Discover indispensable strategies for maintaining an engaging online presence, even when social media fatigue sets in. From MySpace and Facebook's early days to today's multifaceted platforms, Anne and Tom explore how social media has transformed into a cornerstone for business promotion. Learn to create content that captivates both human audiences and social media algorithms, and understand how mastering these algorithms can elevate your marketing game. Gain insights on how social media plays a crucial role in purchasing decisions and the etiquette voice actors must follow. The BOSSes share essential tips on how potential clients vet companies and individuals through their social media presence. Experience the power of video content and the importance of authenticity in connecting with your audience. Learn why the algorithm favors video and how being genuine can build trust and likability among your followers. Anne. andTom address the continuous challenges in voice acting, emphasizing the need for consistency, strategic planning, and adapting to industry trends.

00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey, how's it going? Bosses Anne Genguza here. Elevate your voiceover game with our VIPeeps membership. With VIP membership, you can access our extensive library of over 350 hours of pre-recorded workshops. Whether you're interested in commercials, promos, character animation, audiobooks, video games, corporate narration, audio description or dubbing, our workshops cover it all. Plus, as a VIPeeps member, you'll enjoy a 15% discount on current workshops and complimentary free monthly workshops to further develop your skills. Join VIPeeps today at vopeepscom and take your voiceover career to new heights.

00:44 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.

01:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm delighted to bring back Real Boss Tom Dheere to the show.

01:15 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Hello, hey, , hello, hello, hello.

01:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How are you?

01:19 - Tom Dheere (Guest) I'm good, how are?

01:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) you, I'm good, tom. I have to apologize for being late because I was creating content for my social media. And it's still a thing you would think, after all these years, tom, both you and I have been active on social media, it would get easier, like maybe quicker, but it just doesn't. I mean, it is time consuming. I think we should talk about it, because real bosses need to get out there on social media and present themselves as real bosses.

01:47 - Tom Dheere (Guest) This is also one of the questions that's most asked of me, as the video strategist is talking about how to come up with an effective social media presence. So, yeah, I think this is one that a lot of people are going to want to tune in for.

01:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Sure, social media has just well, it's just blown up, obviously I mean, but back in the day, back in the day when I first got into voiceover, there wasn't much social media out there. Facebook was just now. I'm dating myself, right, facebook was just evolving.

02:14 I think I've been part of Facebook since its evolution which was in gosh the early 2000s right, and so Facebook was the first social media and then other ones popped up after that and they've just exploded and then I think they kind of went beyond where people are now like, possibly social media tired. Oh God, yes, I have social media fatigue, social media fatigue, but yet there's still very much a necessity for running our businesses and advertising our businesses.

02:47 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yes, I think I joined Facebook in 2007. And before that I had a MySpace account which I was active on. If you remember MySpace.

02:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I do.

02:56 - Tom Dheere (Guest) And there was a little bit of voiceover stuff going on on MySpace. And then Facebook came and the interface was just, you know, superior, so everybody migrated. Myspace still exists, but it doesn't even look remotely what it used to look like or function Now. It's only for musicians or something like that.

03:10 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Facebook was great in the beginning. Remember.

03:11 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah, back in. It was just like what are you doing? You know, you just post what you're doing. This is what I had for lunch.

03:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yep exactly. Nobody still cares what I had for lunch.

03:23 - Tom Dheere (Guest) I don't care what I had for lunch.

03:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I do, because now I'm into health and so sometimes people want to know what I mean. There you go.

03:31 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, okay, I think that's the first thing to talk about is like why should you post anything on social media as a voice actor? Right, and it's evolved. When I post on social media and also here's, the thing with you and I, anne, is that we're both full-time voice actors who are always marketing, looking for clients, voiceover clients, but we're also coaches, thought leaders, presenters, guests on podcasts, you know, and doing things like this. So we are also on social media looking for students as well Students, listeners, followers.

04:09 Students, listeners, fans. You know connections of fellow voice actors, of aspiring voice actors, voice actors in all parts of their journey because we can help them with all of our products and services. So you and I have like a dual agenda when we are on social media.

04:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We have a broad audience. We have a broad audience that we want to reach.

04:24 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right. So if you're one of the VO bosses who's watching, who is most likely not a coach, not a demo producer, not a thought leader, not a podcast host, you're just like what do I do?

04:34 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, if you're a boss, you're always a thought leader.

04:35 - Tom Dheere (Guest) That's what I like to think, Ooh, I gleefully stand corrected. Yes, I like to think that.

04:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, I mean that's fantastic Because to be a thought leader, let's create content around that.

04:45 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yes, okay, so that's what I wanted to get to is like why are you on social media, who are you talking to and what do you have to say? So, in its broadest terms, I've learned that to be effective on social media as a voice actor is to feed the humans and the robots.

05:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I like that. Feed the humans and the robots Absolutely yeah, just similar strategy for anything digital these days, right.

05:12 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, it's always been true, but now, just as my understanding of marketing in general and social media marketing in particular, and all the platforms, I tell all of my students your job is to feed the algorithms.

05:23 Feed the algorithms of search engine optimization Google, bing, yahoo to increase your page ranking. Feed the algorithms of online casting sites like Voicescom, voice123, badalgo, so on and so forth, but also feed the algorithms of social media. Figure out what those robots like to eat and feed it to them, and also understand that different social media platform algorithms, because this is what we're really talking about. Different algorithms reward you for different behavior. Yes, absolutely. Instagram is primarily photos.

05:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, and video now, and video now.

05:57 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Well, that's the next thing is that, like Facebook used to be for typing, twitter used to be just for words. Back then, it was 140 characters.

06:05 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my gosh, remember that when we were restricted.

06:08 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah you for typing. Twitter used to be just for words. Back then it was 140 characters. Oh my gosh, remember that when we were restricted. Yeah, you're restricted to 140. Then it went to 280 and it may be unlimited. Instagram is just for pictures, youtube is just for videos, but now all of them are competing with each other so much that all the platforms are super watered down because they're trying to take users away from other social media platforms. So, on all the social media platforms, you can write stuff down, except for YouTube, but you can post photos, you can post videos, you know, and you're encouraged to do all of those things. So that's why it can get really confusing. But when the coders first made all of those platforms, they had one thrust in mind.

06:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You're right, they had specific. Yeah, all of those platforms, they had one thrust in mind. You're right, they had specific. Yeah, twitter was the short post. Yeah, absolutely, youtube was always the video, instagram was the photo, and they all had, like, their purpose.

06:52 But, you're right, now that they're competing with one another, they're starting to kind of have all these different capabilities, and now the amount of content out there is insane. And so, as bosses, you need to be able to stand out right and kind of cut through the chaos, and I think there's two things to be really aware of. Number one is your purpose, right, your purpose on social media, and especially if you want to get work right on social media versus use it as a social platform, remember that there was a personal and a business page for Facebook, and you could do the same thing for a personal and a business page for Facebook, and you could do the same thing for, like, instagram and all of the other platforms. You can have a business page and a personal page. But I think, with the whole authenticity, be real, real bosses, with that kind of evolving over the progression of social media, now you want to make sure that you are authentic and being who you are and not being selly because now people are like, no, don't sell to me Right right.

07:50 - Tom Dheere (Guest) A video that we did not too long ago was about branding, and I think I talked about in that video that voice actors can be grouped into two categories public voice actors and private voice actors. The public voice actors are the audio book narrators, the video game narrators, the cartoon narrators, because those are the ones that when someone listens to your audio book, plays your video game, watches your cartoon, you know who the voice actor is in that.

08:15 Everybody else is a private voice actor and people want to search you and everybody else is private, voice actor, e-learning explainer, corporate. When you narrate that content, the only people that are going corporate when you narrate that content, the only people that are going to know who is voicing that content is the producers of the content. The consumer of the content, the employee or the student, have no idea that Anne or Tom or anybody else narrated that content. So why do I bring this up? Think about that as it applies to social media. If you are an audiobook narrator, if you're a video game narrator, if you're a cartoon narrator, you've got a lot more tools in your tool belt to effectively use social media, because you're not just trying to connect with voice seekers, like all voice actors are in all genres You're also, if you're an audiobook narrator, you're trying to connect with authors.

09:01 You're trying to connect with rights holders. You're trying to connect with listeners. If you're trying to connect with authors, you're trying to connect with rights holders. You're trying to connect with listeners. If you're a video game narrator on social media, you're trying to connect with the people who play the video games and can become a fan of the characters that you portray, same with the cartoon voice actors.

09:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And with that it's dual purpose. Right, because you, as the voice actor, are not only voicing, but you're also marketing for the company. Right, marketing for the.

09:28 - Tom Dheere (Guest) And there's a little more responsibility with that, because when you are marketing on social media and saying, hey, I was the voice of this character in Halo or Fallout or Arkham Asylum or in this Cartoon Network show, you are representing that company. So you need to be very, very careful how you comport yourself, because you don't want to do anything to damage the reputation of the product, service company, stockholder, shareholder or whatever.

09:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Well, that's actually really good advice, no matter what you do, because, again, you think about even if you're voicing e-learning or corporate, but yet you might be on social media bashing the script or something and saying how poorly written it was or how you're annoyed at your client, and so it's always a good idea to just serve it up with a little bit of professionalism, because you don't know how many eyeballs are on Right.

10:18 A lot of times it's really hard to tell who's watching, who's looking, and a lot of times people aren't commenting either. There's so many things that I scroll through on a day to day basis on social media that I read and I just don't comment on. I don't even comment, I don't like it, I don't react. But yet I've formulated opinions about certain people depending on the post, and if I thought, oh, that is a little bit harsh or oh, I'm not so sure, I'd want to work with that person, and so I've made my judgments based on the post. And gosh, this has just been preaching to the choir, but we've been saying that for years. Is you have to be aware of what you post? I mean, it has an effect.

10:58 - Tom Dheere (Guest) I'm sure that you have a list in your head of fellow voice actors who you've observed on social media that you're like oh, I love what they have to say. They're so thoughtful and so smart and so funny and so insightful. I would just love to come up with an excuse to work with that person based on their social media presence. And then the other side of the coin.

11:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) In reality, I remember those a whole lot more sometimes.

11:15 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Do you know what I mean Because?

11:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) the ones who are not presenting well on social media are the ones that are like, oh, watch out, watch out for that one.

11:23 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah, and that's the thing is like we all have a little list in our head of the people voice actors that we see on social media and, based on how they're comporting themselves, it's like I will never work with that person, either as a coach or as a fellow voice actor maybe as a coach to maybe try to help them see the error of their ways with how they are presenting themselves on social media.

11:42 But it's just like it's very easy to behave yourself out of the voiceover industry based on your social media content. You and I have seen it happen multiple times where people implode on social media, and it could be for any of a number of reasons, and that's just a peer-to-peer thing. I mean. What our bosses want to know is about voice seekers who are navigating social media. I will say this is that the vast majority of voice seekers are not paying any attention to anything that any of us are doing on social media. Why? Because they're too busy making their own social media content in hopes that they can get clients to give them money to make their content their explainer videos or e-learning modules or audio books.

12:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Unless of course.

12:30 I'm going to say there might be that exception when, when you get somebody who finds you on the Web, right, you've been referred. And then they go to your Web site, they see who you are and you've got your social media links there, right, they've listened to your demos, they like you. Or even if you're reaching out to them on email and you've got your social media links on your email. I would suspect. I mean, I know I've done it with certain brands that I found interest in. I will go to their social media just to check it out. I don't investigate, unless, of course, it's.

12:59 I don't know, maybe it's a product that I want to buy, but I'm not going to go crazy in depth, but I will take a quick look at oh, there's a YouTube channel. Let's see what they've got there. Maybe they've got other products, or maybe they have like a help section or they have something, a tutorial, and so I will kind of breeze through the social media to see if it's something that I want to follow. Because I'll tell you what the way I'm making my purchase decisions these days is really a lot online, through influencers, through following on social media, through SMS text messages. That's a lot of the communication for people saying here I've got a product, are you interested?

13:39 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right. You've made an excellent point, which is that if they do, and when they do, check you out on social media, which is usually related to, you've done your marketing you have social media links on your website and then they give it a click. They're vetting you. And you know what? In my experience, when they are vetting you, they're looking to see and you said this if you're a client, basher they're looking to see if you're an.

14:03 NDA violator. You'd be shocked at how many voice actors implode on social media because they're posting videos of their auditions. This is the cardinal sin of so many people.

14:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) If you take nothing else away from this podcast, that is yeah that is the cardinal sin.

14:23 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Assume that every audition that you do is under an NDA. Always do that.

14:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Audition and client. Like don't even speak a client name until you've got something that's out there published and you've got permission, that's all. I say All that humble bragging I mean I think that's fine, but it's great when you've got the permission to do so.

14:41 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah. So what I always tell my students is that if you want to record yourself doing auditions to have social media content, do it Great, Go for it. Then you wait, Do it Great, Go for it. Then you wait. You wait until the project's been cast, whether it's you or somebody else and wait until the finished product is posted online. It's front-facing, whether it's you or not. Once you've cleared those two hurdles it being cast and it being posted then you can post it.

15:08 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But even then— but honestly, why not? Just write your own script.

