Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A podcast dedicated to helping higher ed marketers tell better stories and enroll more students.
Hosted by video producer and storytelling coach, John Azoni, these episodes provide quick-win practical advice you can put to use in your marketing right away.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:19
Unknown
I definitely had a lot of imposter syndrome. Like,
00:00:02:19 - 00:00:07:12
Unknown
these people are smart. I don't know anything. They're going to think I'm so stupid and
00:00:07:12 - 00:00:09:13
Unknown
I have to try to be smarter than them
00:00:09:13 - 00:00:09:18
Unknown
And
00:00:09:18 - 00:00:11:02
Unknown
that just doesn't work because
00:00:11:02 - 00:00:16:14
Unknown
about these topics in particular, I am decidedly not smarter than them. They know way more than I do,
00:00:16:14 - 00:00:24:06
Unknown
and the listeners don't know either. They haven't read the books or the papers or whatever it is that they're talking about. And so
00:00:24:06 - 00:00:28:06
Unknown
I have to kind of shift my mindset to be a stand in for the listener.
00:00:28:06 - 00:00:33:16
Unknown
If I was just coming at this completely cold, what would I want to know about?
00:00:38:17 - 00:01:00:21
Unknown
Hey, welcome to the Higher Ed Storytelling University Podcast Podcast dedicated to helping higher ed marketers tell better stories, create better content and enroll more students. My name is John Oseni. I'm the founder at Unveiled and we're a video production company working specifically with higher Ed Marcum teams to help them automate their video storytelling content, their student success stories through a subscription approach.
00:01:01:02 - 00:01:21:00
Unknown
We have a way that makes that really easy on your team, takes a lot of work off your plate and helps you scale up to the tune of 132 videos for an annual subscription. So if you want to know more about that, you can go to unveiled that TV that's unwieldy. Or if you have questions, you can also reach out to me.
00:01:21:00 - 00:01:36:22
Unknown
John at unveiled DCTV or you can text me now at our website go to unveiled that TV. There will be a little box that pops up that that says you can text me. Goes right to my phone. So if you have any questions want to talk about or subscriptions or anything else, reach out to me.
00:01:36:22 - 00:01:39:10
Unknown
My guest today is Jenna Spinelli.
00:01:39:12 - 00:01:51:01
Unknown
Jenna is a Writer podcast writer and speaker in higher education. She hosts and produces the Democracy Works Podcasts and the Narrative series. When people decide.
00:01:51:01 - 00:01:54:19
Unknown
Both of those are productions of the Courtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State.
00:01:54:19 - 00:02:09:05
Unknown
she also teaches courses on freelancing and the creator economy at Penn State University's Donald Bellisario College of Communications. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Belt magazine, Inside Higher Ed and Current.
00:02:09:05 - 00:02:09:22
Unknown
And so
00:02:09:22 - 00:02:25:07
Unknown
in this conversation, we talk a lot about podcasting. We talk about both of her podcasts that she produces, and she takes us behind the scenes of those and we discuss tips for starting your own podcast and making that an efficient process as well as a bunch of other things.
00:02:25:08 - 00:02:28:08
Unknown
So here is my conversation with Jenna Spinelli.
00:02:28:08 - 00:02:37:18
Unknown
Thanks for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.
00:02:37:20 - 00:03:12:04
Unknown
Sure. So I am the communications specialist for the McCartney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. The McCartney Institute is a research center that focuses on different aspects of democracy. We bring, like institutes in a lot of other places. I think we bring together faculty and graduate students from a bunch of different disciplines. We look at, you know, political science and rhetoric and communication and the media and all the different aspects that go into democracy in the U.S. and around the world.
00:03:12:04 - 00:03:38:06
Unknown
And my specific area focus is our communications and outreach operations. So I'm trying to figure out how we can get the work that we do and our thought leadership out there to the public. And so we do that by bringing speakers to campus, and we have two podcasts that we produce that I am lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of my time working on and building the audience for,
00:03:43:20 - 00:04:26:17
Unknown
Yeah. So the job I had before this one, I worked in the enrollment marketing team in the admissions office at Penn State. So in many ways, this job could not be more different than that one, The audiences are very different. You know, I don't do anything with prospective students at all these days. Our main audience is at the McCartney Institute are just kind of the general public and community members, and we do a lot of outreach with groups like the League of Women Voters and our local libraries and those kinds of things to make connections to the community.
