How To Find, Select, and Hire The 'Right' Professional Voice Talent

In this post, we'll look at the key success factors you want to understand when hiring voice talent for your next project.  As an author who was exploring the use of audio in order to promote my books, as well as, develop audio versions of my books, I was in uncharted territory with some very real concerns regarding how to find a true professional voice talent.  With the advances in home computers and the software available, it is very easy for anyone to market themselves as a 'Voice Talent'. So, as someone who needs to purchase voice services, how do you weed through all the wannabe's and find one of the few, true, professional?  What kind of questions should you be asking?  What type of background and experience should you be looking for?  What kind of equipment is needed to give you the professional product you want for your audience and/or customers?  For answers to these questions, I asked longtime professional voice talent and industry expert, Cindy Brooks. Cindy has been involved in various aspects of the business for over twenty years and brings a wealth of experience to this discussion.  According to Cindy, one of the first concerns is making sure the voice talent has the depth of experience needed to deliver a professionally done product. Since every project is unique, it is critical your voice talent have the ability to interpret the script they are given so they can apply the appropriate tone and pace to the work.  

Before beginning your project the professional voice should be asking you detailed questions regarding the target audience, the desired tone and what the overall goal or goals of the project is. A short radio advertisement designed to get people to take action is going to have a different tone and cadence than an informational public service announcement. Your voice talent must be able to make these distinctions in order to give you a voice product congruent with the goals of your project.
Cindy states, "An experienced voice talent will 'feel' your script and 'talk' directly to your audience. They should be able to visualize the people they are 'talking to' and address them directly and with heartfelt sincerity. The ability to change their vocal quality to match the tone of the copy is critical for a voice talent."
A true professional voice talents make the investment in the tools of the trade. Anyone can buy a $50 microphone at an office supply store, hook it up to their Microsoft Windows based PC and call themselves a voice talent. But in terms of quality, they cannot deliver the level of acoustic quality a professional voice, using professional audio equipment, can deliver.
First and foremost, your voice talent should record from a sound proof studio. Background noises as simple as the hum of a refrigerator or furnace can ruin a recording when the recording is amplified. You should expect the clarity, cleanness and background silence achieved by using a soundproof studio.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1059995

Before beginning your project the professional voice should be asking you detailed questions regarding the target audience, the desired tone and what the overall goal or goals of the project is. A short radio advertisement designed to get people to take action is going to have a different tone and cadence than an informational public service announcement. Your voice talent must be able to make these distinctions in order to give you a voice product congruent with the goals of your project.
Cindy states, "An experienced voice talent will 'feel' your script and 'talk' directly to your audience. They should be able to visualize the people they are 'talking to' and address them directly and with heartfelt sincerity. The ability to change their vocal quality to match the tone of the copy is critical for a voice talent."
A true professional voice talents make the investment in the tools of the trade. Anyone can buy a $50 microphone at an office supply store, hook it up to their Microsoft Windows based PC and call themselves a voice talent. But in terms of quality, they cannot deliver the level of acoustic quality a professional voice, using professional audio equipment, can deliver.
First and foremost, your voice talent should record from a sound proof studio. Background noises as simple as the hum of a refrigerator or furnace can ruin a recording when the recording is amplified. You should expect the clarity, cleanness and background silence achieved by using a soundproof studio.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1059995

west palm beach web development in Florida 

 Affordable SEO For Small Business Reviewed

Thanks for Visiting our site, SEO Services are an increasing demand Business due to the expansion of the Internet. More and more Offline Businesses every day are all of the sudden seeking the help and experience of Internet Business Webmasters such as SEO Experts to do SEO for their Business Growth.

SEO has become a sure home Business choice to start working from home for people that are even just beginning. So what is SEO? And what services will SEO Services Provide? In this article we will go over the crucial steps to beginning and taking on an SEO Campaign As done by our Affordable SEO Services.

Affordable SEO Services What are they?

