The start of a new series on how to make 2021 your best year yet as a podcast studio owner.
Today’s Tip: Start a local podcasting meetup.
Transcript
(00:00):
All right. So what’s up everybody. I’m Razz. I’m the owner Pod On The Go. And most of you watching this right now are going to be podcast studio owners. So I’m going to start giving tips for podcast studio owners owned two in Savannah, moved into my first studio made a lot of mistakes with it. I’ll get into that in another video later on. And then I moved into a second studio, which was awesome. But then I moved and I love it because it’s inside my home. We’ve got a new home and I have space for a studio here. So I have a cool setup, but I want to pass on the things I learned, the knowledge I gained from opening my own studio. And I began pod on the go because I saw the need where it was so hard to get clients.
(00:44):
It’s so hard to show people, especially in smaller towns, us, a slower town like Savannah is as far as podcasting goes, how important a podcasting studio is and how having a better setup, how having a better studio space, a better look, a more professional atmosphere could really increase their business and the dividends and the, the clients they gained and how it can make it just easier for them to just plug and play. You just show up. And I do all the hard work and you, you bring the content, you know, the beauty of a studio. So what you guys can do to really crush 2021, right? 2020 has been a hell of a year. You know, we’re going to look back on this year 10 years from now, 15 years, 50 years from now and say how crazy it was, 2020, you know, a year
(01:31):
that had so much promise. How crazy was that? It all went down like this and things have changed drastically. Everybody’s familiar with zoom. Everybody’s familiar with podcasts is now everybody wants to create their own content from home. Everybody’s doing live streams and videos and podcasts and ordering microphones, or setting up studios in their home. Everybody’s trying to do it themselves. Nobody has any real expertise. And most people get stuck on the simple stuff because there’s a learning curve. Like what we do as editors and studio owners it is a, it’s a skill and an art. Here’s what you can do and what really worked for me. And I’m gonna tell you what I did, right. And what I did wrong with this tactic that I use all of last year. But really for the last two years, start a meetup, go to meetup.com and start at pot, local podcasts and meet her wherever your studio is.
(02:20):
If it’s in San Antonio, if it’s in New York, start a podcast and meetup, and I’ve done it with my business partner, Tyler Edic, and my good friend Henrik de Gyor. And we started the Savannah podcast meetup together. And it went strong for like all of last year, even virtual, like we started with before COVID was really a big thing. And we did it in person a few times and we started to AF you know, we kept it going after COVID just with zoom meetings and we’ve invited, you know, other podcasts to come speak and give their advice and tell about their story. We have given tips on how to monetize the podcast. I’ve given. I went to podcast movement a couple of years ago in 2019. So I gave a synopsis on that one month and it just put me in a position to be known as the podcast guy in Savannah. I had the first podcast studio and Savannah started the first podcast in meetup. Did you know, one of the first podcasts in gurus or whatever, whatever you want to call it. And Savannah and just helped a lot of cool people met a lot of cool people. The things I did good as I started that with that, I was able to meet people who were wanting to start a podcast who had questions and I could position myself as a expert in the field and I am
(03:33):
All right. So here’s a few more things you can do to make sure that your meetup, even if it’s virtual is successful, normally you’ll have you have food snacks you know, drinks, whatever. Like normally you’re doing that, but because you are virtual, none of that’s going to matter. You can’t do that. What I suggest normally I would spend $20 to $40 on a meetup. If it was in person buying snacks and food and fruit, why not try doing a giveaway?
(04:08):
Why not try a gift card? You know, keep people engaged, get more people coming to the meetup and staying throughout the entire meetup, do a random gift card drawing at the end of your meetup. You can give away randomly. You can figure out some type of way, just give people numbers, have people sign up for email lists and everybody signs up gets entered into a drawing and then take a picture of whoever receives the gift card at the end. That’s a great way to do it. If it’s virtual. Another thing you can do is make sure to keep people engaged, to make sure you have a list of questions
(04:41):
That you could ask people before and after engagement is really hard because it’s awkward. You can’t break off into groups and socialize with people, but that’s a big part of it. Maybe that people want to socialize with. That’s the purpose to get out, meet new people, make connections, shake, hands, kiss, babies, all that stuff, but you can’t do that virtually. So make sure that you have a list of questions or something that can keep the conversation going and make sure you ask everybody something and write down some of the things that tell you whether it’s their podcasts, that name and their podcasts, keep a notepad nearby while you’re hosting and make sure you have details on every person a little bit, just a little note. So you can get a reminder. And I think that’ll help keep people engaged and also help people to come back to the next one, because they’ve actually received some help. And another big point of it is don’t get discouraged.