00:04:26:19 - 00:04:55:08
Unknown
We also work a lot with people, you know, our podcast listeners come from all over the world, right? So, okay, people who are interested in are concerned about democracy from other states. Other countries have found what we're doing. We have a lot of listeners who are faculty or graduate students at other universities. I was at a conference earlier this year and I had someone come up to me who recognized me based on the sound of my voice, because he listened to our show.
00:04:55:08 - 00:05:25:03
Unknown
So that's kind of an interesting experience, kind of surreal in some ways. Yeah. Nice little ego bump there, I guess. And we work with there's a whole other industry of democracy organizations, groups that are working on like getting money out of politics or things like ranked choice, voting, all kinds of nerdery, going on out there. So that those are our audience members too.
00:05:25:03 - 00:05:49:16
Unknown
We try to provide academic support for the the policy work and the advocacy work that they're doing. The other uniqueness challenge is, I think just trying to figure out how to talk about politics in today's political climate and get get people interested in what we're doing at a time when there is so much talk about politics, were divided in many ways.
00:05:49:16 - 00:06:01:03
Unknown
And, you know, many people just want to Politics is the last thing they want to think about. And so trying to figure out how to connect what we do to everyday people's lives is something that I spend time thinking about.
00:06:01:20 - 00:06:26:07
Unknown
Yeah. So we are part of the College of the liberal Arts at Penn State, and the institute is entirely endowment funded.
00:06:26:07 - 00:06:59:00
Unknown
So we receive gifts from Penn State alumni, largely from political science or communication arts and sciences, who want to, you know, use what they've earned their their their success to pass it on and help us do our work to create a healthier democracy. So I think there is a lot of interest right now, and there has been for the past couple of years in democracy as a cause to support for for a long time.
00:06:59:00 - 00:07:27:03
Unknown
I think it was just something that people kind of took for granted or didn't really spend much time thinking about. And I would put myself in that category too. I did not think much about democracy at all when I was working in enrollment marketing. Right? Just wasn't part of my day to day thought process. But now, because of the some of the ways that politics has changed, I think more people are interested in doing what they can to support groups that are doing civics education type of work and the other things that we do.
00:07:27:03 - 00:07:36:05
Unknown
So in some ways, I think if you ask our development office, it's maybe made their job a little bit easier because it's not as much of a sell now
00:07:36:05 - 00:07:47:16
Unknown
and it's almost, I think, the opposite of that where there are a lot of institutes like ours at other schools that have cropped up just off the top of my head.
00:07:47:16 - 00:08:10:13
Unknown
I know UVA has a large democracy institute, Johns Hopkins, USC, University of Delaware. There's there's lots of them. And so we're all in some ways competing for attention and funding thing. You know, every school has its own alumni, but the landscape from that end of things is definitely getting more competitive.
00:08:12:02 - 00:08:27:06
Unknown
Yeah. So we in 2018, we started a show called Democracy Works that is our flagship show.
00:08:27:06 - 00:08:57:19
Unknown
We have more than 200 episodes out. We've been doing it every semester since 2018. So that's something like, I know lots of semesters, whatever to do hundred episodes. We've been doing it a while. You got to talk to a lot of interesting people. I do an interview on the show that's bookended with some commentary and analysis by my faculty co-hosts, and so that comes out every week.
00:08:57:19 - 00:09:15:19
Unknown
We're on a bit of a summer break right now as we record this in June. So that one's called Democracy Works. That's the one we produce in partnership with the NPR station and also goes out on the radio here in central Pennsylvania. And then the other show was one kind of a spinoff that I had the idea for during COVID.
00:09:15:19 - 00:09:44:02
Unknown
I started off as my pandemic project to work on. It's more of a narrative style series, so very heavily scripted, more like a documentary. You think about Serial and those types of shows or This American Life kind of storytelling. And that was a really fun project for me to work on. It's called One The People Decide, and it tells the stories of individuals who have stepped up to make democracy stronger.
00:09:44:04 - 00:10:17:09
Unknown
So the first season was all about ballot measure campaigns, which is something that people in about 20 different states use to bring issues they care about directly to their fellow voters. You might have heard about them with regard to marijuana legalization or raising the minimum wage or some of those types of issues. So there's a lot of, you know, really passionate individuals and groups that go through this process to kind of go around the legislature in their state when they don't want to act.
00:10:17:09 - 00:10:50:06
Unknown
And so that's really kind of inspiring in some ways. And so we're making a second season of that, which is about strengthening democracy at the local level. And that one I work with a company called LW Studios that helps with scripting and production and sound design, so that it's been a really enriching experience for me and I think for listeners to take, you know, learn about if they're frustrated about politics, to learn about real concrete ways that they can make change and get involved.