Affordable SEO Services are Search Engine Optimization Experts that are there to guide you towards first page results on Search Engines such as Google for your Keywords of choice! Every Business or Industry relies on different Keywords for example if you are a chocolate manufacturer you would sell "chocolates" or "wholesale chocolates" your Keywords of choice would be geared towards the Industry you are in and the keywords customers are typing into the search engine to find you. Our Affordable SEO Services  do research for you using available software to figure this out.

Some SEO Services also provide Website Optimization in ways of website structure of pages, links and provide marketing strategies to get your website popular on the Internet. Some SEO Services can do many tasks these days as well as being your Business Marketing Expert for Business Branding and Building a Business Identity, lets go through the steps that our Affordable SEO Services Company will go through to provide you top Performance based results on the Search Engines.

We Start With Keyword Research!

Our SEO Service in the Gold Coast have a system to follow, this basically always includes in analysing your Business Products and conducting a thorough Keyword research so they can easily see which keywords they will suggest you rank for! This will be the basis for the content creation and the structure for your website.

Keyword research has to be done with special software that can identify if those keywords are used by customers to search for information or if they are highly likely related to the customer searching for products and services to buy. This usually comes down to whether the keyword is long tailed (More than 3 words) or short tailed (2 words or less). Long tailed Key phrase words are usually very specific in what they are searching for and this is why Diagnostic labs and data analysis have noticed that long tailed keywords are where the buyers are! When they are specifically asking for a specific product.

Our SEO Services will then Build Your Site Fresh

Your Website will need articles with your targeting keywords around inside of it, with out keywords your website will not rank. With 100% Unique and Fresh quality Content your Site will look good in the eye's of google and other search engine's as your site will be unique in content and structure.

Gold Coast SEO Service will Build your Site around your Unique or Targeted Keywords. It would be wise to let your Service provider to continuously ad articles onto your website with relative information. This will be how to type information where you will have an area of your Website set up to help visitors learn how to use your product or learn a bit about the industry.

Having fresh content placed on your Site will attract search engines to your Site more often and this is when they start to like the idea of your Info Rich Website and start giving you high Search Engine Results.

Gold Coast SEO Service will then Start to build Back links to your Site

Back links are crucial towards getting your Website in the High Ranks of Google and other search engines. Our SEO Service will Build Back links to your Site on niche relative websites. Having back links placed on relative websites will increase your search engine rank as google See's this as an sign of authority.

Some Affordable SEO Services use software to seek out niche relative pages on the Internet that they can contact or place your back link on it. A back link is a click able link that when clicked takes you to your website. The Back links that work best are Anchor text links! An anchor text link is a phrase of words or one word as a click able link, and again for even better ranking power you would use your main keyword as the text on that link.

Building Back links is time consuming task that no Business wants to take part of. Our SEO Service will do this for you as they have been in the industry and know how to do it. To rank for your Chosen Keywords you will need many Back links pointing to your site, and again this depends on the competition level for your keywords.

Affordable SEO Services can Provide more than just SEO Services!

Our SEO Services is getting smarter these days. We know that Business Need more than just SEO Help. Many SEO Services will also include services such as Business Branding, and PR Media Advertising. The Businesses that will succeed Big time in the information age are the Businesses that can give the customer something to remember them by.

Nothing will do this better than building a powerful USP and Distinguishing them self amongst the Industry you are in. A USP is a Unique Selling Proposition that can tell the customer in a short phrase why they should choose you instead of the competition. It has to reach out and grab the customer in a few short seconds!

Some other Services that Affordable SEO Services provide are:

• Website Design
• Slogan Creation (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Search Engine Marketing (Listing your website on Local Business Directories)
• Social Fan page Account Creation and Design eg; (Twitter, Facebook)
• Site Maintenance (Like changing photo's or loading articles, apps or widgets)
• Copy writing
• Email Marketing

Affordable SEO Services will help you save time from personally having to mess around with research, content creation, posting Back links and many other  tasks. SEO Services are a great choice for established Businesses wanting to start there online presence in a growing Internet world.

If you are looking for an Affordable SEO For Small Business in Australia Please goto: https://www.GoldCoastSEOService.com.au/. We will take care of everything at an affordable price to help you manage long term SEO Goals.

