A brand is the identity you use to present yourself and your voice to the world. It’s honing in on the unique sounds of your voice, your personality, and the way you interpret meaning in the words. It’s like your signature that you bring to the industry. It will help you to establish your place in the industry, draw in your ideal clients, and determine how you influence your target audience.
Here are some things you can build on when you’re developing your voice-over brand.
Analyze your voice and the way that you speak.
It starts with an analysis of yourself, your voice, your personality, and what you bring to the industry. Look into what is special about your voice and the way that you talk. This may take some time to discover as well as practice in different areas of the industry and with different scripts and copy. Try asking yourself the following questions:
-What qualities does your voice have? Is it youthful, warm, or gravely?
-What’s unique about your personality and the way that you speak?
-What areas of the industry are you interested in?
-What type of products do you find yourself getting excited about or talking about often?
-Has anyone given you feedback on your voice? How do they describe it?
Honing in on your voice and establishing what you want to bring to the industry will help get you started on your branding roadmap.
Love what you do.
Find the type of work you love doing. It’s fun to talk about the things that you like, so you’ll naturally have good energy and tones behind it – it will come easier and you’ll get others to be interested in it as well. This will evolve and change over time, but start to find your favorite areas of the industry and the types of things you enjoy portraying to the world the most.
Be authentic.
We all sound different and bring different things to the table. Don’t try to read scripts the same way everyone else would. You want to leverage what you do best and what makes your voice unique in the industry. Keep putting the YOU in your voice-over.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
Define who your audience is. It’s important to know who your audience is and what type of people you’re relaying your message to. You want to have good intel into what your audience is into, what their interests are, how they think, and the things they want out of life.
Encompass all of you.
A brand will encompass all parts of you and your life. It’s important to focus on all of the different things that make up your being: past experiences, previous jobs, hobbies, personal interests, your opinions, products you’re into, or things that you love doing. Figure out the things that you want to say and how you want to communicate it to the world. Look into how different parts of your life and personal experiences fit together. Dive into your background or things that you know a lot about.
Be recognizable.
Use words + visuals.
Keep a narrative going as you continue through your voice-over career. Let people come on the journey with you and keep an interest in what you’re doing. Compile projects that you liked working on that fit you best and share them on your websites and social media. Talk about your development and successes in the industry.
Visuals are a great tool to utilize and something that make your brand stand out and can keep consistency throughout all of your platforms such as emails, websites, invoices, social media, etc. You can use things like logos or have a set style of colors and fonts that you use so people start to get familiar with you when they see it.
Create a road map.
Know where you’re headed in voice-over and what you’re looking to accomplish. It’s a good idea to set goals to bring in aligned projects. Create an overall vision of what you’re looking to accomplish in the industry and who you are looking to communicate with and bring a message to. If you have a destination in mind, it’ll be easier to create the steps to get there. Start jotting down ideas or creating a vision board of what makes you unique in the industry and what encompasses you and your brand.
Establishing a brand for yourself is fun. It helps you connect to your target audiences, get aligned with the areas of voice-over you’re looking to get into, and find the places where your voice fits the best. Getting connected to yourself and what makes you unique will help you connect to the work you love doing and bring in an audience who are looking for those qualities.
Check out our free PDF with pro-tips from real working voice-over actors here!
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