00:11:09:21 - 00:11:35:16
Unknown
So with Democracy works, that one is definitely on much more of a regimented schedule. I'm usually trying to book interviews about two or three weeks out, and so once I do the interview, I get the recording and the transcript and share that with my co-hosts and put together kind of a document for them to work in to write their notes.
00:11:35:18 - 00:11:55:19
Unknown
And then once a week we all get together to record their parts of the show, their intro and outro segments. So we do it at the same time every week. At the beginning of every semester, we just pick a time that works for everyone's schedules and sort of go from there. And so that's a pretty well-oiled machine. I know that I'm going to have to.
00:11:55:19 - 00:12:27:17
Unknown
Do. You know, 12 to 15 interviews per semester. So I'm also spending time reading these people's books and articles and getting up to speed. I, I feel like I've gotten a Ph.D. in political science during the course of doing this over the past five years or so, although I'm sure the actual PhDs might disagree with me on whether I have done the work to get one or not, and then one, the people decide that's a much more you know, it's six or eight episode season.
00:12:27:22 - 00:12:58:04
Unknown
The interviews are much more in depth. I was able to travel to do some for the second season, and that is really leaning more into the stories and the character driven elements as opposed to the scholarly research or the arguments or that kind of thing. So it's nice to be able to get out of the ivory tower and talk to people as human beings and not just experts or, you know, political talking head type of figures.
00:13:22:07 - 00:13:52:08
Unknown
That's right. Yeah. They have a great team of editors and sound designers that, yeah, I would love to actually just like, learn more about that part of the process and like look over someone's shoulder as they do it. I mean, I know a little bit. I know like enough multitrack editing to be dangerous. I think I've, you know, I could put a democracy works episode together if I have to, and I have had to do that in the past, but I could not do a one that people decide episode, at least not quickly anyway.
00:13:52:10 - 00:14:14:22
Unknown
And LW C also helps with scripting. To your point about the style and the complexity, it's hard to both do the reporting and do the writing like I find, at least for me, I get too far in it. So it's nice. Just like if you're writing a long piece or something, it's nice to have that that second set of eyes to help see things in a different way.
00:14:20:03 - 00:14:26:12
Unknown
So some of it comes from other organizations in the space. There are
00:14:26:12 - 00:14:43:10
Unknown
a lot of think tanks that will write like a policy paper or a case study about something about a topic, and they'll use an anecdote or an example of people who've done it. And so it's taking out all the dry, boring think tank language of it, right.
00:14:43:10 - 00:15:05:17
Unknown
And getting down to the human element of the story. Some suggestions come from listeners. If they hear something like, Oh, this cool thing happened in my town, some of them I'll see on local media or social media, just always keeping an ear to the ground for for what's happening around these particular issues that I cover.
00:15:14:10 - 00:15:15:22
Unknown
Yeah, that show.
00:15:15:22 - 00:15:38:05
Unknown
We also get pitches from authors who have books coming out or different experts in the space. So that one's a mix of people that I seek out, people who pitch us different speakers who come to campus. That's kind of part of of a package. If we bring a speaker to campus, we'll take them to the studio and do an interview while they're here.
00:15:38:07 - 00:15:57:06
Unknown
Faculty colleagues here at Penn State, we I tell people, and this is important for people who are starting podcasts at their schools, like our show is it's about democracy. It's not about Penn State. It's not just the Penn State Faculty hour for people to come on and talk about their research or how great
00:15:57:06 - 00:16:00:07
Unknown
university is. All those things are true.
00:16:00:07 - 00:16:29:21
Unknown
But if that's all we did, people wouldn't listen because they're interested in the topic. And so I try to keep that in mind and still try to get, you know, our Penn State colleagues on as we can, But they have to be able to contribute to the topics we cover. I'm not going to have somebody I don't know from the chemistry department on, even if he just got a big grant or a big award, like he doesn't talk about what we talk about.
00:16:29:21 - 00:16:32:08
Unknown
So, you know, there has to be a fit there to.
00:16:44:10 - 00:17:04:04
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, so I think that for the Courtney Institute, like Democracy Works is the thing that we're most well known for around campus. So it's really, you know, Penn State is a big place. There's lots of stuff happening. So it's really helped us carve out a little niche for ourselves.
