Our friend, T.J. Walker , CEO of Media Training Worldwide and top communications expert, offers practical advice about getting feedback from the home team before you take your speech on the road in front of bigger audiences. He encourages you to try out your speech with a smaller audience – a “free focus group.”

Evoca can help you rehearse and get feedback. Record your speech using your phone, just like a mic, use Skype, or our online recorder.  Then email the voice recording right from your Evoca Express account to your inner circle to get feedback. Listen to it yourself, too. Once you’ve perfected it, you can email the entire recording or excerpts to the media in the cities where you are scheduled to deliver it. Need a transcription, too? You can order it online or email it to your in-house transcriber.

Take it away T.J. …

So you have just finished what you think is one of your run-of-the mill presentations, but this time it is to a group twice the normal size in one of your regional offices. After your speech, you are approached by three people.

• Suzy says to you, “Great job on the presentation.”

• Sam says, “Nice speech today!”

• Finally, Jim says (with a big smile), “I won’t forget your speech today, that’s for sure.”

You smile to your colleagues and you smile to yourself. You think, “Darn it, I AM good.” There is only one problem: your speech may have been horrible. How can that be, you may ask, given all of the unsolicited praise? Unfortunately, praise like that is meaningless when it is so general and abstract. Let’s look again at the praise you received.

• Suzy says, “Great job on the presentation.” What she really means is “Please recommend me for that promotion to New York City.”

• Sam says, “Nice speech today!” What he really means is, “I deserve a raise.”

• And when Jim says, “I won’t forget your speech today, that’s for sure.” He really means, “I won’t forget it because you put me to sleep in the first 30 seconds and I never heard it in the first place. Thanks for the time to catch up on my shuteye!”

When you receive praise from audience members immediately after you speak, here is what you should do if you are looking for meaningful feedback.

• Say, “Thank you. What part of the speech stands out for you?” or “What part of the speech was most helpful.”

If the person complimenting you says something like, “Oh, everything about your speech was great,” then you know your speech was a disaster and the person complimenting you is just giving your praise for other reasons, perhaps sympathy.

You should always probe audience members for what they remember in your speech. Which stories stick in their brains? How would they summarize your speech to a colleague tomorrow who was not in attendance? This research is golden for a speaker and it is FREE!

If you try out new material or a new story in a speech and nobody comments on it, maybe it wasn’t so great after all. If everyone tells you after the speech that they loved the story you told (almost as an afterthought) near the end of your speech about the time you went to San Diego and pulled an all-nighter with your team in order to close the sale the next day, then maybe you give that story a more prominent placement in your next presentation, as long as it makes the point you desire.

Great speakers are often great because they use each and every single speech as an opportunity to get a free focus group on how to improve for their next speech. You can to, as long as your probe your audience members after you receive compliments.

Copyright 2010 TJ Walker

To capture Hospice patients’ life stories, professionals and volunteers are using the convenient recording-by-phone service offered by Evoca, providing a precious legacy and family keepsake. Interviewers can record using any phone, just like a microphone, while visiting the patient or during a phone call. The recordings – saved in a password protected account in standard MP3 format – can be downloaded, burned to CDs, and listened to online. Recordings made off-line with digital recording devices also can be uploaded to the Evoca Express account for safekeeping and sharing.

Recalling and preserving their stories is an important activity for patients who want to capture their memories for posterity. Patients’ stories can be kept private or contributed as oral histories for their families, communities, veterans’ associations, and religious organizations. For example, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization more than 50,000 veterans die each month; that’s roughly 28% of all deaths in the United States.

Using the phone as a “mic” for an in-person interview puts the patient at ease.

A phone interview often is easier to schedule with an elderly or disabled patient, who can readily answer a phone call and often likes to talk on the phone.

Hospices can acquire one central Evoca Express Pro subscription or one subscription per patient and family. A family member can also subscribe online to get underway. The person who is managing the Evoca Express account can register up to 30 phone numbers of interviewers – staff, volunteers, family members, or friends. Phone recordings can be made from a registered phone or by using the registered phone number as the password for activating the recording session.

Subscriptions are renewable on a monthly basis and allow for unlimited length of individual recordings and the ability to increase recording storage time. Registered family and friends can use Evoca to record supportive messages, stories, humor, music, and words of love for the patient to play.

To learn more about how to create, save, and share audio recordings visit Evoca’s YouTube channel. Videos also include how to record interviews using Skype, the free international phone service, in case the patient and interviewer are countries or continents away from each other. More information about Evoca voice recording services also is available at Evoca’s online How To guide.