15:12 - Tom Dheere (Guest) I'm just saying yeah, if you want to show off.

15:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I mean write your own script. There's so many tools out there. Tom and I think we had an episode. Yes, yeah, there's so many script libraries out there.

15:23 - Tom Dheere (Guest) What tool could I use to write a script these?

15:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) days, or where could I find a script? There's tons of stuff out there. I mean honestly. There's Scripps, libraries everywhere and, as a matter of fact, there's tons of finished products and commercials out there already in reality, and you could just rewrite one of those.

15:38 - Tom Dheere (Guest) You know what else you could do. Anne is like. I've seen a lot of voice actors over the years who will find a company and they'll look at their content online and listen to the voice actor and the voice actor is awful and what they'll do is they'll re-record it and send it to them and say compare the difference. Wouldn't you rather work with me? If you want to find something that's on social media and the voice acting is not great, you could record yourself doing a better job. You got to be careful about that because you may insult the client because they didn't make good business choices and you may insult the voice actor who did the job.

16:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, don't try to get the work by insulting. That's the biggest thing.

16:14 And I always say that you know to my students when they're quick to say the copy is not correct and so I'll just record it the correct way. And I'm like, be careful of that, because usually that copy has been through rounds and rounds of approvals and if you just come up and say, oh, you made a mistake like nobody wants to hear that they've made a mistake, especially if it's gone through multiple approvals right, so you're better off. I would say, subtly communicating with your client, like, hey, I recorded this extra take just in case that's what you meant for the script and give that to them. Don't charge them for it.

16:43 Give that to them, and then you'll be the hero, you'll be the savior of the day, and that is honestly they'll be like thank you, anne. I can't believe it got through all of these people right. Or I can't believe I made that mistake and forgot the S on the end of that word or whatever it is. You know what I mean. Nobody wants to be finger pointed at and said well, you just did a stupid thing and you made a mistake, Right.

17:02 - Tom Dheere (Guest) So I do that all the time. I have a lot of European clients, yeah, and it's a lot of translated scripts, because often I'm asked to do an explainer video that's already been produced in French or Italian or whatever. And they say here's the updated script.

17:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) But I have so many clients now who say Tom, make whatever changes you need to make in the script Exactly, which is lovely, but if you, don't have that permission structure with a relatively new client, give them alts.

17:26 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Oh, yeah, yeah, give them alts, just give them alts All day long. Give them alts all day opportunity and don't charge them for it.

17:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I never charge them for that To me that's nickel and diming and that's not the professionalism I want to show my client.

17:37 - Tom Dheere (Guest) So, on social media, obviously avoid insulting anyone on any level, but one of the most important things to do to try to put yourself out there as a voice actor on social media is to demonstrate value and progress. What is your value as a voice actor? How can you demonstrate that on social media? What progress have you made as a voice actor? How can you demonstrate on that social media? I'm now going to contradict myself, anne. Oh, okay, the most important thing is just be a human. Yes, be a good human, hanging out with good humans, collecting good humans, sharing good human stuff with good humans. That's more important than any explainer video that you could post.

18:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, it doesn't have to be work-related.

18:14 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Exactly A lot of times, when you're posting content about voiceover accomplishments, it comes out as very braggadocious, yes, and self-aggrandizing.

18:21 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and, yeah, I think, if you just showcased your personality, showcase who you are and bring some. I'm going to say these days, a lot of social media is either educational or entertainment-based, right? So why do I watch videos? Right? And videos, of course, I mean. This is why we're recording in video, tom, because video seems to be the media of choice.

18:43 - Tom Dheere (Guest) The algorithm rewards it the most.

18:45 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, in order to cut through the chaos. So of course, there's video. So, guys, you got to get brave and I'll tell you what. I've been making videos for many years and it's not something that you can do quickly. It does take some thought, some strategy and some practice to get good at it. But if you're authentic, right, and you're showcasing and you're trying to really bring value to the people who are watching, that's going to come through, and so it makes it, in a way, easy. You don't have to be like, oh, I do voiceover or even demonstrate, Because if you're just talking into the camera and you're being authentic and real, guess what? Guess what 90% of the casting specs are written to hello real conversational authentic and allow yourself to come through.

19:27 allow that and it's interesting because I always say for my students, like the last layer to put on top of your voiceover script or your audition is the point of view, is your emotion right? And that is what. When we're talking to one another, gosh, we bring that out in spades, but yet somehow, when there's words in front of us that aren't our own right, it's very difficult to figure out what point of view, or we can't get past the read of it to even showcase right the point of view. And so when you're out there on social media, connect to people with your heart, connect to people with your authenticity, and people hire people they know like and trust. Isn't that like 101, like marketing 101? People hire people that they know like and trust. So have them get to know you on social media have them get to like you on social media and have them trust you on social media.

