It's Marketing's Fault

Send us a Text Message.Kendall Breitman, Community Manager at Riverside.fm joins me on today's episode of It's Marketing's Fault.Kendall shares how podcasts allow brands to control their own messaging and directly connect with consumers in an intimate way through audio. She discusses how creating a sense of community around a brand through one-on-one personal connections on social media and in-person meetups is very effective for building loyalty and advocacy. She also points out that startin...

Show Notes

Send us a Text Message.

Kendall Breitman, Community Manager at Riverside.fm joins me on today's episode of It's Marketing's Fault.

Kendall shares how podcasts allow brands to control their own messaging and directly connect with consumers in an intimate way through audio. She discusses how creating a sense of community around a brand through one-on-one personal connections on social media and in-person meetups is very effective for building loyalty and advocacy. She also points out that starting a branded podcast does not have to be intimidating or time-consuming. Simply recording casual conversations that are already happening internally or with partners/experts can create evergreen content with minimal effort as long as it is consistent.

Riverside.fm
LinkedIn: Kendall Breitman
Twitter: @kendallbreitman

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Eric Rutherford
Eric is the founder of Build That Podcast, a podcast production agency focused on the B2B marketplace

What is It's Marketing's Fault?

Welcome to “It’s Marketing’s Fault”. If you are a marketer, this phrase is familiar to you. Sometimes deserved, often times not. 

Don’t worry, you are among marketers and friends here. Let’s discuss how to do marketing the right way. 


As a side note, in episodes 1 through 37, this was Build That Podcast. The goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence.  If you go back and listen to earlier episode (those before November 2023) you will hear that name. Don't worry--it's good content too. :)

Welcome to it's marketing's fault.

The podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way.

I'm your host Eric Rutherford, and I am thrilled today because I have with me Kendall Breitman.

She is a community manager at riverside.fm where her goal is to build a community of podcasters.

And if you're not aware of Riverside, I want to definitely make sure you understand what that is.

It's an all in one podcast video platform.

provides high quality audio video transcripts options for editing the works.

I know I use it.

I love it.

And so, so glad Kendall, you're able to make it to the show today.

Kendall, welcome.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I'm really excited to be here and talk with you about marketing, podcasting, community, all of it.

Yeah, me too.

Like this, this is some of my favorite stuff, uh, to talk about.

I can geek out on this, uh, for long periods of time.

So that's, that's why I've got my mute button so I can just cut my, cut my sound and let you do the talking that way.

I don't overwhelm the conversation.

So, uh, yeah, I'm just thrilled.

So before we get into podcasting and, and Riverside.

Let's just kind of jump back a couple of years because just in kind of looking through your LinkedIn and through some of your experience, you have had just a lot of experience as a reporter with Bloomberg, with NBC.

What's something, what's a skill that you learned during that reporting, through that reporting experience which helped you most today and really kind of what helps What would help you most in terms of thinking through community and marketing?

Yeah, when I actually first started in journalism, I was wondering why a lot of my former colleagues would end up in marketing or PR, that type of thing.

And actually now that I myself have made the jump, I think that it's because I would say the skill that I took away from it is listening.

Listening and finding the story.

So I think that a big part of when I was a journalist, you would travel around the country listening to different voters.

And I was...

covering politics.

So you're listening to different voters, their political opinions.

And then you have, let's say, like 15 conversations with 15 different people.

And you have to sit there and say, OK, what's the story?

Like, if I had to sum all of this up, what does this mean?

What do people want, think, feel, and how do you communicate that?

And I think that was the perfect skill to have for community, because I am talking to users all day, people in our community all day about, just hearing their conversations, their posts about what they care about, what they're interested in and then taking that and saying, okay, so the community feels X way.

They think about this Y way.

So I think it's almost, there's a lot of parallels in there that were really unexpected for me.

I love that.

Let's let me just kind of go a little bit deeper into that.

When when you talk about listening and learning how to listen and how to gather that information, what is it about like that active listening?

Is that like a skill to acquire?

Is that something that develops over time?

Because I think that is something key to marketing everything else.

Just like you said, I'd love for you to elaborate on that a little bit.

