My friend and excellent VO pro Dave Courvoisier has discovered a very promising new website/application called chirbit.  It holds a lot of promise for those of us that work in the audio industry, whether voiceover or radio.  Dave had an excellent back and forth with the chirbit developer and posted about it on his blog Voice Acting in Vegas:

The site struck me as a delightful use of the potential of audio and social networking.  I eventually asked the originator of the site – Ivan Reyes – if he’d mind responding to a few pointed questions about Chirbit, specifically the possibilities for voice-actors.

It looks to me like the future holds a lot of promise for this way cool application – Chirbit.  Check it out by clicking on the quote.

When I use a company that has exceptional customer service I like to pass that information on to my friends and clients.  Redco Audio is one such company.  Redco manufactures and distributes custom pro audio and video cables, connectors, patchbays, microphone boxes and custom panels.

Recently I ordered some wall plates from Redco.  They didn’t have exactly what I wanted so they custom made them for me.  I ordered on a Monday, they made them on a Tuesday and I had them in my hot little hands on Thursday.

Hart Voice Overs New Wall Plates

And to top it all off, Redco’s price was better than anything else I found on the net.  These babies are pretty and stout!  So I got exactly what I wanted at an awesome price.  I’ve only ordered from Redco a couple of times but you can bet I’ll order from them again soon.

Yesterday I had a good friend and sometimes client email me and ask me about the new Hart Voice Overs website.  He said:

“I’m curious to know about the blog that you have been doing.  Was that a free application and did it integrate with your existing website?  How has it been?  You like?”

I’ve had a few other people ask so I thought I would share some of my response:

That my friend is WordPress and it is awesome.  Go to www.wordpress.com to check it out. And yes it’s free.

I really can’t say enough good things about it.  It originally started as blogging software but has really evolved into a complete content management system.  Originally I was just going to use it for my blog but I’ve now decided to build my whole site with it.  Brian Hart Productions needs a redo and even though I’m not planning to use a blog there I think I might use wordpress anyway.  It’s very intuitive, very easy to use even with multiple users, and there’s a ton of great support documentation on the web.

They have two options.  You can host a blog on their site – for example mine would be something like hartvoiceovers.wordpress.com or you can download the software and put it on your domain which is what I have done.

It’s highly customizable, there are tons of free templates to choose from or your can make your own.  It’s very configurable and easy to deal with things like SEO and subscriptions etc with the help of available (and again free) plugins.

Just a few examples of plugins I use – but I have a ton:  I have one that turns my site into a mobile version for use with blackberrys and iphones, ones that automatically post to twitter and facebook when I make a new post, one that lets commenters subscribe to see additional comments (and drive them back to the site), one that automatically generates an XML sitemap so the search engines can index the site easier, and one that displays my twitter posts on the side, one that finds photos with a creative commons license so I can use them legally and for free in my blog.  There are others that allow for payments, ad banner rotation and on and on and on.  Another plug in I installed automatically creates a database backup and emails it to my gmail account as often as I specify.

This is getting long I know but here’s another other cool thing.  With an app I downloaded I can create, edit and publish posts from my iphone and moderate comments.

So yeah, as you can tell I love it.

Brian Hart
Tel:  251.752.9221
Hart Voice Overs

Contact Brian

Someone I’m following on twitter posted the link to this list on search engine optimization.  I wish I could give them credit but I honestly don’t recall who it was. If it was you leave a comment below so I can thank you publicly.

List of Best and Worst practices for designing a high traffic website:

“Here is a checklist of the factors that affect your rankings with Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines. The list contains positive, negative and neutral factors because all of them exist. Most of the factors in the checklist apply mainly to Google and partially to Bing, Yahoo! and all the other search engines of lesser importance.”

I’ve bookmarked it so I can keep it handy and I thought you might wish to do the same.

My wife knows me so well.  For Valentine’s Day she gave me Velcro cable wraps and I love them:

I use these guys to keep my microphone and instrument cables neat and tidy in storage and in the rack when I have one that’s too long, I use them to keep up with networking cables in the studio.  I always have an extra or two in my laptop bag just in case.  They are so useful that you’ll find them all around our house and garage managing power cords too.  I even keep them on my boat to manage my docklines.

Here’s the best part.  They are cheap.  No, don’t rush right out and order them from a music supply place.  Next time you are in Wal-Mart grabbing your milk, bread and new underwear swing on over to the sewing section.  You should find these very handy little Velcro wraps tucked in with the needles and such.