Tips about how to project your best voice during a phone interview are delivered by T.J Walker, one of our favorite experts in media and presentation training.  Sounds like much of T.J.’s advice can apply to both interviewees and interviewers.

You must have high energy. You must sound like you are excited, not bored by your subject matter.  People tell us all the time that their topic is too serious and that they wouldn’t want to sound like some infomercial salesman.   That’s not what we’re suggesting you do.  We realize that your voice is the only criteria an audience has to judge you by.  If you sound boring, they will think you are boring and just tune out.  It’s as simple as that.  Every time we practice with a CEO or executive on bringing their voice above their comfort zone and have them record it and watch the results, they are always pleasantly surprised.  It doesn’t sound like an infomercial salesman at all. It sounds like someone who is just plain interesting and compelling.

Here’s a little tip:  When talking on the phone stand up (even when people can’t see you.)  This will help loosen your vocal cords and give you more energy.  It also helps to bring out natural highs and lows in your voice.

USE NOTES – This isn’t a high school exam, you can have a sheet of paper in front of you with a FEW key bullet points that you want to bring up.

If you add some preplanned SOUND BITES to that sheet, that’s good too.

However, DON’T READ paragraphs off your sheets of paper.  Even if your audience can’t see you, your reading will be obvious to them. You will sound flat and boring.  Bullet points are just memory joggers.

Your message trumps production values. Spend less time worrying about the technology and what microphone is being used, and more time making sure you stay on message.

With permission © 2010 TJ Walker Speaking

Ready for your next phone interview? Whether you’re the interviewer or interviewee, you can record it using Evoca. Check out our How To video: Record phone interviews. This informative video and other Evoca How To videos are available at www.youtube.com/evoca.

Recording your voice has always been easy with Evoca using any phone, Skype, or computer mic. For Evoca subscribers using their phones to record valuable content such as interviews, conference calls, voice-overs, opinions, testimonials, language lessons, and stories, we have added France, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. This brings our Evoca worldwide phone coverage to 28 international cities and 34 cities in the United States.

Denmark: +45 78 77 50 08
Finland: +358 94 2419 190
France: +33 1 82 88 25 37
Norway: +47 21 05 82 36

Evoca access currently includes the European countries of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, along with Israel and Australia, and countries in Asia and South America. International numbers are listed at the end of the blog post. If you would like to request a phone number for your country, email Evoca Business Development and we will research its availability.

If you are new to Evoca, you can sign up for a free trial subscription and start recording from your phone immediately:

• Call, speak, hang up (or listen, erase and re-record)
• Recordings are instantly saved to your Evoca Express account as MP3 recordings
• You can email the recording, share it online using a standard viral player widgets, post it to Twitter — or keep it private
• For subscribers who want to customize player widgets, they can use our Evoca player wizard to brand it, size it, include an image to make a talking photo, select different player behaviors like loops and instant playback, and lots more.
• It is also convenient to record a phone interview or Skype interview. Conference call recordings are just as easy.

You can learn more at our online How To section at www.evoca.com/how-to and our Evoca YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/evoca. To use another Evoca audio content creation tool, WordPress users can get information about adding the Evoca Audio Recorder plugin to their websites or blogs at the WordPress.org website or the Evoca website.

Here is a complete list of Evoca international phone numbers:

As an avid user of Evoca phone-to-web services to podcast her literary work online, Alice Shapiro, Atlanta-based poet and Pushcart Prize nominee has partnered with Evoca to launch The Change Interviews project to enable Pushcart Prize winners and 2010 nominees to share their spoken words online. Authors’ voices are recorded and podcast For The Change Interviews project using Evoca’s phone-to-web services.

Annually about 60 authors from dozens of presses in the independent publishing field are named Pushcart Prize winners. Outstanding works of fiction, poetry, memoirs and essays are published in the anthology The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Founding Editors of the annual anthology include Paul Bowles, Ralph Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates and Reynolds Price. Since 1976 thousands of authors have been honored by the Pushcart Press, recognized as one of the most influential publishers in American history. It was founded by Bill Henderson in 1972, publishing its first book in 1973, Henderson’s The Publish It Yourself Handbook. A harbinger of the contemporary self-publishing market, Henderson initially distributed his book by foot and auto.