20:12 All the get to like you on social media and have them trust you on social media All the three things.

20:16 - Tom Dheere (Guest) My most powerful social media tool that I've had for 20 years is blogging, Blogging, putting it on your website and then getting it out there on social media and the specific tool within my blog is a video.

20:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) A video and a blog, I think.

20:33 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Video. Oh God, the combination is it's a synergistic combination, but the tool within the blog that I would put on social media. That was a big part of getting me to where I am today, as both a voice actor and the video strategist was talking about all the ways that I screwed up.

20:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I had a tip of the week.

20:52 - Tom Dheere (Guest) For like almost 15 years. I had a tip of the week in all of my blogs, which is this is the mistake that I made last week as a voice actor. This is what I learned. And I'm going to pass along that lesson to you, so you do not make that mistake. Before that, all of it was just self-aggrandizing. Look at me, look at me, look at me. And nobody read my blog Once I started talking about my vulnerability and my mistakes and my humanity.

21:15 My social media presence got a lot stronger. I was connecting with a lot more people. I got a lot more readers and subscribers. So it's always made a difference because social media, it's social media. They use that word for a reason.

21:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And it's so interesting because you want to present yourself in a certain way on social media or it's always been like oh, you know the whole filter thing, right. So you talk about the filters, especially for like women, and people are like okay, I'm showing my face, I've got photos, I've got video now and here's a filter. And I think that people are just again, they can see through the filters and they really want that authenticity.

21:53 And for me, as much as I want to say I want to look great on camera a lot of times if I sit here and say to you well, my gosh, you know what, I've got these wrinkles, or I've got some sort of physical like I may have just lost a bunch of weight, but I'll tell you what I've got loose skin now. So I'm really working hard, right, so that I can feel better, get better. And so if, by admitting that and the vulnerability of how I still feel, like, oh, I want to look perfect, but I'm certainly not, and I tell people about that, that's what's going to connect people with me, to want to follow me, is that okay? So she's not that perfect looking filtered face or body or gosh, I have so many flaws. And I think if I say my flaws, that's what makes people say, oh, identify, I've got those flaws too. So I feel like if she can feel confident, then I can.

22:44 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Right, right. If there's one thing I've learned over the past few years, is that voice acting it doesn't get any easier.

22:52 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) No, it doesn't, it just doesn't.

22:54 - Tom Dheere (Guest) There's just different and new types of hard. So Anne and I, who are much farther along in our voiceover journey than many of our bosses, we have our own struggles.

23:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) We just have different sets of struggles.

23:06 - Tom Dheere (Guest) You're having struggles as bosses when it comes to getting training, getting a demo, building a website, setting up the home recording studio.

23:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Figuring out what to post on social media.

23:15 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Figuring out what to post on social media and you recording studio, figuring out what to post on social media, figuring out what to post on social media. And you know, anne and I have checked off those boxes years ago, but you know what. We still need new microphones, we need to replace cables, we need to upgrade our dogs, we still need to record content, we still need to follow industry trends to make sure our performance is relevant to what current casting is calling for.

23:35 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And we need to evolve with social media because that is honestly how we get eyes on our business, that's how we market. And, tom, if I had a nickel, for the amount of times I consulted with somebody that said, how do I get work? I mean, this is what you do, too right? How do I get?

23:51 work in voiceover. Well, you can have the best voice in the world, but if nobody knows about it, they can't hire you. I say that over and over again, and so how are they going to see you, how are they going to hear you? Right?

24:02 You've got to advertise, and advertising is more than just. Of course, you can do the mining on LinkedIn and get yourself some contacts and do some cold calling. You can even do some direct mail marketing. But I'll tell you what. As I just mentioned, boss has a great product for that, a Boss Plus. But you've got to make sure that these days, you are really tailoring it to your audience. You have to tailor it because there's just so much information and even email now it's harder and harder to get through somebody's inbox, and so you've got to be very strategy conscious when you are creating those emails. You have to know who your audience is. You have to know how to talk to them, just like you do on social media.

24:39 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah, To be great is to be consistently good, and you can't just do the occasional blast on social media, get bored, tired, scared or busy and then just wander off and then go back. Because here's another thing the algorithms of social media need to be fed consistently, you know, and not all of your content is going to be top notch viral content. It's just not going to be what the algorithm recognizes. Consistency as a result of persistency on your part. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon.