My advice?  Pick up more than one pack.  You’ll get addicted to them and want more.  Trust me.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

And to my wife:  Thank you honey, they are just what I wanted.  Love you.

B

So Google now has the Buzz.  You already Tweet and you are addicted to Facebook.  It’s getting so complicated trying to keep up with it all.  Here’s a little help.  Mashable has an article on how to integrate Twitter and Facebook into your Gmail account and turn it into one giant networking center.

The article is straight forward and I’ve already gone through the steps.

The biggest problem I had was finding the Gmail labs.  It is not the same as Google labs, which was my first mistake.  Log into your Gmail account and then click settings (in the upper right hand corner)   Here’s a screen shot of where to find Gmail labs in the settings menu:

Where to find the Gmail Labs button (click for larger image)

From there just follow the instructions on Mashable.

The twitter client is not working for me right now – I’m still troubleshooting that one.  I’m also trying to figure out why you need it since you can link your twitter account with Buzz.  So you might want to skip that step for now and play with Buzz.  I guess it depends on how you want the layout.

The Facebook app worked like a charm with no issues but is a bit ugly inside the clean gmail interface.

That’s it.  You are all set to network until your fingers go numb.  Enjoy.

UPDATE:  Apparently the twitter gadget is not working properly at present.  That’s a shame, it would be the most useful to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  After playing with it I think I’m much happier using a desktop client for Twitter and utilizing the tabs in my browser to keep track of Facebook and Gmail/Buzz.  Putting them all in Gmail is a cool idea but at present it’s still just a little too clunky for me.

With all the information on the web are these really necessary? I suppose some of us just prefer a book to a screen.

(really I’m just testing how to post from my iPhone)

photo credit: dichohecho

How do you stay in contact with clients and potential clients?

One of the easiest and most inexpensive methods available today is with a well crafted newsletter.  But how do you actually deliver it to your customers?  Sure, you can use your regular email program and send it to ten or twenty addresses at a time – how inefficient.  Let me offer a few suggestions I think you’ll find much less frustrating and a better use of your time. 

There is a discussion going on on the VO-BB right now about the different ways there are to send out newsletters to clients.  One popular solution is to use Constant Contact.  It’s online and it’s easy to publish and send out newsletters as frequently as you wish.  I’ve never used it myself but everyone I talk to that does loves it.  Other online solutions suggested include Email Brain and Vertical Response.  If none of these suit your needs just type “newsletter” into your favorite search engine and you’ll find dozens of sites that offer mailing services.

Before you commit to spending any money see what options you already have available.  For example my hosting service provides CPanel for website management.  Cpanel includes an option for mass mailing directly from the server.  That means I can design a newsletter in Microsoft Office or Macromedia Dreamweaver and mail it directly from my server without any third party involvement and save a little money.   It’s not quite as easy of a process as some of the online services and it takes some time to manually add new addresses so there is a trade off in time versus money.  Check to see if you have Cpanel or a similar option available from your provider.

Other hosting providers may have solutions built into their web packages as well.  For example if you use Go Daddy to host your site they have some mass mail marketing packages available at an additional cost.  Just a note:  I’m not endorsing Go Daddy, I’ve never used them for hosting but they are one example and a popular hosting site.

As you can see there are a variety of options available to deliver your newsletter.  I suggest you contact your provider and see what you may already have available and then investigate on the web if a third party solution is more appealing.

Creative Commons License photo credit: myuibe

Dave Courvoisier made an interesting post on his blog the other day about how to record decent quality audio on your iPhone.  It’s a good read and short.  Check it out.

So now you can find auditions, record an audio sample and submit it all from an iPhone.  Pretty cool.  My biggest suggestion would be to find a nice quiet spot to record though.  One option?  Believe it or not – your car.  Automotive engineers work hard to make today’s car interiors quiet and acoustically pleasing.  So take advantage of their hard work and go record an audition on your lunch break behind the wheel, just don’t drive while you do it.

If you are like me you keep contact with family, friends, co-workers and even clients on Facebook. It can be quite a challenge to quickly scan through all information in your News Feed with that many contacts. Here’s my tip of the day.

Organize your contacts into well defined “friends” lists. For example I have separate lists for family, friends, VO Peeps (other voice actors), high school friends and college friends.

Once you have defined your lists and sorted your contacts it becomes much easier to follow each group in your News Feed. Just click on “Friends” on your main page, then select the group you want to see from the drop down list and all your other contacts are temporarily excluded from your News Feed.

It’s a little more complicated with the new Facebook layout but once you get used to it I think you’ll find it much easier to keep up with who’s doing what and save a little time in the process.