Inspired by an author’s instinct to convey the sound of words through readings, Alice Shapiro explained, “I use Evoca as a virtual Internet microphone. I can turn the world into a poetry reading stage, reaching a much broader global audience than traveling from bookstore to bookstore.” Using the phone registered to her Evoca account to make each interview recording, Shapiro asks each author to describe the impact of their association with the prestigious Pushcart Prize and to recite their poems. Upon hang-up, the interview recording is instantly saved as an MP3 recording to her Evoca account. Then she copies and pastes the Evoca-generated player widget code into her website.

Featured poets include Elena Karina Byrne, Bryan Borland, Alice Shapiro, Ray Sharp, Cassie Premo Steele, Lynne Thompson, Bobbie Troy, and Lorraine A. Vail. For example, Ray Sharp, nominated poet, talks about what led him to compose Threnody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001 and recites his own poem.

</p> <div style=”width:290;” id=”flashPlayerHTML-Mini”> <div id=”playerHeader”></div> <div class=”evocaFlashPlayer” id=”playerCode”> <span class=”mceItemObject” classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,24,0″ width=”290″ height=”24″><br /> <span name=”movie” value=”http://www.evoca.com/evocaPlayer/wpaudioplayer.swf” class=”mceItemParam”></span> <span name=”quality” value=”high”class=”mceItemParam”></span> <span name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”class=”mceItemParam”></span> <span name=”wmode” value=”transparent” class=”mceItemParam”></span> <span name=”flashVars” value=”initialvolume=80&titles=Ray Sharp_Trenody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001&rid=212719&soundFile=https://s3.amazonaws.com/evocacom/5/3/1/9/7/1269201885556.mp3&host=http://www.evoca.com/&listenURL=http://www.evoca.com/lc.jsp?rid=212719&file=https://s3.amazonaws.com/evocacom/5/3/1/9/7/1269201885556.mp3″ class=”mceItemParam”></span> <span class=”mceItemEmbed” src=”http://www.evoca.com/evocaPlayer/wpaudioplayer.swf” mce_src=”http://www.evoca.com/evocaPlayer/wpaudioplayer.swf” width=”290″ height=”24″ allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” flashvars=”initialvolume=80&titles=Ray Sharp_Trenody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001&rid=212719&soundFile=https://s3.amazonaws.com/evocacom/5/3/1/9/7/1269201885556.mp3&host=http://www.evoca.com/&listenURL=http://www.evoca.com/lc.jsp?rid=212719&file=https://s3.amazonaws.com/evocacom/5/3/1/9/7/1269201885556.mp3″></span> </span> </div> <div id=”playerFooter”></div> </div> <p>

The Change Interviews also are available online at Shapiro’s Evoca account for listening and downloading for non-commercial use. Anyone interested in automatically savings new recordings to iTunes or a computer file can subscribe to The Change Interviews RSS feed. Author of poetry collection Cracked: Timeless Topics of Nature, Courage, and Endurance, Shapiro’s poetry readings are streamed from Evoca servers to her website. Shapiro chose Evoca’s phone interview recording method; other Evoca subscribers use the Evoca Skype call recorder to record interviews.

Evoca CEO Murem Sharpe observes, “At a time when the publishing industry is grappling with fierce competition, disruptive technologies, and content ownership controversy, it is refreshing to simply listen to writers recite their work and talk about it. Evoca makes it possible to have this very human listening experience. The Evoca team is pleased that our easy-to-use digital media technologies have contributed to the creation and distribution of authors’ voices.”

About Evoca
Evoca (http://www.evoca.com/) is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations, educators, and individuals to easily create and share interviews, testimonials, opinions, stories, and language lessons using phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Its online recorder also enables recording through any computer mic. Evoca subscribers can share recordings on Facebook, Twitter, websites, and blogs by posting player widgets streamed by Evoca or use recordings within a private group. Evoca uses Google Translate to enable its worldwide subscribers to sign up, access its user guide, and record and share languages from around the globe.

Evoca Express is available online as a 30-day free trial, Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscription. Subscribers access the call recording feature by dialing any of its worldwide public phone numbers or Skype, and also can get dedicated local or toll-free telephone numbers in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe. It is delivered through Evoca’s highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform.

Large organizations, other web services, and telecommunications partners also can license Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media, enterprise-grade platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express webinar training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

By now you know we are big fans of TJ Walker, expert on media and presentation training and CEO of Media Training Worldwide and blogger at TJWalker.com.

Many Evoca subscribers embed audio recordings within their PowerPoint presentations, either as a link to the web page with an embedded Flash player (provided by Evoca – standard or customized by you) or from their Evoca Express account. Evoca streams the audio playback from our servers. Player widgets can be for a single recording or playlist.

