the speed
or negotiation of price with talent,
you obviously try as best as possible
to identify what all potential problems might be
for your prospective client in terms of,
certainly, in terms of dealing with voiceover
in their day to day operations.
And then it's seeing if you can find any shared ground.
And obviously, we default to discussing any shared ground
in terms of our voiceover business, which is great, fine,
but if there's any other experience,
whether or not it's even like
if you trained to a certain level in a sport
and what that taught you about your work ethic.
You know, all of these different aspects
can make you more memorable as a result.
And ultimately, with all of these follow-up correspondences,
it's not about their being disingenuous,
and it's not about the expectation
that they'll immediately get back to you.
It's just personalising things,
making things seem a bit more interesting.
I went back in a previous video
about saying how a lot of the grind
is because we're not creating a lot of stuff,
we're simply kind of reaching out
in a more mechanical way, ultimately,
if we're doing it to any kind of degree of scale.
So all of these opportunities to provide personal insight,
whether you put it in a blog,
whether you put it in a social media post,
whether you put it in an Instagram Reel
or a TikTok, whatever,
whatever works for you.
But again, that level of personalization
would be, I'd say, the kind of like the third tier.
So you start with your portfolio of work,
then it's kind of the next level of on
is your continual development as an artist
and as a voiceover and as a business,
so you can get that sense of journey and growth
and be able to share that creative endeavour as well.
And then the third aspect to that is the personal,
is, you know, the outside of business aspect
that you can kind of add into the conversation.
If you've got those three,
then you can kind of alternate
and shape what your follow-up strategy is
in a lot more of ways.
And once you've kind of got it down,
it's not something that you've got to completely reinvent
every single time you follow up,
you've still got that chain
and you can swap things in and out more organically,
depending on how you feel, depending on what response,
what level of responses a certain piece of content
or a certain email gets.
Anyway, I've tried not to over-complicate things,
probably have, though.
But I hope you found this useful.
Thank you so much for joining me as ever.
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Wishing you a great week, and I will see you next time.