Sirenetta Leoni Inside Voiceover—Information + Insights On Voice Acting

For those of you actors/voice actors who are planning to start your own blogs in 2012, here are some excellent tips on what NOT to do...

(H/t to fellow Scoop.it curator Martin Gysler for yet another excellent find.

 

"Are you thinking of starting a blog in 2012, or making significant changes to your old one?

 

One thing that you should always be 100% clear on is your purpose of writing. Is it to start a personal blog where you don’t really care if you have a total readership of 9 or is it to have a blog that you want to monetize at some point.

 

If you belong to the former camp, then do as you please, and skip this post. If not, read on.

 

1. Making Your Blog All About You

 

Your blog is not an online journal. Although it might feel like the perfect place to let everything out, be careful about what you write. Especially, when you have aims of making money from it.

 

Many people get offended at this advice. They indignantly retort that they are writing for their friends and family only. If that is your intent – and it is perfectly fine – go ahead but keep this in mind it would be fairly hard if not impossible to reach wider audiences with a personal blog..."

Via Martin Gysler

If you can't figure out whether you should allow subscribers or not, and/or have questions about Facebook privacy settings in general, this excellent, easy-to-digest post from Social Media Examiner breaks it all down for you step-by-step. 

[Thanks to uber-excellent Scoop.it curator, Martin Gysler, for posting yet another smart, useful article.]

 

Social Media Examiner: "Facebook privacy settings: what you need to know about privacy and sharing personal information with the new Facebook features and Facebook Subscribe button.

 

Facebook is trying to make privacy simpler. But as they add more features, privacy always seems to become more complicated.

 

With the addition of the Facebook Subscribe button, understanding how your Facebook privacy works is more important than ever.

 

The good news is that Facebook is making it simpler to find the settings for controlling your privacy.

 

The bad news is that there’s a lot of confusion around the Subscribe button and what it means for privacy. So let’s start by tackling the privacy issues around the new Subscribe button..."

Via Martin Gysler

The "take 10 second to think before you post" is a brilliant rule we should all follow as well as it's corollary: "Don't post anything you wouldn't want your grandmother, clients or employees to read and associate with you." Just remember, when it comes to the internet, once you put it out there, it may be out there forever...  

 

(Thanks to fellow Scoop.it curator par excellence, Martin Gysler, for finding this post.)

 

INC: "I really want to tell you about my lingerie ... but I'm not going to.

 

It's true that I've found a certain line of women's underwear that I'm so excited about that, at times, I'm inclined to want to tweet and Facebook about them. But clearly, I don't—because I impose upon myself the common sense "10 second rule."

 

As a business owner as well as an individual who values some boundaries on her privacy, I take 10 seconds to ask myself, Do I really want the whole world to know this about me? Because in all the haste to seem social media savvy, I've seen a lot of smart people do, say and post a lot of things they may come to regret later..."

Via Martin Gysler

More Twitter "how to's" for those of you who are learning to use Twitter for your voiceover marketing. All of us have been guily of hashtag abuse at some point. I know I have. Best rule, try to highlight what you think are actual searchable terms in your tweet, or the parts that are truly relevant. For example, I'd tag the headline of this article as follows: More #Twitter_Basics To Know For Your #Voiceover_Marketing...The do’s and don’ts of #Twitter_hashtags, because people searching for #Twitter_Basics, #Voiceover_Marketing or #Twitter_hashtags, could find this article to be of help to them. In other words, don't tag it #Justin_Bieber, when it has nothing to do with the him, just to draw Twitter traffic to your site.
(Thanks to Martin Gysler for posting to his Scoop.it topic, "SOCIAL MEDIA, what we think about!" first.)

 

TheNextWeb.com: "It’s difficult to express how annoying the misuse of hashtags on Twitter is. While there are definitely some upsides to using the popular conversation-tracking feature, there are many of us on Twitter who either simply don’t understand how to use them appropriately, or think it’s funny to overuse them.

Inspired by recent hashtag fatigue, we’ve decided to help out our readers with this helpful do-and-don’t guide on the proper use of hashtags via Twitter. Enjoy.

 

Do:
Use hashtags to keep track of communities.

 

Some communities online are utilizing hashtags on Twitter to keep track of conversations going on within their group. Matthew Doucette, game producer at award winning indie game studio Xona Games, says he follows #XNA (XNA Game Studio) to keep up with what’s going on in independent game development."

Via Julie O'Donnell, Martin Gysler