So we are always on the lookout for good advice about using technology in presentations, especially to incorporate voice recordings that bring PowerPoint slides to life. For example, you can let your own customers or supporters record a testimonial  to enliven a success story or case study. Real people’s voices bring credibility to your assertion that your product or service is the best in the market.

With his permission to publish, here are TJ’s:

Ten rules to follow when you are using technology in a presentation

1.    Assume the worst.
2.    Practice using the technology, that includes the laptop, microphone, projector, speaker, microphone, laser and anything that you are going to use in front of people you should practice in advance.
3.    Practice in the same environment as you will be giving your final presentation, i.e., if you are presenting to 400 people in a conference hall using a big projector, then practice in that hall or one similar. Don’t simply practice on your laptop in a hotel room because it’s easy to do anything with your laptop in a hotel room and this will give you a false sense of confidence.
4.    When microphones [and speakers] break and computers freeze, don’t panic and don’t complain. If there is a tech person around, calmly mention that your microphone is no longer working and ask for help. If you computer freezes, calmly restart it without drawing attention to your problems.
5.    Have a plan B. If your PowerPoint stops working, just be ready to talk to people using nothing more than your paper notes.
6.   Test all technology either right before you speak (if possible) or during the largest break of the day (breakfast, lunch or dinner) preceding your presentation so that you can make sure you know how everything works.
7.    If you get lots of feedback from a microphone, just stop talking and step back. This solves most problems right away.
8.   Never, ever try to learn any piece of technology in front of people. Every laptop keyboard is slightly different; every remote control is different. It’s really tough to learn anything new when you have the tension associated with being in front of people and they are staring at you.
9.    If you are going to use PowerPoint with video clips [and/or audio clips] and use a microphone, give yourself an extra hour to rehearse in the room where you will be presenting—because there are a million things that can go wrong.
10.    Never forget, the presentation is about the ideas you have to help, inform, inspire and educate you audience, the presentation is not about your technology.

About Evoca

Evoca (http://www.evoca.com/) is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express is available as a free 30-day trial, Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscriptions. It provides voice recording and online digital content distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated local and toll-free telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Evoca’s Twitter audio update feature, TweeVoca, enables posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also share recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can license, Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form http://www.evoca.com/contact.php, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express webinar training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

TJ Walker, friend of Evoca and one of the one of the leading authorities on media and presentation training in the world, shares his insights about the power of using stories in your presentations. His message: dialog makes your message genuine. Even if you’re not a born public speaker or joke-teller, the humor and emotion of a true story can put a smile on the faces of your audience members or an “uh huh” of understanding and connection.

Here is TJ’s sound advice, excerpted from his recent blog article:

Most of us use dialogue quite naturally when we are telling our friends and families interesting stores about what happened in our day. Many great humorous stories are told in a dialogue format. But the first thing most business presenters do is to strip the dialogue out of presentations because they think it is somehow not “professional” or “businesslike.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course it is possible to say things that are unprofessional during a presentation, but that is a function of what you are saying, not because you said it in an interesting manner.

When you tell a story using dialogue, several positive things occur all at once:

1. By introducing another character, you make your story more interesting.
2. Speaking in dialogue takes you away from the position of a God-like narrator from above and puts you down on the ground in a non-abstract position for your audience.
3. When you say the words that someone else said to you, you change the tone of your voice. This makes you less monotonous to listen to.
4. When you insert dialog, you naturally pause in-between characters. This pausing makes you sound more conversational and more interesting.
5. With dialog, you might even slightly mimic the other person’s tone of voice, thus providing more sound variety for your audience.
6. By using dialog, you are by definition, making your presentation more conversational, less abstract, and therefore easier to follow for your audience.
7. By using dialog, you are necessarily slowing down the delivery of new facts to your audience, thus giving them a chance to catch up and absorb your most important points.

Of course it is possible to give a good presentation without using stores with dialog, but you are making it much harder on yourself if you try. All great speakers sprinkle dialogue throughout their presentations, no matter how complex, difficult or technical the subject matter. All lousy, boring speakers studiously avoid the use of dialogue.

Thank you, TJ for your permission to share your words of wisdom!