Yeah, I think that sometimes people mistake active listening for listening and then their minds kind of activated on what they're going to respond.

I talk with podcasters even all the time, journalists, interviewers in general, who when somebody's answering the question, they're kind of trying to look for the follow-up.

And I think that when your mind gets too focused in that, what am I going to say next?

It's almost...

It's almost like a bad date, right?

Like you're just sitting there being like, how do I continue the conversation?

And that's never gonna get you the best conversation.

So I think active listening is actually, it sounds so easy, but it's easier said than done.

Of just sitting and really just listening.

And you don't have to have the answer prepared or the next question prepared, just kind of letting that sink in.

And that's also why I didn't just say.

listening.

It was listening and finding the story.

That active listening is also trying to figure out how does this connect with a wider feeling, a wider group, a wider message take away, but after they give the answer.

I think that's the key and sometimes it's just that pause afterwards it sometimes it's just being able to not feel like you have to roll into the next comment Yeah, I actually like I posted something about that the other day from a webinar that I did that even that's it's a sales tactic and it's also a interview tactic that as interviewers we almost want to fill in all of this Dead air all of this blank space the silences, but in reality, it's when you take the moment when you just take a beat and Maybe allow for a few extra seconds in there for somebody to think That's usually when somebody will follow up with something profound or say a real clip that's going to be your big takeaway from that interview or that use case, something like that.

Just giving them a beat to be able to think and trying not to fill in that dead air.

Yeah, and I think that's definitely a learned skill because I think we do, we just do not feel comfortable with silence.

Like it just sort of, I don't wanna say great's on us, but it's like, oh my word, I have to say something.

And so I love how you brought that up because for a podcast host, that is something.

You have to learn, but even more, you know, it's for journalists, for anything else.

That silence, that, that finding the story afterwards and connecting the dots.

Is so critical because many don't, uh, they, they just don't make that connection.

I don't know if you've experienced that, but, uh, I mean, even like with marketing too, if you're like trying to understand your user, your customer, your client, whatever, if you are like, how we try to fill in that space is also sometimes how other people are as we're as we were just saying, like we all do it.

So if you also kind of give them that silence, if they want to try to fill it, it's going to be something that might be a little bit more vulnerable, that might be a little bit more even truthful that just I have to fill this space, so let me give them more of what I think.

Let me...

And then you can kind of dig more into those feelings.

So I think that it actually...

It's cool to be able to play it both ways, to know that if I give them this silent moment for a second, that they might try to fill it with something that they feel like they should share another step further.

I love that.

I love that.

So if you're listening and you're thinking about podcasting, if you're thinking about just the individual conversations that you have on a daily basis, this is something to really begin to practice.

It won't happen perfectly the first time out the gate if you're not familiar with it.

But man, this is just a valuable skill to learn.

It's something I know I am improving upon.

as I go.

I've not mastered it.

I'm farther along today than I was like a couple of years ago, but I find I still have a long way to go.

We're all works in progress.

It's okay.

And honestly, anyone who knows me would be laughing at the idea of me on a podcast talking about embracing silence, because I am also working on that, let's just say.

Oh, I love it.

So, so let's just kind of jump into to riverside.fm.

What?

I gave a brief intro of it.

What is it and what problem does it solve?

So it's an online recording studio.

Also, you're able to edit your content.

So for something like this interview, we're able to hop into the studio, speak with each other, remote guests, or even just yourself, and record high quality.

So we are able to, there's not compressed audio or video, and it's all recorded on your computer locally.

And that's really the cool part for me is because you're able to get really crisp, incredible looking content.

that you're able to put out there on social.

You can make clips of it.

You have a transcript.

So it's really an all-in-one kind of recording, editing solution for somebody trying to make content or podcasts.

And I would say, was the other question something that I that I, oh, what problem is it solving?

Yeah, yeah, what problems does it solve?

What I like to say is I think that it solves a problem of accessibility, of stories, in the way that you don't need an entire fancy set up studio to be able to record your content, to be able to record your podcasts.

You're able to do it from your office right now, that's where I am, from your living room, from your home, wherever you want.

I'm recording on an iPhone through Riverside right now.

And you're...

It's just...

What I think is that when you open up more opportunities for people to be able to have conversations from anywhere, you're able to get more stories heard.

You're able to get your own story out in a much more accessible way.

So I think that that's, for me, the problem that it solves.

But if you want to get into the technical side, it also solves the problem of recording over bad internet and getting that pixelated kind of picture and then You just had an hour long conversation and none of it's really usable for social media.

So yeah, I guess that's kind of like the hardware and software answer of it.

I like how you're describing it makes storytelling more accessible.

Uh, I think we forget that sometimes that sometimes we think that storytelling is only for either a select few, it's only like, it has to be this big studio, uh, but really the tools that we have today, even compared to.

You know, five years ago.

are phenomenal in the storytelling aspect.

What do you think, kind of building on that, what do you think makes a good story?

Now I know it's a broad question, right?

Because I know we're talking marketing, we're also talking podcasting, we're talking all of that.

But I think there's some similarities between the two.

What do you think is like key to a good story?

I would say emotion.

I'm like a driven by emotion type of person.

I think that like you could say challenges, obstacles, but when you really get to the heart of that, it's the challenge and the obstacles elicit an emotion like that you need to overcome something, that type of thing.

So I would actually say that emotions, a great part like communicating those emotions I say would be essential for that story.

And even like, I know that where you were saying that we were kind of hopping around, but that has a lot to do with marketing.

Because if you are what you're trying to do from what I was saying before, listening and getting the story is understanding the motion, the emotion that drives that story, the reason people feel that way.

What could make them not feel that way?

I mean, it's a it's like not a coincidence that when in marketing of pain points, like that's because the emotion is they're feeling like it's a pain to be doing something.

So really, yeah, I would say that that's what drives a story and that's what should drive, yeah, what we were talking about before, finding the story.

And that makes sense.

And I think sometimes logic, as human beings, we are not logical.

We like to think we are, but I would agree.

I love that idea of how emotion really drives story because it does.

I think we are drawn in to the narrative and it just pulls us along waiting for the next aha moment, so to speak.

Um Community manager.

So let's talk about what is a community manager?

How does and what do you Do within Riverside's framework?

How's that work?

So community management was something that was new to me when I started.

But really, as I like to describe it, is that they're within marketing.

Like when you're marketing something, you're trying to bring people in.

And then once they get in, what do they get?

They get a product.

They get support through it.

But in order, from a marketing perspective for community, people kind of crave these connections.

They want to connect with the products they're using.

They want to connect with other people within their industry.

And so it's really just tending to that need, to that want.

And giving it, I almost compare it to something like customer support.

That it's creating loyalty among people that are using your product.

Because when I started, I was like, when I was building this community, the cool part for me is that I was building a community of podcasters.

So these are people that already like to create content, like to speak out, like to talk about, it's also a very open community.

So they talk about the tools they're using, they wanna help each other.

But a community really needs to play on like the specific individuals and what they need.

And then as a product delivering on those needs.

So how I kind of started working into Riverside's framework.

was I just, I think it's maybe the journalist in me, I started by completing a ton of user interviews.

So people that would tag us on social media, people that would interact in the community on our Facebook group, and just ask one-on-one to get to know them.

And an example is I assumed that the want would be that people wanna network.

They wanna meet other podcasters.

But I didn't dig enough into it to realize until after I did these meetings that people want to do that because they want to get better.

The main driver was learning.

They want to learn from others.

They want to become better at what they do.

And then also what people loved about the conversation is that they felt heard and tended to.

So that was my two takeaways.

With this specific community, we have to give them learning, and we have to make them feel heard and listened to and deliver on that.

So for example, community management for me has been webinars.

It's been roundtables with podcasters.

It's been in-person meetups, just creating opportunities for people to learn.

We're creating guides made by community members for others on how to post your podcast to social media, how to do X, Y, Z.

And then on top of that, I also take feature requests.

And then something that we do is when that feature is released, I'll make sure to tag that community member and say, hey, you mentioned this a month ago.

It's out.

And I just wanted to make sure that you saw it.

And those kinds of things, when you look at it from, again, a marketing perspective, that's how people tell other people.

I use Riverside, and I love it.

They take feature requests.

They set up opportunities for me to learn.

And the product is solid.

Like influencers, you're able to get your product out there in front of people.

But when we think about our own relationships, our own habits, I'm so likely to use something if my best friend who's podcasting recommends it and loves it.

And that's kind of what it's centered on is just making people feel like they belong and that they want to invite other people into that.

long-winded answer, but there you go.

That's my long and short of community management.

No, I think that's brilliant.

And just that, I love how you in the research, you found out those two key tenants of they wanted to learn, you know, improve their skill set, but they, they also just wanted to be heard.

And so I think that's really because that's That's not something I would have thought of walking in, in terms of this is what the community wants or these are what these user wants.

But as you say that, it makes me realize like, wow, that, I mean, that's applicable to any business in terms of what they're doing, especially the being heard aspect, people really listening.

What was, can we just go a little deeper on that and just from, just from your experiences, your conversations, what was that like?

Can you elaborate?

Yeah, so what I was saying a few days ago that when people are heard, they're more likely to be loyal to your product and trust your product when they feel like they're being heard.

When people are learning, they're also able to use your product to its fullest capability, and they'll stick to it longer.

Because also, as far as podcasting, I mean, I don't remember the exact figures, but a lot of people will start a podcast and might not and might not continue it.

And so if you give them the tools to continue it, it also gives them the tools to continue to use your product.

I would say as far as feeling heard, what we've tried to do, I actually, it was partially inspired by, it was mostly inspired by the community and by speaking with them.

But I was also noticing other companies that were doing it.

So for example, A random example would be Glossier.

It's a makeup company.

And so every time before they release a new makeup tool, I don't have the word right now, every time they'd release it, they'd show tweets or something of people saying, oh, I want this product but in brown, or something like that.

And then they'd say, we heard you.

It's coming next week, or it's coming tomorrow.

And that kind of a light went off in my head that was saying, like, if people feel like you're hearing them and then you're applying it to what you do, it's going to make your product better.

But it's also going to make people feel.

I mean, if you're going to look at podcasters, I don't think you can get a more vocal group of people who want to feel heard.

I mean, they're all in the business of being heard.

So I think that it just makes people feel like you're like your company cares when they're making things that you feel are catered to you.

Or another example is if we're working on something and somebody, we switched this a couple months ago, but if somebody did a feature request and they said, hey, I'd love to have something, we'd write back, hey, we will put it in a feature request for you.

But what we've started doing is saying, that's on our radar, and we'll give you an update whenever we have one for you.

And then following up on that.

So I'll go through, write down all of the people who had requested it.

And when I post a new feature that somebody's requested, to be able to have that connection with a brand that you say, like, I'd love to be able to get this shirt in the color blue.

And then a company writes back to you and says, hey, we heard you, and we made this in a color blue.

Like.

That's a real connection that's going to really build loyalty for someone.

You're not simply a nameless user.

You are, I don't want to say called out.

Called out always feels like it has a negative connotation, but really you are being called out and saying, hey, we heard, thank you, you're valuable, and here's what we did.

Yeah, like my mom's a small business owner.

And she was talking about this phenomenon one time, that if you move to a larger shop, like the more successful that you kind of become, there are some people that will kind of drop off because people want to sometimes do business with a smaller company.

And then they also don't feel like their, like my purchase matters as much.

I could just go to the store next door rather than going out of my way to yours.

And so it's also trying to keep in this online rather than a storefront, but the small town vibe.

Like this, we hear you and you're just part of this community and you're helping shape this product.

So trying to kind of hold on to that as much as you can.

And that seems like the stuff that that's the hard work, right?

That's the stuff that doesn't scale.

You know, I've been just having all kinds of conversations this week about scale, but that stuff doesn't scale well at all.

It would, I mean, the thing is that with the, when you're going to be doing community management or putting like your, putting your weight into community, your company needs to really back you up on that.

And I think that that's one of the reasons that I love working at Riverside is they really, they understand the importance of it and they really want it to dive into community.

Because it's not, I compare it all the time to the Gatorade pores in football.

I'm not a sports person, but go with me on this.

Like how much money does Gatorade make?

How many Gatorade bottles does Gatorade sell because you're pouring this gigantic water cooler of Gatorade on a coach's head?

Like you can't quantify that, but you've, through that action, they've worked their way into like the zeitgeist of sports, into that gigantic moment in sports history every year.

So you can't quantify how much people are buying Gatorade from that.

But you know that there are so many people that are on their way to a football game and they're grabbing a Gatorade so they could have it after or drink it during because it's so synonymous with the sport.

So it's that kind of saying, it's a similar feeling.

It's harder to scale, but you can also find scalable moments.

For example, we have meetups.

And so for the first few, I was the one doing them.

I was in London, so we did one in London.

Philadelphia, New York.

And then as people saw them, and I made connections within the podcast community, people would say, I'd team up with podcast managers or podcast producers.

And these people also want to get their names out there.

So we team up together.

They rent out some space in a bar.

And then they do a podcasters meetup.

And it works for them because they're able to get their name out there.

It works for us because we're able to get our names in front of more creators in the community.

So it's about also finding these little ways to try to scale by getting other people excited about what you're doing.

But it might just take your initial push to begin it.

But once people see community efforts, that's the nature of community, is they want to get involved.

So then you'll be surprised by how people want to help carry it forward.

that and I want to ask about going a little more detail in the meetups in just a second but it sounds like really through this through these conversations through this through this dialogue you're really creating individual champions of the product in the community themselves that who then go out and you're reaching a group but then they're going out and really carrying it as almost like a grassroots message so to speak.

Yeah, bingo, community management.

No, it's exactly like what I was saying before about influencers.

It's like people might not have 11,000 followers on Instagram, but they have people in their communities that know that they have a podcast, for example.

And they'll say, hey, I know you have a podcast.

What are you using?

And when we think about sometimes how people are starting on different products, like, Today, I was looking for a social media scheduling tool.

So I went on to a Facebook group of social media marketers, and I looked at what people recommended for schedule tools.

These people can sometimes be a whole, they're influencers themselves of their communities.

So yeah, it's just about realizing the power of one person's voice and the power of them belonging to something and wanting to share that.

Yeah, I think we underestimate sort of that power of one in terms of what they can do and who they can reach.

Let me just kind of...

Yeah.

past something, you're like, that person went out of their way to call their friend and say, hey, what are you using for your recordings and editings?

Riverside.

Like the power of that.

And it is powerful.

It's much different than going down the road and seeing a billboard uh or seeing as you say seeing something in the half a second of a scroll it's this connection it's like it's that additional yeah it's trust that's true wow and it's so it's so funny because within podcasting that's something i'm always talking about is the trust that listeners have with guests and with hosts just because of the audio medium yes audio medium sorry that we'll edit that out audio medium and just like it's a conversation you get to sit down you you're sitting there you're part of a conversation which just builds that trust but it's the same with community management it's a one-on-one referral and championing of the service Yeah, exactly.

So it's definitely, as somebody that kind of measures my own success by how fulfilled I feel, sometimes it's a really great job for somebody like me that does that, because I just leave it feeling all of these connections with so many different people kind of bonding over something as fun as podcasting.

So.

So at the meetups, I know you mentioned several, you mentioned London, you mentioned Philadelphia.

Who primarily was there?

Was it like solopreneurs, just individual podcasters?

Did you have like medium to large businesses, people from that who attended?

What did that look like?

It was mostly individual podcasters, but then there'd be some people that they have a one-person podcast production company, or they are working with a larger kind of company, but they are their producer for the podcast.

So they're people that are kind of craving these connections and somebody else to relate to in this way, to talk about...

What microphone are you using?

How are you promoting your shows?

Do you have any advice for me?

It was really cool to see what people were speaking about, what people were getting excited about.

Yeah.

No, and that's good to know because I think my experience with podcasting is it's a phenomenal medium for conversations just like this for lots of other conversations.

And it's often misunderstood by the rest of the world and business in general in terms of the impact it can have, partly because what you were talking about earlier, sometimes attribution is really challenging.

Sometimes getting your message out is really challenging.

So hearing about these conversations between podcasters and marketers, there had to be magic that not only occurred there, but afterwards from what happened.

Yeah, I mean, we make WhatsApp groups after every meetup too, so that people can continue the conversations.

And it is really cool to see what people are talking about.

And when you're talking about podcasting, things kind of like misunderstood business, I was going to make a joke about how a lot of the people that go to these meetups are joking that like, I'm here because my friends and partner can't listen to me talk about my podcast anymore.

You know, it's like other people that know what it's like and are also because of the nature of Riverside and it being a remote recording platform, are also a lot of the time doing this on their own.

And they are like, they're remotely interviewing people, which means that they're also, even when they do have guests on, it's not like we're sitting next to each other.

So it's also just about creating this kind of, from, I like to say, from local recording to local meetups, but that's my just kitschy little line that I.

that I made from it.

No, but it's true so much.

And I think just with the technology available today, it's like I missed the wave of in-person podcast interviews.

Like I was, I'll say later to the game, I was 20, everything, the world shut down because of COVID and everything else.

So I was sort of...

in the podcasting realm when things went virtual.

So I never had the earlier experience where a lot of it was in person.

And so I can really respect that of, okay, what happens when this becomes, we're sitting across a real table, you know, from one another and having like a non-microphone conversation.

Exactly, but when you're not, then just shoot it on Riverside.

There we go.

know, it's, it's true, right?

It's just because it makes it easy.

It really, it really does.

And so how do you see businesses either using podcasts as part of their marketing strategy or how do you see, how do you see it effectively being done?

Because I think I talked to businesses and I think there's interest.

But at the same time, I think there's hesitancy.

And so how are you seeing it done effectively out there in the marketplace?

Yeah, so not just saying this because I'm at Riverside, but really, I think that podcasts right now for business are essential.

I like to compare it to the branded blogs.

Now, blogging has become so an obvious necessity for so many businesses.

When you're creating a business website on Wix or something, and it will automatically give you a blog page, I think that the future should also with a podcast page because just like branded blogs that became so important for SEO, I think that there are a lot of important factors into podcasting for a brand, including SEO.

So, for example, if you record a podcast and you take your transcript and you put that transcript in your webpage, like all of those keywords in there, all of the authority, trustworthiness that you're building, like just on the SEO side is...

really helpful for businesses.

But beyond that, there are so many.

You can either use a podcast and have it be a way of people to try out your service.

For example, if they just want to get to know a bit about more of what you do, instead of jumping on a sales call, they're able to just take you in their ear wherever they're going.

Or they could discover what your.

what you're covering, what you're talking about, by even looking for something else.

For example, I like to give the example of OnStar.

It's in your car and it's like the alert system in your car.

Yeah.

So they have a podcast about true crime of stories that happen in your car.

And so I think that's so genius because first of all, it gives the reasoning why OnStar is...

would be a necessary tool for somebody or a necessary thing for someone to have in their car.

But it's these really interesting ways of connecting with people in a way that otherwise I wouldn't particularly be listening to OnStar on my way to work.

But if I'm just kind of listening to these stories, it's this natural way that they've worked their way into my morning commute.

You know, like, how powerful is that?

It's a way to connect with people.

Just what you were just saying, the power of voice, the power of if you're using video, seeing people's faces, and feeling this connection.

It's almost like when I am talking about community and making these one-on-one connections of people by just a phone call.

It's kind of like that in the way that people are able to feel.

My favorite hosts, I feel like I'm friends with them in a way.

And it's weird because I like.

the amount that I've heard their voices as I'm walking through my day, or as I'm walking around through my day.

So if you can have that be your business, like imagine how impactful that will be.

And you can make yourself, if you wanna be a thought leader on this, you're able to really do that.

If you want to form connections within your industry, there's no better way of starting a connection with somebody I think than having them on a podcast, talking with them for an hour, and then you really know each other at the end of that.

You can follow up with them and...

collaborate with them.

So there are a lot of extra business opportunities on top of a podcast as well.

There's so much there and what you just shared, like just so many levels deep of important truths about podcasting and business.

I want to touch real quick on OnStar again.

First, I didn't realize they had that podcast.

There's so many cool branded podcasts like OnStar has one.

There was one called The Sauce that McDonald's did about the history of their Szechuan sauce.

There's like, you're able to, like there's how, like Dior Talks, which is kind of like behind the scenes of the House of Dior.

There's Inside Trader Joe's, which is similar, like how they pick.

what's going to be the taste tester for the day.

There are different levels to branded podcasts that you could do some sort of murder mystery and have it connect to your brand in this really cool, interesting way.

My last one that I'll give is GE put out one called The Message, and it was about how they're using technology to get signals from space.

So suddenly you're listening to a podcast about space and then learning also about GE and...

they control that message.

You hear what they want you to hear, rather than an article that a journalist wrote and can kind of put their own framing on it.

It's like you're able to control that messaging and own that messaging, just like a blog.

I like that.

And I think that's underappreciated as well because with podcasting as with blogging, you control the medium, you control distribution as opposed to a social post, which a very small percentage of your connections will see on average.

This is like direct, very much a direct to consumer.

type of medium between you and the listener.

Yeah, and also beyond that also, when you're talking about social posts, the amount of content that you can get out of a podcast, it's like you can create social posts from it.

You can take the transcript, put it in ChatGPT and make a blog post from it.

You can make a carousel type of post from it.

There are so many different ways that you can, we make the guides that I mentioned earlier.

If we did a webinar about...

how to nail your next interview last week.

And then we take some of those tips that we shared during the webinar slash podcast and create a guide out of it.

Like there are just so many different things that you can do.

And as I'm saying this, I'm realizing that you had asked about kind of people being intimidated by the process of creating a branded podcast.

And I would say that I just want to answer that because I think that podcasts can seem intimidating because you already have so much to do.

Like...

How am I going to sit down and be recorded?

And it feels much more of a to-do than it needs to be.

But if you frame it as just kind of like, I want to have a conversation.

Let's say it's a CEO and the CFO.

And every week, let's just have a conversation on Riverside.

I'll plug it again, that we're just going to record it.

And instead of, and there's going to be a different topic every week, and we're just going to record that conversation.

People, you're already having.

these conversations with your employees, with your coworkers.

So if you just press record, you're making a podcast.

Then you just put some intro music, an outro, done.

It's so easy to continue to keep doing that, as long as you just stay consistent.

You can record five of them at a time, and then just schedule them and not have to do it for another month and a week.

There are ways to make it approachable.

It doesn't have to be an hour, it could be a half hour.

It could even be 15 minutes.

There's a podcast thing from Zendium.

It's two minutes long podcast to listen to while you brush your teeth.

You can make podcasting as much or as little as you want it to be to be able to work in with your brand.

You just have to be consistent.

All of those were amazing examples.

And I think it's true.

It's like you really, you're only limited by your imagination on what you want to do and how you want to frame it.

And like you say, you're already having conversations anyway.

It's just about pressing record.

And And then from there, you have so many editing tools, even with Riverside.

But you have so many editing tools that you're able to just in one click remove silences, in one click post it somewhere.

If you want to make it a part of your routine, then I don't think it's as intimidating as it seems sometimes to people who are running a business.

I agree.

And I think even just the getting the recording itself, like even if you just use the podcast, you don't you don't repurpose it initially.

Just having sort of that content archive, because that's the I think that's one of the beauties is it's evergreen like you can you can use it going forward for however long you want.

to use it.

It's not like a trending Instagram post, which, you know, is good for six hours, right?

I mean, it's okay.

So there's a little bit of hyperbole there, but you know, it's, you can use it long term.

I mean, you could even use it in other ways.

I'm just thinking as you were saying that about what if for onboarding you have your CEO and your co-founder talking about the ethos of the company.

To be able to give that to people, to have people be able to listen to that while they're onboarding, this passive listening and understanding in that way, I think that could even be really cool.

Like the power of just recording conversations, it can be internal for your employees, it can be external as a marketing strategy.

It's just a way to connect with somebody, and it's continuing to get easier to do that.

I love it.

I love it.

And I think it's so important.

And one of the really cool things about having a conversation like this is as you're sharing ideas, I'm like, I've never heard that before.

Oh, that's a brilliant idea.

Oh, I'm going to go make notes.

And so I think everybody listening, and this is just like they're note taking and you know, just being able to gobble some of this up, because I think sometimes you don't know what you can do until you hear an idea.

And then it's like, oh yeah, and if I can do that, then I can do this other thing.

I think we're still, I think podcasting and just this medium of conversation is really early.

Like in terms of, you know, I hear, oh, you know, podcasting is, you know, it's too late to get into podcasting, you know, all of those kinds of things.

But I still think it's really, really early, we haven't seen real how podcasts can be leveraged.

Yeah, no, I completely agree.

And I think that it's going to become more so.

I think that if you're recording video with it, too, it doesn't have to just be a podcast.

It can be a video podcast on YouTube.

It could be that you clip that video and just are able to put it on social media.

adds a level of authority and expertise and trustworthiness and all of those good SEO words, but just that also apply to real life to your business.

And so I think that it's, and it's a powerful medium.

It's definitely, I mean, as somebody that used to write articles, I'd say that it's definitely more of a connecting, has a higher ability to connect with people than a blog post.

Wow, that is, I mean, that's encouraging to hear, that's powerful to hear.

And if you're listening, I would encourage you to just kind of let that sink in.

If you're thinking of a podcast, if you're just kind of evaluating those things, yeah, these are important concepts and ideas to think on.

As we kind of wrap up, one takeaway that you'd like to leave the listeners with.

I don't know if it's a takeaway, but this is my tip for anyone that's going to start a podcast, especially for business.

I like to do what they call a 10 episode rule.

Just as you're writing down these notes that we were just talking about, I would write down 10 episode ideas.

If you have those 10 episode ideas, then you can have a podcast.

It's going beyond, oh, it'd be really cool to talk with each other.

That's how I kind of separate the, we have a great conversation, we should have a podcast kind of trope versus like we actually have a podcast here.

So I would say if you want to create a business podcast or just a podcast for yourself, like you have the topic, like the main topic, and then just try to write what 10 episodes of that would look like.

In this episode, we talk about how to edit your podcast.

In this one, you talk about how to like, write all those down.

And if you can think of 10, keep pushing yourself because at that point you might already be on a roll.

Think of 20.

And then just look at that right there and say, that would be 20 weeks or if you want to release it monthly, 20 months of podcast, of content.

And I think that's probably where I'd tell people.

It seems overwhelming.

That's where it starts.

Yeah, and just getting something down on paper, getting that the ideas of what you would do and sort of in a, in a quantifiable framework.

Cause when you do that, I mean, when you write down 10 ideas, when you write down 20 ideas, then it, then it feels doable.

It's not like this, it's not like this esoteric, Oh, I got to come up with stuff.

How do I do this?

Yeah.

It's like, okay, I've got, I've got 15 ideas.

I can create a season.

Okay.

Like it's, so I appreciate that.

And it's sort of like step one.

Can I create a list?

And if I can, then I can go on to step two.

So, yeah, I think that's brilliant.

So for everybody listening, who wants to know more about you, maybe wants to connect with you, maybe want to know more at Riverside, where would you like him to go?

Well, if you want to know more about Riverside, it's just riverside.fm.

And if you want to connect with me, I would love to.

As I have very clearly said in this interview, I love talking with people.

So come join the community.

I am at Kendall Breitman on LinkedIn.

You can find me on Twitter.

And the spelling of that will be on this show or Instagram.

And I also am poking around the Riverside social media profiles.

So also follow riverside.fm.

And I would love to keep this conversation going.

So really, reach on out.

I love it.

So we will put all of those links in the show notes.

Definitely reach out to Kendall.

Definitely check out Riverside.

Kendall, this has been awesome conversation.

This has been a lot of fun.

I really appreciate you joining me today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

This has been a really great time.

So thanks for having me on, giving me the opportunity.