Lost voice? Well you are a voice-over artist, a human being, so not invincible. From time to time you are going to get sick, lose your voice and not be able to work. Obviously if you are not working you’re not earning so what can you do to make best use of the downtime? Marketing is the answer.
Like anybody else who is self employed you have to manage the sales, admin, marketing and delivery for your business. If you’re lucky you might be able to outsource some of the admin like invoicing but the marketing, sales and delivery is down to you. So, if you’re not too ill, consider catching up on that marketing that you’ve always planned to do. It doesn’t have to be too strenuous or drain you too much.
Here are a few things that you could consider whilst you’re resting your voice;
- Update your website – when was the last time you did this? Put your latest demos on there and update your content. Maybe even start a blog. Doing this will have a positive effect on the SEO.
- Do a bit of research on studios that you haven’t contacted yet. As an online voice over artist geography doesn’t really matter so these studios could be anywhere. Write some emails to the studios and introduce yourself. Let them know that you exist and are in the market for work. You’re not going be ill for that long so hopefully, if they do need you, you will have recovered by the time they get in touch.
- Give some thought to your social media. If you haven’t done so already, create a facebook and twitter page and start creating some posts. Make the posts a mixture of entertainment, useful information, and shameless self-promotion! You can use sites like hootsuite to help you schedule posts so that you don’t have to think about it on a daily basis. You never know what it might yield.
- Is e-learning voice over one of your services? The chances are it probably is. E-learning is growing massively and if you Google e-learning companies then you will find plenty for you to have a crack at. Research their website and fire off some e-mails. These companies are often looking for new VO talent to use for their projects.
There are plenty more things you could be doing but the above will give you a start. Of course we wouldn’t advocate you working too hard and making yourself more ill but if you’ve lost your voice and can’t work, at least you could be teeing up your next job opportunity!
What do you think? What do you do when you lose your voice? Please let us know.