Not All Voiceover Advice Is Good Advice

Facebook groups, Reddit threads, LinkedIn communities and other voiceover forums can be incredibly useful. You can meet other voice actors, compare experiences, learn about gear, talk about auditions, discuss rates and occasionally pick up a really valuable piece of information. I participate in these conversations myself, and there are absolutely good people sharing good information.

But there’s something every newer voice actor needs to understand: not everyone giving advice actually knows what they’re talking about.

Meet Barney (pictured above). He became a voiceover guru overnight after starting in VO yesterday. More on Barney later.

It becomes surprisingly easy to forget this when someone posts something confidently and several other people immediately agree with them. If you read a piece of voiceover advice that sounds strange, questionable or flat-out false, do a little homework before you act on it.

Who posted it? How long have they actually been working professionally? Are they booking voiceover work? Are they represented by legitimate talent agencies? Do they have professional demos and an established body of work? Have they actually coached, produced or worked professionally in the area they’re giving advice about?

Because one of the strange things about online forums is that you might be getting advice from an experienced working professional...or you might be getting advice from Barney, who started voiceover ten minutes ago and has already appointed himself Director of Voiceover Knowledge. And Barney is VERY confident.

That’s where things can become dangerous and frustrating for newcomers who genuinely want to learn from professionals and do things in the right order.

One of the biggest problems with social media is that everyone gets the same size comment box. A person with 35 years of professional experience and someone who bought their first microphone Tuesday afternoon can both type a paragraph that looks equally authoritative on your screen.

I recently saw someone suggest that a newcomer could make their professional voiceover demo on their phone. WTF? Come on, man.

Your demo is one of the most important marketing tools you will ever have as a voice actor. It may be heard by agents, casting directors, producers and potential clients who will make a decision about you within seconds. There’s a big difference between using your phone to practice, record an idea or listen back to yourself and presenting a phone recording as a professional voiceover demo.

Your phone is fantastic for ordering pizza, checking the weather and watching videos of cute puppies. It is not your professional voiceover demo studio. And frankly, this is where moderators of professional groups occasionally need to step in and, you know...moderate.

There’s a big difference between someone expressing a personal preference and someone presenting genuinely bad information to inexperienced people as professional advice. When questionable information goes completely unchecked, newcomers are often the ones who pay the price.

Voiceover forums aren’t the enemy. I don’t want this to sound like I’m telling people to stay away from voiceover communities. Quite the opposite. Some of these groups are fun, there are wonderful people in them, and interesting discussions happen every day. I’ve also seen experienced professionals generously share information that would have been much harder to find when I started in this business.

Use the groups. Participate in the conversations. Ask questions, make friends and learn from the discussions. Just don’t automatically treat every answer as gospel because somebody typed it confidently. Take online voiceover advice with a grain of salt and verify what you’re hearing. If several experienced working professionals are telling you one thing and Barney From Tuesday is telling you the exact opposite, that might be worth taking into consideration.

That doesn’t mean experienced professionals are always right either. Nobody is. I’ve been doing this for more than 35 years and I’m still learning all the time. The voiceover industry changes, technology changes and there can absolutely be more than one legitimate way to approach something.

But experience still matters. Context matters. Track record matters. Newcomers deserve good information. This part is especially important to me because people entering the voiceover business are already overwhelmed. There are microphones, interfaces, acoustic treatment, coaching, demos, agents, casting sites, marketing, rates, auditions, editing and home studios to learn about, and that’s before you’ve even started figuring out how to actually run a freelance business.

The last thing a newcomer needs is somebody giving them terrible advice that causes them to spend money in the wrong place, create something before they’re ready, develop bad habits or completely misunderstand how the professional voiceover business works.

Unfortunately, there is already plenty of snake oil floating around this industry. You’ll find people promising huge money, selling shortcuts, telling beginners they can skip training or suggesting anybody can create a professional demo after watching a couple of YouTube videos. You’ll also find people presenting themselves as experts when there isn’t much professional experience behind the microphone to back it up.

That’s why I always encourage people to research both the advice and the person giving it. You don’t have to be famous to have a good idea, and a newer voice actor can certainly share something useful. But when you’re making important decisions about training, demos, equipment, marketing, rates or your career, it’s worth knowing whether the person advising you has actually walked the road they’re telling you to take.

Ask questions. A lot of them. Whether you ever work with UVT Coaching or not, I want you to get accurate information about this business. I’ve spent more than 35 years working as a voice actor and audio engineer, and the professionals I work with at UVT bring substantial real-world experience of their own. We’re passionate about voiceover, obviously, but we’re equally passionate about newcomers learning the business correctly and avoiding the misinformation, exaggerated promises and snake oil that can make an already challenging industry even more confusing.

So do your research. Ask several professionals. Look people up. Listen to their work. See whether they’re actually doing the things they’re teaching you to do. And if something you read in a Facebook group, Reddit thread or LinkedIn discussion makes you stop and think, “Wait...is that actually true?” don’t be afraid to investigate.

Your voiceover career deserves better than blindly following the loudest person in the comment section. If you’re ever unsure about something you’ve heard, you’re always welcome to reach out to me at terryuvtcoaching.com. We’ll give you experienced, candid advice about all aspects of the voiceover business. No hype. No magic shortcuts. And definitely no professional demos recorded on your phone.