Here are a few more ideas from the Evoca team:

• Practice your presentations — stories and all — using Evoca Express. You can use your phone, Browser Mic, or Skype to record and then email the recording to a trusted friend or mentor to give you feedback before you step into the lights. Try it out at: https://www.evoca.com/signup/signup.jsp

• Share your recorded presentation online on your website, blog, and Facebook page using Evoca’s viral Flash player widgets. Use the copy/paste code we auto-generate for you.  If you record your final “live” presentation, you can upload the recording to your Evoca account and then embed the Flash player widget exactly where you want it to appear. Just like this:

• “Tweet” the recording to your Twitter account using Evoca’s handy TweeVoca feature that enables you to “click and post” Twitter audio updates.

• Ask your fans,  supporters, and customers for feedback. You can embed a Browser Mic in your WordPress blog, other blogs and your website to invite audio comments. Keep the recordings private to help your learning process, or if you want to share the comments with the world online, post them using an Evoca Flash player widget.

You can get More Insights from TJ Walker & Jess Todtfeld at http://www.tjwalker.com and www.SpeakingInsider.com.

TJ’s article – Media Training Worldwide  – Copyright 2010

Evoca LLC – Copyright 2010

Inspired by the annual “National Day of Listening” sponsored by StoryCorps and National Public Radio, Evoca makes family storytelling and recording a daily event during the holidays and year-round.

Using 21st century Internet and phone technologies Evoca launched “Every Day of Listening” to enable family members who are getting together at Grandma’s house or even across the ocean from each other to record using any phone, Skype, and a computer mic. With a shared Evoca account, creating a family audio memory album is possible whether family members can get together in person or not.

Getting underway is easy. The family “organizer” signs up online for an Evoca Express Pro subscription and registers up to 30 phone numbers of the family members who can call to record stories, memories, and humor. For family members located in different countries or any Skype users, 30 Skype accounts can also be registered. The organizer can sign up for a free trial subscription to practice. Then any family member with a registered phone number or Skype account simply dials any Evoca public phone number, hears the cheerful Evoca greeting: “Welcome to Evoca. Record after the beep and hang up when you’re done”, talks, and hangs up. The recording is instantly stored in the family account as an MP3 recording. Recording a Skype call starts by clicking on the Evoca Skype Call Recorder contact in your Skype account. Since Evoca is a web service, no software downloads or updates are required.

J’miah Nabawi, national award-winning storyteller, teaching and performing artist, and Evoca’s Artist-in-Residence offered, “Everyone has a story to tell. With Evoca, precious stories of family members, especially our elders, can be captured, shared, and saved for future generations.” He added, “We applaud StoryCorps and National Public Radio for encouraging the telling and sharing of family members’ stories. We are thrilled that Evoca makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to share their stories, short or long, simply by picking up their phone. They also can include singing, music, and laughter for their loved ones to hear.”

Two family members can easily record together with one of them asking questions and the other giving the answers. StoryCorps calls them “interview partners” and offers a terrific “Great Questions” guide. Evoca provides step by step instructions about how to record an interview by phone or Skype. The family can even record a group of people in “conference call” style using Evoca’s phone or Skype features. Evoca also provides its subscribers with a Browser Mic, an in-browser Flash recorder, which can also be embedded in a family genealogy website or blog to collect voice recordings using any computer mic.

The recordings can be kept private, emailed to family members, downloaded to a CD to mail to Grandma, or posted to family and genealogy websites, blogs, and social networking profiles such as Facebook. RSS feeds can alert family members to new recordings that they can add to their  Tunes, iPhones and iPods. Transcriptions are available through Evoca’s online transcription service.

About Evoca

Evoca is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express (www.evoca.com) is available as a Free 30-day trial, Pro, Local, and Toll-free subscription. It provides voice recording and online digital content distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Organizations of any size can easily integrate and customize Evoca features into their online properties, marketing programs, education and language training courses, and customer-facing operations. Evoca launched its Twitter audio update application, TweeVoca to enable posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also “share” recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can also benefit from Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form http://www.evoca.com/contact.php, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

©2009 Evoca LLC. All rights reserved.  All copyrights and trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

To invite customers, fans, and supporters to record a message, our Evoca Express Local and Evoca Express Toll-free subscribers can easily customize their welcome greeting any time —  every day, week, or month — or keep the original one.  The frequency is completely up to the Evoca subscriber because it’s 100%  self-service.  Idea:  Ask your CEO,  one of your sponsors, or your favorite celebrity (or sound-alike) to record the message!