00:17:04:04 - 00:17:28:16
Unknown
And it's still a fairly new unit. It's only maybe about eight or nine years old. So in higher ed terms, you know, that's not much at all. And so it's it's really given us something to kind of stake our our flag in the ground about and I mean, we have won a few awards for it from the case and from other organizations.
00:17:28:16 - 00:18:01:02
Unknown
So that stuff is helpful to the the university. I think that I know I've heard from our new president that she's listened to the show and she shared it with colleagues like she, I think, appreciate that. We try to take a nonpartisan stand on things. And that's, you know, good for her to be able to share with our board of trustees or with the state legislature in Harrisburg that, you know, we are not like the stereotype of what they might think about higher ed and its political leanings.
00:18:01:02 - 00:18:23:06
Unknown
And, you know, all of that. We are trying to stay as nonpartisan as we can and to to consider a variety of viewpoints, because our times, our democracy is diverse. There are people with a lot of different beliefs and ideologies and backgrounds, and we all have to work together in some way. So that involves listening to each other and understanding what different people think.
00:18:23:08 - 00:18:26:20
Unknown
And so we try to to help our listeners do that as well.
00:18:50:21 - 00:18:58:23
Unknown
MM
00:18:58:23 - 00:19:11:22
Unknown
hmm.
00:19:11:22 - 00:19:32:11
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Well that, that's great that you're able to kind of think about it at that level and recognize when that's happening. We've done episodes on our show about news avoidance and, and yeah, why people tune out from politics and why politics makes us depressed and what we can do about it.
00:19:32:11 - 00:19:51:06
Unknown
So I think just even talking about some of these things out loud and acknowledging that, yeah, it's okay to say that politics makes you depressed, it happens to everybody. And there is, I think this kind of like schoolmarm kind of tone almost of like you need to know your civics and you need to know this, that and the other.
00:19:51:06 - 00:20:18:02
Unknown
And that can be intimidating for people if they don't have that background or they don't they're not inclined to really seek out that kind of content or information. So I hope that we can meet people where they are, and especially with when the people decide, like, that's why I wanted to lean so much into the storytelling and the human aspect of it that, yeah, if you're not well versed on all the kind of wonky of it, that's okay.
00:20:18:02 - 00:20:31:16
Unknown
You can hook in to the story and then all of that information and education can come later.
00:20:31:16 - 00:21:01:11
Unknown
So in the first season I talked with a group of LGBTQ folks in Cincinnati who were involved in a ballot measure campaign to enact protection from discrimination, and they were not successful the first time. And it was pretty devastating for the gay community in the city.
00:21:01:13 - 00:21:29:08
Unknown
Some people ended up leaving Cincinnati as a result of this in the nineties, but then they kind of regrouped in the early 2000s and got the ballot measure back going again, and it passed the second time. So and the process is they learned a lot about how to talk to people about these issues. And the the first campaign, the one that lost was very much about like demonizing their opponents.
00:21:29:08 - 00:22:00:04
Unknown
And that didn't work. And so the second time around, they learned that they have to get to know their neighbors and help people see that they're really not that different. And why these issues are important. So I think just that lesson of getting out and talking to people is important. And it's a very powerful example of how it can work.
00:22:00:06 - 00:22:28:20
Unknown
So the first season we still made during COVID when a lot of things were shut down. So I was a combination of remote interviews and a lot of archival footage, like news clips from when all this was happening. There's a great not just in Cincinnati, but but across the country. There's like a really interesting network of LGBTQ media, radio shows, newspapers, you know, public access TV, right?
00:22:28:20 - 00:22:47:02
Unknown
And a lot of that is archived at university. So that was really cool, too, not just for that story, but for others that I did to be able to dive into the archival audio and get that in in a way that it was, you know, it's hard to do on just a straight interview show.
00:22:47:02 - 00:23:06:10
Unknown
Quick break. Here to tell you about how you can scale up your student and alumni success stories without taking on a bunch of extra work to manage with our video storytelling subscriptions. Look, making even one video, it takes a lot of legwork, lots of steps to go through. Hire a video vendor, heard all the cats, do all the scheduling, and then you get one video out of that.
00:23:06:10 - 00:23:22:01
Unknown
But what if you get a whole year's worth of storytelling content that you can use to highlight your various programs? And all you had to do was find the stories and hang them off? Well, you can hand them off to us. Unveiled. Our aim is to take the friction out of telling great stories.
00:23:22:03 - 00:23:43:13
Unknown
So whether you're a big school like Penn State or a smaller liberal arts college, you can tell really compelling stories all year round and fill your content calendar with video content. We get this done for you anywhere in the U.S. We're going to batch you a year's worth of content and then every month trip out to you one new student or alumni story along with a whole package of additional video content.
00:23:43:13 - 00:23:53:05
Unknown
So you're going to get the full length story, which is usually 2 to 3 minutes. You'll get a 32nd cut down, a 15 second cut down of that story to use in various ways, and then eight topical videos.
00:23:53:05 - 00:23:58:00
Unknown
to help you promote other things like scholarships, career development, internships, all that stuff.
00:23:58:00 - 00:24:17:02
Unknown
and not only can you take what we deliver and obviously crop it to how you needed to format it, however you need to for social media, do whatever you want, but you're also going to get all the B-roll and interview footage, all the raw stuff that we shoot, and there's a wealth of additional content opportunities within that that you can run with.
00:24:17:02 - 00:24:36:10
Unknown
Use it however you want, and you don't have to go film anything else. So head over to pricing dot unveiled dot TV to download our pricing guide, which has everything in it that you need to know. And if you'd like to chat further, you can book a call with me on our website, find me on LinkedIn or email me at John at Unveiled Dot TV, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
00:25:01:13 - 00:25:05:02
Unknown
Not exactly. So my degree is in journalism.
00:25:05:02 - 00:25:27:12
Unknown
I've been a writer and reporter for a long time. I teach journalism, but I had never done anything in the broadcast realm, so I was never a TV host, never worked in public radio. So that part of it was new for me and definitely something I grew into. If you go back and listen to the first six months of democracy works, the interviews were kind of rough.
00:25:27:12 - 00:25:49:20
Unknown
Some of them have definitely improved along the way. And then there's also a big evolution from my co-hosts to, you know, faculty can give a talk at a conference or something, but to be on the mic and talking in this way that you and I are now is not something that comes easily to everybody. So that was a lot of work for them, too.
00:25:49:22 - 00:26:21:21
Unknown
And I would say to anybody else out there who wants to start a podcast with faculty, make sure they practice like do a couple of episodes that might never get published just so they get more comfortable on the mic and figuring out what the right level is to to talk to so they're not losing people. I know my co-hosts say that they approach it like they would like an undergraduate first year seminar, so students who are coming in are interested but maybe don't know a lot, and that seems to work for them.
00:26:21:21 - 00:26:42:05
Unknown
So yeah, I have kind of become the face and the voice of it over the years, but that was not something I entered this job thinking I would do my co-hosts had wanted to start a podcast but didn't know how, and I didn't really know how either, but I figured it out and went to the public radio station at the time.
00:26:42:05 - 00:26:47:14
Unknown
They were also looking to get more into podcasts, so it was a good partnership opportunity for us.
00:26:51:09 - 00:27:14:19
Unknown
Mm hmm.
00:27:23:00 - 00:27:26:13
Unknown
Mm
00:27:26:13 - 00:27:54:13
Unknown
hmm.
00:27:56:11 - 00:28:15:05
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thankfully, there's tools like a script. I don't know if you use that at all, but that helps take out a lot of the arms and the eyes and things automatically. But you're doing great.
00:28:15:05 - 00:28:37:15
Unknown
I never would have known that you're, you know, you haven't been doing interviews for very long. I think it's. It's hard to listen to, isn't it? You know, listen to what someone saying and, you know, you have your list of questions, but you want to also be open to changing things up in the moment. And it's hard to at least I find it's hard to listen to what someone saying and formulate a question in my mind.
00:28:37:15 - 00:28:44:08
Unknown
That's something I've had to work a lot on.
00:28:44:08 - 00:29:10:10
Unknown
MM mm.
00:29:10:10 - 00:30:08:14
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, I definitely felt like as someone who interviews faculty and scholars and researchers, like, I definitely had a lot of imposter syndrome. Like, these people are smart. I don't know anything. They're going to think I'm so stupid and I have to try to be smarter than them or I have to show them in this interview that I'm smarter than them.
00:30:08:16 - 00:30:10:16
Unknown
And that just doesn't work because
00:30:10:16 - 00:30:28:08
Unknown
about these topics in particular, I am decidedly not smarter than them. They know way more than I do, and the listeners don't know either. They haven't read the books or the papers or whatever it is that they're talking about. And so I have to kind of shift my mindset to be a stand in for the listener.
00:30:28:10 - 00:30:51:08
Unknown
If I was just coming at this completely cold, what would I want to know about? And so I think that the guests appreciate that as well. It gives them more flexibility to be able to take the conversation where they want to go. I do also try and I've evolved to try to get people off of their specific talking points.
00:30:51:08 - 00:31:08:15
Unknown
This is especially true if somebody is on a book junket. I don't know if you've interviewed, you know, authors on book junkets or I could see even like a CMO or president or provost, they get in this mode to like their comms. People write out all their points that they're going to say it's hard to get them off of that.
00:31:08:15 - 00:31:29:02
Unknown
But I think that's where the listening comes in and just asking, Well, why do you think that? Or you know what? Where does this come from? What made you feel that way? Kind of throws people a little bit. They're like, oh, I wasn't prepared to like, actually talk about myself here. So China, you know, and some people are better about handling that on on the fly than others.
00:31:29:02 - 00:31:54:14
Unknown
But that's sometimes where the really interesting stuff comes from. Or you get someone saying, Oh, no one's ever asked me that before. And so those those kinds of things really. And at a time when there's so many podcasts to listen to and people go on a lot of different podcasts trying to find what you could do to get that one unique little nugget I think is important to.
00:32:28:10 - 00:32:41:04
Unknown
MM
00:32:41:04 - 00:33:31:13
Unknown
Yeah, it's like break out of the LinkedIn Avatar version of themselves, right? Yeah, My first Democracy Worked interview I did the guest came in with six pages of typed out responses to the questions like, Oh boy. And then it was hard for me to even get a word in edgewise because you just kept talking the whole time.
00:33:31:13 - 00:33:58:15
Unknown
I mean, he's great. Like he's done a lot of other work with us and has been a good colleague. But I think even he acknowledged after the fact that, yeah, that was maybe a little bit too much because he was nervous too. And so it was like both of our first times in this setting. I guess that's maybe another word of advice, like your first couple of guests pick people that you're comfortable with one and two, like they've maybe done this a little bit before.
00:33:58:15 - 00:34:19:19
Unknown
They've been interviewed. They are good talkers, as they say. They can kind of help you along. And if even if you ask like a not great question, they can pick it up and take the conversation and help carry it a little bit more while you get your legs under you.
00:34:19:19 - 00:34:41:05
Unknown
Mm hmm. Hmm
00:34:41:05 - 00:36:00:13
Unknown
Mm hmm.
00:36:00:13 - 00:36:03:06
Unknown
Yeah. So the script is one for sure.
00:36:03:06 - 00:36:26:05
Unknown
And I should say that we don't really do much with videos, with video podcasting. I know That's like, all the rage in podcasting right now, but just for a variety of reasons, not a good fit for us. So that's not a direction that we've gone. I do use an app called Repurposed I o to publish audio to YouTube with a static image.
00:36:26:05 - 00:36:30:22
Unknown
I'm sure there are other apps out there to do that, but that's one that I use.
00:36:30:22 - 00:36:34:23
Unknown
see? I'm drawing a blank.
00:36:34:23 - 00:36:52:00
Unknown
Oh, okay. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot you could do with it. I think it basically takes content that you make one place and puts it somewhere else. So we use a podcast, a YouTube integration.
00:36:52:02 - 00:37:18:01
Unknown
There are lots of others. I think you can also use it to make audio grams and things like that. So to be able to share clips on social media, we're able to do that through our podcast hosting platform. So I will sometimes make things in there if I have time. The other part of this that I'm admittedly not very good at is like, it's hard to both produce the thing and promote the thing, right?
00:37:18:01 - 00:37:53:12
Unknown
So sometimes if our episodes come out on Monday, I'll get a Thursday in like, Oh man, I haven't even like shared this episode on social yet because I'm already working on the next one and the next one after that. I'm sure you know how that goes. And so I tend to focus a lot of my promotional energy on promo swaps and linking up with other podcasts and trying to find listeners that way, or promoting the show through the university's newswire and social media, sharing links with our guests if they're able to share on social or their organization.
00:37:53:14 - 00:38:22:06
Unknown
That also helps a lot too. As far as other tools I use, I know you can use to script for transcripts. I also use Otter to generate transcripts to publish along with our show notes. That's that's been helpful. We use simple cast as our hosting platform. I like it a lot. It's easy if you have multiple shows, you could put them all under the same account.
00:38:22:08 - 00:38:44:09
Unknown
I like the analytics it offers. There's probably more I should be doing, but like I said, it's hard to like make the thing and promote the thing. So I try to do what I can and focus on the things that I know work and if I have time for the other stuff, great. But if not, I'm okay with it going by the wayside.
00:39:03:15 - 00:39:08:18
Unknown
Mm hmm.
00:39:12:21 - 00:39:41:20
Unknown
Mm
00:39:41:20 - 00:40:02:16
Unknown
hmm.
00:40:17:17 - 00:40:30:00
Unknown
Mm hmm.
00:40:30:00 - 00:40:51:18
Unknown
Yeah. Same here. That's why I use Otter. Yeah, it's. It's good enough. I think. Mm.
00:40:56:14 - 00:41:15:05
Unknown
Yeah. So our episodes of Democracy Works came out on Monday morning, and we usually record on the Wednesday before that, and the editors get it on Thursday. So usually Fridays are my day to write the show notes and get the transcript.
00:41:15:07 - 00:41:27:02
Unknown
I have to send it to the public radio editor. Like their news director, she listens to it because it also goes up on their website. So it has to like meet NPR standards and all of that.
00:41:27:02 - 00:41:46:04
Unknown
I also use the transcripts as a way to catch anything, any big editing mistake. So if you don't have time to listen to your episode all the way through before publishers, you can at least scan down through the transcript and see.
00:41:46:05 - 00:42:08:23
Unknown
Just make sure it all flows together. Make sure there's just nothing weird in there and I've caught a lot of things that way, even just, just by, you know, reading through so that that's one one efficiency or, you know, one kind of hack that I've used. And then I keep my show notes pretty simple, like who is going to if they're just looking to see if they want to listen or not?
00:42:08:23 - 00:42:21:12
Unknown
Like they're not going to be reading the next great American novel, right? So just a paragraph or two, usually one paragraph about what the episode's about, what the topic is, and then a little bio of the guest relevant links.
00:42:21:12 - 00:42:22:08
Unknown
And then,
00:42:22:08 - 00:42:26:07
Unknown
yeah, the episodes come out on Monday mornings
00:42:26:07 - 00:42:32:19
Unknown
and if it's a Penn State person, I have a story in our University News Wire ready to go.
00:42:32:21 - 00:42:38:16
Unknown
The promo start airing on the radio. So also on Fridays I'm recording a 32nd promo for the radio
00:42:38:16 - 00:43:07:19
Unknown
and then with with one that people decide it's, it's very different like I am. The second season starts in July and so I'm like pitching guest essays. I can write in newsletters and setting up promo swaps with other podcasts because it's a very limited time window that I have to really promote it and get it out there and looking for other organizations that might be interested in sharing it or other political podcast that might want to have me on as a guest to talk about it.
00:43:07:21 - 00:43:17:10
Unknown
So just kind of doing a lot of that legwork upfront. So it's all kind of locked and loaded and ready to go when the season starts in the middle of July,
00:43:26:00 - 00:43:38:18
Unknown
I think. I mean, it's it's just kind of the standard format. On the one hand, for narrative shows, I guess This American Life would maybe be the exception to that, or at least the one I can think of right now, because that comes out every week.
00:43:38:20 - 00:44:10:19
Unknown
But, you know, most series like that are season based, I think one because it's like to your point about batching, if you're doing all this intense work of sound design and narration and it's just easier to kind of chunk all that and do it in, you know, a couple of months as opposed to all the time. Like if I had to track an episode and read 15 pages of narration every week, I don't know that I could do that.
00:44:10:21 - 00:44:30:07
Unknown
So it's easier to just take a day, just like people record audio books, right? Like you see them just spending 8 hours in the studio today. Like, I don't have to do that much. Thankfully. But you know, it is probably an hour and a half per hour of tracking that will then get edited down for a 25 minute episode.
00:44:30:09 - 00:44:51:19
Unknown
So that's a lot of reading, a lot of talking. And then also there's just there's only so much to say, like, I have a point that I want to make or an overarching and then, you know, six or eight stories to illustrate that theme. It would just it would get very repetitive, I think like for season one, here's this ballot measure.
00:44:51:19 - 00:44:58:08
Unknown
Here's this ballot measure. Like, I mean, I could do that. There's certainly been hundreds if not thousands of them over time. But
00:44:58:08 - 00:44:59:10
Unknown
the stories all
00:44:59:10 - 00:44:59:19
Unknown
get,
00:44:59:19 - 00:45:08:21
Unknown
kind of the same on some level. So it would get repetitive after a while. Whereas what democracy works, we talk about all kinds of stuff, and so that's just a never ending well of ideas.
