A professional voice over talent can add significantly to the impact of your eLearning course. On the other hand, the wrong choice might do more harm than contributing to your goals. In this feature, we will cover best practices on how to find the best eLearning voice actors and will also discover common mistakes to avoid along the way.
Hire professional eLearning voice over talents and voice actors
Identifying great voice talents for eLearning has never been easier! bodalgo's award-winning online casting helps you find the perfect voice for your eLearnings productions: fast, easy, and free of charge.
Always go for a professional voice actor
The first and probably most obvious tip on the list: Always use a professional voice over talent! Now you might say: "But my staff members understand the topic like nobody else, why wouldn't I use those?" We hear you and fully understand that using the expert from your office to voice an eLearning looks like a good idea. But think about: While your CTO, for example, knows the topic inside out, the chances are little that they will have the same expertise in interpreting copy in a way that keeps the audience excited, alert, and interested throughout the course.
A professional voice actor will always deliver your course with the approach, energy, seriousness, or lightness needed as they have learned and perfectioned their craft. You can trust and benefit from their years of experience.
What's more: "In-house" productions potentially lack audio quality unless your company owns a recording studio – which is rarely the case. And mind you: Inferior sound quality can be quite a threat: First of all, poor quality weakens the script of the eLearning, which is a shame as you might have put a lot of effort and money into creating it. At the same time, sub-par audio might hurt how the company is perceived.
Voice actors specialized in eLearning
Just like with any other service, voice over talents often dedicate their work to a specific field: Commercials, corporate narration, audiobooks, animation and, of course, eLearning.
So when you are looking for an eLearning voice actor, you want to make sure that they have experience in this field. When you post a casting for eLearning voiceovers with bodalgo, this is an insanely easy task as you will receive relevant offers in minutes, including audio samples and a quote. You can easily compare different voices and determine which one suits your project best.
Sorry, Mr. Roboto: AI voices are not a good choice for eLearning as they can not take direction.
Stay away from AI voices
There is no doubt about it: AI voices have undergone a tremendous increase in usage. There is hardly any mobile device that will not feature an AI-powered voice. But although AI voices sound much more natural than just a few years ago, there are far away from being a viable replacement for professional voice over talents.
The primary reason for this: AI voices can not take direction, and this will not change for the foreseeable future. The best advice regarding AI voices must be at this time: Stay away from them. Their tendency to sound monotonous without any change in diction is a guaranteed path to audience boredom. Which is the last thing you want from eLearning voiceovers.
Conversational is key
When preparing the script for an eLearning voiceover, keep in mind that its wording should feel like naturally spoken words, not like an essay. You want to keep the tone conversational yet professional where necessary. Avoid overly long sentences and keep the language easy to understand, so the content can be processed easily by the audience.
Don't rush and leave time for pauses
In general, the speed of eLearning is rather slow compared to other types of voiceovers. That's is because the audience needs to be able to follow the content easily. Pauses help the listeners to process the information better, so make sure you allow for those in the timing of the eLearning. This is especially important if you have a fixed clip that you want to translate to different languages that need more or longer words to express the same. You never want to rush the voiceover.
Adapting eLearning to different languages
Talking about translations: Let's say you have an eLearning course in English that you want to roll out to different countries. It is essential to let the translator know that the script will be used for a voiceover (and is not intended to be read by the audience). That way, a good translator will make sure the translation will sound lively and vibrant.
Later in the production, it has been good practice to give the voice actor a bit of freedom to change the copy in case it lacks natural flow. Copy editing by the talent might add a bit to the costs, but the final product will benefit greatly.
Frequently asked questions regarding eLearning voiceovers
Good to know: Answers to frequently asked questions about eLearning voiceovers
How to find eLearning voice actors?
Online casting websites like bodalgo can be an excellent resource for eLearning voice over talents. Whatever service you use, make sure that their talent roster features only professional talents. Stay away from websites with tens of thousands of "talents". Those websites will take everybody with a microphone on board, regardless of the level of professionalism. You want to avoid those.
The same is true for websites that do not specialize in specific fields but offer every service imaginable from programming to painting to plumbing. Again, the quality of the services provided varies greatly, which makes it difficult for you to tell the few diamonds from the lumps of coal.
How much is an eLearning voiceover?
As a rule of thumb, expect eLearning recordings to start at about 1,000 USD/GBP/EUR per finished hour of eLearning, but there will be experienced talents that charge significantly more. A free job posting on bodalgo.com will get you offers from many professional voice talents in minutes.