25:13 So to be consistently posting on social media, whether it's photos or videos or blogs or other content. You have to be consistent. Come up with a long-term strategy. Come up with a schedule. There's so many content schedulers out there. There's so many AI-related tools out there to help you come up with ideas for your social media content, Create your social media content Schedule and post your social media content. It takes thought. It takes work.

25:40 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It takes time and it's not easy.

25:42 - Tom Dheere (Guest) No, Anne and I were talking about this before we started recording. It's a constant struggle to come up with new interesting content, assemble the content, edit the content and then schedule the content. And then the second you click that publish or schedule, it's like, okay, what's the next thing I got to do? Amen.

25:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I mean amen Again. Like I keep bringing this up, like if I have people that sign up for my free consults and they say you know what? I've got a great demo, but I can't get work, there's two things right Either it's your performance and your auditions, or it's you haven't marketed yourself enough. And again, I can guarantee more than half the time it's going to be the fact that you didn't market yourself enough. You have to market yourself, like insanely, and these days, to market yourself, social media is a huge part of that picture. It just is.

26:28 And so what do you do when you're just a voice talent, right? And how are you going to market yourself? How are you going to, like, think outside the box? Well, as Tom and I mentioned before, what can you bring to the table that brings either some educational value or some even entertainment value? I feel like voice artists can really bring the entertainment value, because that's really, when I scroll at night, that's what I'm looking at, things that bring me entertainment value, because my brain is fried, because my brain is fried, and so I feel like as voice actors, as actors, we can do something creative and gosh. There's always podcasting, too. That's a form of social well, it's podcasting, but I consider it like a social media marketing.

27:07 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Oh, it absolutely is. What do you do? The second your podcast is published. Where's the first place you go?

27:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I social media market the podcast.

27:13 - Tom Dheere (Guest) You put it on social media.

27:15 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Exactly exactly. And that podcast doesn't have to be talking about voiceover. That podcast can simply be whatever you're passionate about, whatever you're experienced in. Bring that past experience to your podcast. I mean, the possibilities are unlimited. And with that, without you direct marketing and hard selling your voice, you've got a platform where people hear your voice and they hear your voice on a consistent basis. And if you end up doing like Riverside, like we do, or some sort of video podcast, they're going to see you as well. So look at, you've just like killed how many birds with you know. I mean, you've just literally checked off multiple boxes just by having a podcast, that's video recorded.

27:52 - Tom Dheere (Guest) Yeah, and they're hard to put together and you know you need a creative team. You need to be able to be objective and figure out what are you lacking, what skill sets are you lacking, and do you develop those skills or do you outsource those tasks? But the most important thing of all of this stuff, regardless of the social media platform you use whether it's video or audio or pictures or whatever is that your most valuable asset to having a strong social media presence as a voice actor is you. You are unique. You have your own set of thoughts and feelings and opinions and experiences. Everything that happened to you before this moment informs you in this moment. So so many of my students try to sell themselves short. Well, I just started to be a voice actor, so I'm not worth anything. Yeah, but it's like weren't you a teacher for 20 years?

28:41 Yeah, well weren't you a registered nurse for 25 years? Well, maybe you know, it's like you have so much stuff to share.

28:48 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You have so many amazing life experiences and stories, all of which can be analogous you know, or allegorical, or anecdotal or any other SAT word I can come up with, because of all the A words you've just come up with A lot of A words in there, like Ann, to informing Thomas.

29:05 - Tom Dheere (Guest) There's an A in Thomas, but no one calls me Thomas, except for relatives that aren't with me anymore. But, like, all of those things can inform your social media presence, because who you are is authentic. The more authentic you can be, regardless of the content, the more you're going to resonate with people. Just to be successful on social media, be a good human, collect good humans, share human stories. That's your best bet to be successful as a boss.

29:29 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) What a wonderful note to end our discussion on actually yeah, be a lovely human and bring that to the masses. Oh gosh, we could probably go on forever about social media, but guys bosses, do the thing. As Mark Scott would say, do the thing. Or who else ever says that? It is something that does take time, it takes a strategy. It is a marathon and not a sprint. So thank you, tom, for chatting with me today about that. Always lovely to chat with you.

29:57 - Tom Dheere (Guest) You too.

29:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) All right bosses. Big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week.

30:09 - Intro (Announcement) Bye. Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution, with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.

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