(05:36):
Some mediums are going to be huge where you have a hundred people sign up and a hundred people will say, they’re going to come. You know what I’m saying? It doesn’t really matter because this is content you can record and post to the YouTube channel constantly we can, can record and share to Facebook and Twitter as well. So that’s another thing it’s like, it’s not one and done, and everybody forgets it. You can record the content. You can, the meetup and post it, write a blog post about it. You can tweet a clip from it. You can post a part of it to Instagram. You can convert it to audio and start your own podcast for the meetup that goes on your company website. So it’s all types of ways to flip the content. So even if nobody shows up and you feel you’re still putting out great content and you’re still sharing valuable advice, then people are going to come back. People are going to watch it later. Even if they sign up and can’t make it, or they sign up and they forget, or there’s something comes up and they can’t, they can’t log on. Don’t fret recorded and you have content to post later. Also, like I said, briefly with the name, name is something extremely simple. And so people know exactly what they’re signing up for. Name it, your city podcast, meetup, that’s it, or podcasting to meet up, make sure people will know where it is, what you’re doing and how they can join.
(06:58):
Another good thing is that I was able to do an in person. I met a lot of new people like meeting new people is what you want from a meetup, from a podcast. You want new clients coming to you and associating with you with somebody who knows what they’re doing. That’s the next thing I will say is that it helped me begin a community. There were four or five people who we just clicked with and they just kept coming back each time. And it was really cool. You know, we all got to know each other a little bit more. We got to help each other with each other’s podcasts. We let reviews on their podcasts. We subscribed, we shared it. We followed all that stuff. That’s the beauty of a community. What could I have done better? I could have had things to sell there.
(07:39):
You know, a lot of it was like, let’s just do it, you know, but I didn’t have anything prepped to sell. Like I could have showed sold t-shirts I could have sold courses online courses. I could have sold all kinds of different types of merch or e-book. If I had an e-book, I could have, you know, some kind of little pamphlet, anything, you know, I could’ve given them something while I was, while they were there with me, I could have followed up better. Honestly I could have followed up with each person on an individual level and just touch base where there was like LinkedIn, I couldn’t connect with them. They only thin and ask them questions and seeing how the things were going and offered any kind of help. I could have followed up with people who were interested in starting a podcast and giving them a, you know, cinema a course or a lesson on how to, how to start a podcast, pamphlet something, or, you know, what equipment to buy, what, what options were equipment they could get.
(08:30):
If I could have had some of that stuff ready that I could give out as either a freebie or something I can sell, then that would have been, you know, 10 times better. It would’ve been worth my time. A lot more. It was still worth my time. But, you know, I could have also used it as an income opportunity rather than just a lead generator. So that’s probably the biggest thing I would recommend you do. So I would say start a meetup wherever you are. Especially at 2021. Even if it’s virtual reach out to people, posting on Facebook, share it. People, the beauty of meetup.com is that people will find it naturally. There are people on meet up, searching for podcasts all the time. You know, that’s the beauty of it. People have time now they’re at home. They’re looking for things to do that, looking for how to create content and show them exactly why you’re the expert.
(09:15):
So that’s what I would do. That’s my tip for today is start in 2021 start planning now is December of 2020 in January of 2021. You have a couple of weeks when I put this out, start planning and people will find you people and people will love it. And you’ll, you’ll find supporters. You’ll find friends, you’ll find new clients. And it’s just one thing that most pocket studio owners don’t think about because we get so caught up in the day-to-day. We get so caught up in the editing and running the business that we have to also work on the business. So starting to meet up is a really easy way to invest in your company that will help you crush next year.