Ask for our free website review and we will give you our best advice on how to make a difference in your brand.

If you have any Questions please contact us on 1800 Gold Coast SEO Service (1800 734 453)

ARTICLE ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT

READ THIS HANDOUT CAREFULLY! You must do this analysis by answering the specific questions listed. Keep your answers as brief as possible using an "outline" style rather than an elaborate writing style whenever possible.

Criteria for Article Selection

The articles reviewed for this assignment must report the results of someone's research in an area of social research. The research should have been carried out by the author(s). The article must be directed at a scholarly audience.

Your review must be on an article reporting structured research, that is, one with variables, statistical analyses, relationships among variables, etc. The article may be about any social science topic you choose. Check with me if you have any doubts about your topic. Research in sociology, political science, psychology, education, or social work are fine. (But remember you need research articles; not all articles in any field are research articles.)

The following types of articles may NOT be used:

• Purely theoretical papers which discuss concepts and propositions, but report no empirical research;
• Statistical or methodological papers where data may be analyzed but the bulk of the work is on the refinement of some new measurement, statistical or modelling technique;
• Review articles, which summarize the research of many different past researchers, but report no original research by the author;
• Popularizations or abridged reports, commonly found in popular newsstand magazines such as Psychology Today or books of readings designed for use by undergraduates;
• Extremely short reports with less than four pages devoted to methods and findings.

• Some Remarks on Grading Standards

• 1. The key to this assignment is to apply the methodological concepts you have learned in this course to the evaluation of a research article. You demonstrate your ability by specifically linking the procedures discussed in the article to the concepts. Think of it as a take-home final, not as an opinion essay. You have the burden of proof to demonstrate that you know what you are doing. In particular:
  1. Never answer just "yes" or "no"; always explain your answer.
  2. Never state some general methodological term or principle without linking it up specifically to something in the article (or to something missing in the article).
  3. Never give a vague or evasive answer in which you avoid sticking your neck out (hoping you won't be marked "wrong"); if you don't commit yourself to a specific answer, I will assume you do not know what it is. But try to say what is needed as briefly as possible. Long-winded, rambling answers are evidence that you do not know precisely what is important.
  2. Questions of "fact" will be graded by comparing what the article says with what you said it said, along with your ability correctly to use the relevant methodological terms. Questions requiring evaluation will be graded according to these criteria:
  1. you take some position
  2. you defend your position by talking about your article in ways that raise issues that we discussed in class.
  3. If the article fails to give some information the review asks for, you get credit by saying that the article fails to give the information. Note that this failure should then become part of your evaluation of the relevant section. (I will try to avoid approving articles that are missing too much of the relevant information.)
  4. If the article is unclear or ambiguous, or if you are ambivalent in your evaluation of something, it is fine to give an answer that expresses these problems.
  5. Don't blindly assume the author is using the correct methodological terms for what s/he did.For example, Ransford describes his sample as "disproportional stratified" (p. 298 of Golden reader). But if you carefully read the paragraph on p. 298 and the extended description of the sample on pp. 309-310, you will discover that the sample was not stratified at all: three clusters (Watts, South Central, Crenshaw) were chosen purposively; blocks were chosen randomly within clusters; and households were chosen purposively within blocks, after a random start on block corner and an overall quota of 8 households per block. The use of the term "random methods," rather than "random sample," is the sort of thing you'll see when the procedures are less than ideal.
  6. Question or comment, So please contact.
• 
  

