“Build it and they shall come.”
Fantastic advice for building a baseball pitch for ghosts, but terrible advice when it comes to your voiceover website.
After all, there are so many people Googling and scrawling the web everyday, that eventually someone must land on your website…right?
Well, as most people are now taking a look at the analytics for their voiceover site, the answer is – no, not really.
In our experience, many voiceover websites struggle to get even a handful of views in any given month, and many of these visitors are bouncing off the site within a few seconds. And it’s arguable how many of those visits are even real people.
Now, this isn’t to say that your voiceover website requires a huge amount of traffic. Afterall, it’s a specialised service and if you’re being especially focused with the style of voiceover and genres that you provide for, then a low number of visitors who are highly targeted won’t affect your lead generation overall.
Your numbers don’t need to break the bank, but they’re still important
But if you are finding your low website visitor numbers frustrating and are constantly bashing your head against a (hopefully figuarative) wall, then you may very well be making one of these big mistakes…
EVERYTHING IN THIS ARTICLE
Mistake 1: You’re not sharing your voiceover website
Mistake 2: Your social media game is weak
Mistake 3: Your website offers no reason to return
Mistake 4: Your website has no value for your readers
The Solution: The steps you need to take
You’re Not Sharing Your Voiceover Website
Unless your SEO game is through the roof, most of the traction your website gets is going to be through you sharing your website over social media, and not people finding it through Google searches.
Like any aspect of your business, you have to push it and put in the effort to get it in front of people. Building a website does not guarantee that people will find it, and just because it’s linked in your social media profile, does not mean that people will click that link.
In fact, think about how you actually use your social media?
Do you jump between profiles, reading the latest updates that someone has made?
In all liklihood, you probably do that 1% of the time. A majority of your social media time is you being recommend things by the algorithm and passively enjoying things that pop up on your timeline.
And that means – Post…Post…Post – to be part of that timeline action!
Your Social Media Game Is Weak
But maybe you are sharing your website, all the time, everyday. Maybe you’re even posting the same content over and over, desperately trying to make the algorithm take notice and get you on someone’s timeline.
So the fault may very well be with the way you’re presenting it, rather than the content itself…and trust me, this is good news.
It can often feel like social media is just magic and random. Some people have it and some people don’t.
But in reality, people thrive on social media, because they understand the medium and understand why people use it. And the best part is, you can understand this because…you use social media too.
So start by taking a deep look about what you look at on social media. What interests you and what pages do you follow? You’ll very quickly start to see a pattern. It might be to learn new skills, it might be for humour and it might be because the people you follow just have controversial and interesting opinions.
And from here, you can often a get a sense for where you’ve missed the mark. It can be very easy to start down a road of playing it safe and just making posts whose entire purpose is just to shove a link in someone’s face and only say: “I have a website”.
It’s no joke that 99% of Business Facebook pages look like this. Your mission – don’t be like this!
But that isn’t how social media is meant to be used. It’s meant to be engaging and communicate with others, and that’s what people actually respond to. So make sure that your own social hasn’t picked up these boring habits where it’s just a space alerting people to the fact you have a website.
Ensure that your posts are asking a question, or helping someone solve a problem, or even pushing an eye grabbing opinion that you have in your chosen field. It can be scary to be this open, scrap everything and start all over again; But you do have to ask yourself:
“If you were someone else, would you be interested in what you were saying?”
Your Website Offers No Reason To Return
As any working voiceover knows, the best client is a return client. All the hard work to win that client has already been put in, so every single return visit is work that you didn’t have to advertise for.
It’s the same with your website, a majority of your visitors won’t be fresh new eyes who have found you by accident, but instead, a large proportion should be returning visitors. This isn’t only important for your SEO, as Google loves sites that have returning traffic (although that’s a blog for a whole other time), but it’s also important that your potential clients are returning frequently.
It’s always unlikely that your clients will simply visit your website once and fill in an enquiry straight away. It could be weeks or even months as they visit several other voice artists’ sites and possibly even show your demos to multiple decision makers. You need to have that returning traffic in order to guarantee that you are consistently staying on someone’s horizons, so when they’re ready to hire, you’re one of their favourites.
This is why it’s vital to be creating new content on your website as often as you can. You need to convince people not only why they need a voiceover, but most importantly, why they need YOU as that voiceover. You can’t simply have a static website that never updates or changes. You need to keep it updated and changing, so one visit is never enough.
This is the most fundamental reason why a blog can be so powerful…if you actually use it that is
Your Website Has No Value For Your Readers
And finally, we get to the real hard news to hear.
You may very well be putting in a lot of time and effort creating content. You may even be sharing that to a wider audience over your social channels, but it’s just not quite sticking with people.
Well, the sad truth is, it might be that your content just has no value to your readers.
The good news is, that if you have the work ethic and intiative to be in this position, then it’s a fairly simple problem to resolve. You just need to be a harsher critic and gain additional perspective when it comes to how you’re using your website to market yourself.
And the quickest way to do that is to ask yourself some hard questions:
“Who is this for?”
“Is this interesting?”
“Is this teaching something?”
“Would I read this if I discovered it?”
While this can be a hard pill to swallow, it can also be a very cathartic experience. Learning from your mistakes can be one of the most gratifying things you can do, because it gives you direction and teaches you a lesson that you will never forget.
So I recommend everyone reading this, even if you’re just getting started with your content, make a list of all of your ideas and truly reflect on whether or not they are actually interesting or useful to someone…because it will save you a lot of hardship going forward.
There’s No Quick Solution, But…
The good news is that there is always a chance to get people visiting your website. A website isn’t like food, if you don’t do something with it then it doesn’t just go off and is ruined forever. You have plenty of chances to start again.
At any time, you can rework your image, your brand, your voice and your workload to start making your voiceover website an interesting and vibrant platform that gives the world your best and gets people interested in learning more about you and your business.
So here is everything we’ve discussed here tied up in a neat little bow, for how you can start getting your website visitor numbers into the healthier digits:
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Create content for your website that gives people a reason to visit it.
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Create a content schedule so you continue to give people a reason to return.
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Actively share your website, don’t wait for people to find it.
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In fact, make a social media schedule, so you never forget to post again.
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Do some social media soul searching and ask, am I being interesting to someone else?
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Make a list of your best content ideas, try them out and see what works.
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Go back and edit your old content, refresh it and try to attract viewers all over again.
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And most importantly, don’t fear being unique and actually say something that no one else could say.
And with that monumental task ahead, I guess the only thing left to say is…good luck!