00:45:08:21 - 00:45:19:12
Unknown
Democracy is broad, it encompasses a lot of things. So that's I think that's why we've been able to keep it going for so long because it's it's hard to run out of things to talk about.
00:45:19:12 - 00:45:36:17
Unknown
Mm hmm.
00:45:36:17 - 00:45:55:22
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I do think that there's space in, like, I would love to hear a narrative style podcast, like behind the scenes of an admissions office or something.
00:45:55:22 - 00:46:23:21
Unknown
Like, there's so many narratives out there about higher education, like the free speech on campus debate, right? Is one from my world. And yeah, just taking a different approach to telling some of these stories in higher ed or higher ed marketing, I think that there is absolutely an opportunity out there for someone to do it, whether that's you or the other kind of podcast folks out there.
00:46:23:21 - 00:47:02:17
Unknown
But I think whoever does that would definitely stand out. I know I do the newsletter for high ed Web. I featured your show in there before. I'm always looking for new and different things to to put in there. So if any if any listeners have a higher ed podcast like Reach Out, I'll be happy to feature you in our newsletter.
00:47:02:17 - 00:47:32:06
Unknown
definitely have a clear idea of what you want to do. The podcast landscape is so much more competitive these days than it was when we started back in 2018. You really have to know who you're making the podcast for or what you want to say, why that topic will resonate with the audience you have in mind. The answer today in 2023 cannot be that my podcast is for everybody.
00:47:32:08 - 00:47:55:16
Unknown
Well, my podcast is for the general public. Like that is way too broad unless you're a celebrity or something, you're not going to ever have success with that audience. So what's the niche you want to fall into? What's your plan for putting out content on a consistent schedule? Do you have the team in place, the resources, financial and otherwise that you need?
00:47:55:18 - 00:48:18:16
Unknown
I think it just requires a lot more planning and preparation than we certainly had to do back when we started. And if if we were starting from scratch today, it would be way harder. Like I make no bones about that that we got in early. And I think that's the reason we've been able to kind of build the audience that we have and keep it.
00:48:18:18 - 00:49:17:09
Unknown
But it's still possible to make great podcasts and build audience today. But you just have to be much more thoughtful and deliberate about what you're making and who you're making it for. MM
00:49:17:09 - 00:49:33:13
Unknown
So you were saying about Tik Tok and YouTube? Sure. It's one thing I've started doing is not repurposing a snippet from the show, but I'll just make like a 32nd or one minute like front facing video on my phone, like, Hey, this is what we're talking about this week.
00:49:33:15 - 00:50:02:20
Unknown
And then, you know, put that out with all the relevant hashtags and kind of make it, you know, TikTok friendly. And yeah, I agree. I've seen good traction there as well, and that helps me get more comfortable. It's I don't I don't love being on TikTok, but I know that I have to do it on some level. So I think that's that's been a good way to dip my toe in the water.
00:50:10:18 - 00:51:06:20
Unknown
MM Yeah, Yeah. And it's, it's a great calling card too. A reason to reach out to people you wouldn't have any business contacting otherwise. And I mean, for me it's led to speaking gigs and invitations to be on panels. If you haven't gotten those yet, I'm sure they're on the way. And it's just yeah, it's a great way to, to build your brand and get yourself out there.
00:51:09:09 - 00:51:20:11
Unknown
So I am at Jenna Spinelli on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. And my website is Jenna Spinelli Ecom.
00:51:21:12 - 00:51:37:04
Unknown
Thank you for listening. Three things I want to give you before you go. Reminder to go to number one reminder to go to pricing Dot unveiled TV to download our free pricing guide and learn all about how our video storytelling subscriptions can make your marketing team's lives so much easier.
00:51:37:06 - 00:51:56:16
Unknown
Number two, if you if you if you're already doing storytelling or you want to do more of it, you want to do it better or differently. I have a three part storytelling framework that you can download at unveiled to student testimonials, and that will take you through the framework that we put to use in the videos that we create.
00:51:56:18 - 00:51:59:02
Unknown
And it doesn't even have to be for video. It can be for written
00:51:59:02 - 00:52:14:11
Unknown
text based content as well. Number three, leave a review for this podcast. I'd really appreciate it. Helps us out a ton. Thank you so much for listening. My name's John is only go connect with me on LinkedIn. Email me at John at unveiled Dot TV.
00:52:14:13 - 00:52:21:16
Unknown
That's Joey Chen. And in the meantime, we'll catch you in the next episode of the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast. Thanks.