Perfecting Punctuation - How to Put the Apostrophe to Work

The Apostrophe has been around for quite a bit-say since the 16th century. At that time, the little curlicue punctuation mark held the intent purpose of signifying 'omission.' Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and even Sir Thomas More plugged in ' (the apostrophe) whenever they chose to eliminate letters from words. William Shakespeare proved the apostrophe's worth in A Lover's Complaint, "Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride;... Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied To th' orbed earth;... anon their gazes lend To every place at once, and nowhere fix'd, The mind and sight distractedly commix'd." Shakespeare thoroughly demonstrated his ability to remove letters and provide a virtual garden for the growth of the apostrophe.  Through the centuries, as writers' and publishers' affection of this tiny form of punctuation grew, so did its many uses. The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, dedicates a total of twenty entries on how best to employ the apostrophe. British Bestseller, Lynne Truss, demonstrates a further and superlative understanding of the apostrophe in her work Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which notes eight different uses for this punctuation.  Today, most English punctuation is used for convenience's sake. Sometimes, correctly, more often than not the punctuation usage is flawed. By exploring a few of the basics regarding the apostrophe's purpose, a writer can enhance clarity and strive for perfect punctuation.  Beginning with the most obvious and original use of the apostrophe: utilization of this mark for the omission or removal of letters. Common contractions could not exist without the apostrophe. A singular letter can be replaced by the punctuation, but at times, a solitary apostrophe counts for more than one letter. Some of the more popular contractions are: Don't (do not), Can't (can not), I've (I have), He's (he is), Won't (will not), Couldn't, Shouldn't, Wouldn't (could not, should not, would not), and then the proverbially misunderstood it's (it is). This final contraction is often mistaken for the English possessive cousin of... that's right-"its".  For a moment, review it's versus its. One perfect punctuation rule can be applied when considering how to apostrophe or how not to apostrophe in regards to "it." "It's" purpose is simple-the contraction for IT IS or IT HAS. An example, "IT IS a long way to the park" utilizes the pronoun IT and the verb IS. Now, apply the contraction and the sentence becomes, "IT'S a long way to the park". When IT is joined with IS or HAS, then a contraction of "IT'S" can be interchanged. For each and every other time that an "ITS" is required, do not use an apostrophe-for any reason. Just to be clear... there is no such word as ITS'. It simply does not exist and a writer's eye should recognize the atrocity and strike it from writing.  The second most common use for the apostrophe is to show possession-who or what owns something or other. Possession may seem clear cut until the apostrophe enters the scene. Many a writer has been dropped in their tracks by this little grammatical mark. Breaking down the differences between singular noun and plural noun possession can make the apostrophe's use easier to understand. Examples of a singular noun possession could be: Joe's house (the house of Joe), Mildred's restaurant (the restaurant of Mildred), or Sally's kids (yes, those noisy ankle-biters belong to Sally). The use of the apostrophe seems straight forward when dealing with a single owner. Add the apostrophe and an "S" and the singular possession is complete. What happens, however, when that same singular noun, which holds possession, ends in the letter "S"? When Jess owns the house, where does the curly mark go and is another "S" added or not? "Jess's house" is the proper punctuation for this sentence. Tuck the apostrophe behind the last letter of the noun, and then add an "S" to complete the formation for possession.  This leads to the last category for possession: handling of plural nouns. When dealing with plural nouns, which hold possession, such as, "Children, Men, Women", where does the apostrophe land? Utilize the same rule of adding an apostrophe behind the last letter of the noun, then add an "S" and consider it a job well done.  

The result will be: children's books, men's ties, women's shelter. For one final twist on plural possession, consider any plural noun that ends in a "S", and there are plenty for consideration, such as, Senior Students Dance, Dogs Play Area, Members Lodge, Legislators Study Group. Not to confuse the issue or leave anyone out, ask one clarifying question: Is it one student or many students attending the dance? One dog or many dogs allowed to play? One member or many allowed in the lodge? And finally, one can hope that all legislators would find time to study. If the answer is more than one of anything showing possession, and that plural noun ends in "S", then slap the apostrophe behind the last "S" and stop. The resulting punctuation becomes: "Senior Students' Dance", "Dogs' Play Area", "Members' Lodge" and "Legislators' Study Group."  For writers who are actively engaged in perfecting the written word, consider the importance of the apostrophe and its correct usage. A simple Google request on the curly mark and over three million hits return. For such a tiny punctuation mark, the world clambers for an easy and accurate way to put the apostrophe to work. Consider two of the apostrophe's basic uses in omission and possession and any writer is well on the way to perfecting punctuation.