Record a new welcome prompt

• Dial the number that comes with your Local or Toll-free account
• Or record using our Browser Mic
• Or upload a “voice talent quality” welcome prompt – it’s up to you

Activate it instantly

• Click on My account > Dedicated phone number > Welcome prompt drop down menu
• Select (name of recording) > Click UPDATE button – you’re done

Hint:  We automatically append the Post-recording options menu that invites your callers to “press any key for more options” when their recording is completed. They will be able to make the following selections:

Want to disable the post-recording options? Go to  My account > Dedicated phone number > Post-recording options menu > Disabled

To get started exploring how our Voice-to-Web recording services can enliven your website or blog with customers’ audio  testimonials, readers’ and audience members’ spoken-word opinions, and fans’ shout-outs, we offer a 30-day free trial subscription. You can upgrade to an Evoca Express Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscription any time.

We’re pleased to let you know that our Browser Mic plugin for  WordPress 2.7 and above users is available, making it easy for customers, fans, and supporters of WordPress users to record comments, opinions, stories, and feedback.  By adding Evoca’s online Flash recorder widgets to their websites, blogs, and social media profiles, they can increase interaction with their online visitors, who they can invite to add comments, opinions, stories, and language practice sessions of value to the host and the visitors. The Evoca Browser Mic operates like a global toll-free phone number without any telecommunications fees.

Our mission is to increase ROI — Return on Interaction™ — by enabling our subscribers to engage their online visitors with audio commenting. Given the enormous popularity of WordPress.org as a web publishing platform, Evoca is supporting the WordPress community’s interest in useful plugins by offering the Evoca Browser Mic.  Evoca’s Browser Mic attracts fresh, compelling user-generated content every day. The genius of WordPress is that it combines the dynamic content of a blog with the static content of a traditional website.

In addition to the Browser Mic plugin available for WordPress version 2.7 and above, Evoca offers plugins for WordPress 2.6 and below, TypePad, Blogger, Drupal, and a generic plugin that will work on all sites that allow copy/paste HTML and enable Flash objects. Recorders can be embedded on one or more pages to invite comments about different topics. Recordings are instantly saved to the Evoca Express subscriber’s account and can be streamed through Evoca Flash players on any website, blog, and social media profile to share with the world or kept private to share with a customer service team.

Using the Browser Mic online visitors can opt in to tag their recordings with their email addresses and additional typed comments, which is highly valuable information for commercial, nonprofit, and political organizations that are building email lists. Evoca also alerts the subscriber with an email message when a new voice comment is created and saved as an MP3 recording to their Evoca Express account.

“Evoca’s WordPress recorder plugin is a terrific tool to help companies connect with their customers. Using actual voices to deliver customer testimonials, supporters’ opinions, and fans’ enthusiasm makes the online experience genuine and believable”, contributes Jonathan Nery, CEO of the Kloudgroup, the digital media consultancy. “Because it’s our job to create strategies and design for effective web communication, we have embraced WordPress as a web development platform for its agility and easy integration with social media applications like Evoca.”

Here are some FAQs:

How does the Evoca Express Browser Mic plug-in work?
When you install the plug-in, we will place a voice recorder in your blog or website’s navigation bar. Any user that visits your site can leave you a voice recording using this plug-in.

Where will the voice comments go?
Any new voice recording that is made will be stored in your Evoca Express account. You will find the recordings made using the plug-in under “Comments” in your Evoca Express home page.

Can I post the voice recordings to my blog or website?
Yes! All recordings that are made will come with a custom HTML code you can use to post a voice comment into your blog. So, if a reader leaves you a voice comment that you want to share on your blog, all you do is copy and paste the HTML code provided into your blog post, and your readers will be able to listen through the players we provide. The “Share” button on the player enables your online visitors to instantly post it to their Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and other social media sites as well as email and bookmark it.

Does the person who leaves me a voice message need to install any software?
No. The Evoca Express Browser Mic plug-in uses standard browser technology to enable readers to record using their existing settings. All they need is a computer microphone. By simply clicking on the “Record” button, they are ready to go!

Are the recordings saved as public or private?
All recordings are saved as “private” in your Evoca Express account under “Comments”. You can move the recording to your My home page , keep it private, or make it public to stream from a player in your Evoca Express account or that you embed in your website, blog, or social media profile.

How will I know when a reader leaves me an audio message?
We will send you an email each time you get a recording with a handy link to go straight to listen.

About Evoca

Evoca is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express is available as a Free 30-day Trial, Pro, Local, and Toll-free subscription. It provides voice recording and online distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Organizations of any size can easily integrate and customize Evoca features into their online properties, marketing programs, education and language training courses, and customer-facing operations. Evoca launched its Twitter audio update application, TweeVoca, to enable posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also “share” recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can also benefit from Evoca Enterprise, its media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com or using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder.