Podcasts Build Strong Communities
In this episode with our friend Kendall Breitman, the community manager at Riverside FM, we explore the role of a community manager and how podcasts build strong communities. Riverside FM is a remote podcasting platform that allows you to record from anywhere!
What Is Riverside FM?
Riverside FM is an online tool you can use to record, edit, and share remote podcasts and video interviews in studio quality from anywhere. What we love about it is that it enables local recording of lossless audio & 4K video tracks independent of one another. It also creates transcripts of all of our conversations, which we love for when it comes time to pen these blog posts!
If you are just starting out and don’t have the budget to rent a recording studio, have someone edit your podcast, write your show notes, and post everything, try Riverside as a way to experiment and determine if you love the medium.
Ultimately, we love Riverside because it enables people to share their stories and have important conversations without needing to invest in an expensive production.
What Is A Community Manager?
Many people consider community managers as the next frontier in marketing. Essentially, a community manager tries to bring more users, more customers, into a business. Then, once they're there, it comes down to what the users are provided beyond basic product support. What's making them come back and feeling a real connection to the product?
As a community manager, you are a voice for the community. You come to understand their wants and needs, being able to then communicate between the company and the online community. It also involves setting up value for them beyond your product or service, whether that's education, meetups, or webinars – anything that helps to bring people together.
Ultimately, it’s about having somebody that's able to understand the needs of users beyond the product, understanding how the company can fit in with what they're already doing. It serves to build trust between the users and the product/service.
Community Management and Podcasts
As a community manager, you need to be able to identify community members that are able to be creative and put themselves out there.
In the realm of podcasting, you're dealing with people who are in that space, who all know how to create videos, know how to use these platforms, and are able to connect with their own communities. Those strengths are already built in.
Try starting with hosting one-on-one meetings with users. Once you're able to take yourself away from only existing behind the screen, you're able to form better connections and learn about your users in a more intimate way.
The realization that Kendall had was that rather than doing it purely to network and meet people, the users at Riverside really want to learn how to take their podcast to another level and become a stronger host. Without hosting those one-on-one meetings, Kendall wouldn’t have received that key information.
To be able to form those connections leads you closer to being able to answer questions and address the needs of your audience that are using your product or who are listening to your podcast.
The Challenge Of Defining Your ROI In Podcasting
When we speak about growing a community, there are black and white actions that, if you do X, you’ll get Y as the output. However, there are also less defined things, like podcasting, that you can do to work your way into the zeitgeist. This is why podcasting has intrinsically become a part of growing a thriving business.
Community is so valuable, however, people tend to overlook it because there’s no bottom line type of effort involved. It’s challenging to try to quantify and define it, yet it's so valuable. You can attract so many aligned clients and community members in this way.
Tips For How Podcasts Build Communities
Never underestimate the power of a one-on-one connection. If somebody's tagging you and your podcast, reaching out to them on social media, thank them, and take interest by asking them a question about themselves.
Create a hub for your community – whether that's on Facebook (like a Facebook group), Circle, or Discord. What works really well is to tease conversations or funny things that people posted in the group on your podcast. Make that group really relevant and fun for your community. Nobody wants to just see posts promoting a new episode.
Create conversations that people are going to actually engage with. Take it beyond your podcast and establish a personal brand. People build communities around people and the desire to connect with others.
How Do You Pitch Being A Guest On A Podcast?
Podcasters are out there looking for guests all the time. Speaking with and building up your repertoire by reaching out to different podcasts that you're interested in can open you up to that world. There is a group called Earbuds Podcast Collective that sends out themed newsletters on different podcasts that you can discover.
How To Break Into The World Of Podcasting
Start by joining and speaking to podcasting communities online to see what really goes into making a podcast. It's inspiring to see other people that are excited about what they're doing.
If you think that you have a podcasting idea, try to think of 10 episodes that you would do and write them down.
It helps you to evaluate if you will be able to keep it going, if you really have a viable idea, and