Cooperative Podcast Strategies for the Circular Economy?

So this conversation is a follow up on our conversation about the potential for you to podcast. 

And the reason I'm sending this to a few of you, the same video, is because there's some overlap between a couple of your niches. 

And I think it opens up the approach. to podcast strategy in some ways. So I'm gonna go ahead and produce this as a generic because that'll give a little extra info to subject party A and a little extra info to party B that might sort of feed your creative juices about how to approach this when you hear the larger concept. 

And so again, we discussed how a podcast in your industry with some sort of interesting narrow approach usually is a great way to engage people that you would like to have in your Rolodex. People who you'd like to have in your circle of influence or you'd like to leverage their circle of influence for your message.

 There is also of course private podcasting for almost like a client nurturing customer development communication channel. There's an example of that. Wissenco, the big... multinational accounting firm does a private podcast for their clients. Panasonic does a private podcast for their employees, so does Keurig. And those are thought leadership things and that's one way to look at it. 

But in the most generic terms. The idea is, if you have marketing goals that this meets, for example, content. This can fill your social media channels. This can fill your YouTube. 

This can fill your blog and newsletter with all sorts of fun new content that you've created with usually other people in the industry who bring an audience to the table. 

And then you share with them a media kit so that their marketing department the following week is also directing their audience or circle of influence. to your podcast, i.e. your brand and your business. 

And that's all good. And so then if there's anybody in the room on your side who has a marketing acumen, they'll understand how, especially when you factor in taking a maybe 30 minute or even an hour conversation, that also turns into a whole myriad of focused clips that are subject matter specific. for your Instagram, your YouTube, your LinkedIn, and so forth. 

So that's how a single conversation can sort of be the kernel that sprouts to like this sort of mushrooming syndication of content that's got your brand all over it. 

And that's a soft sell approach that has the added benefit of, you know, there's all these other people participating from all these other companies, which is like a social proof effect. and gives you more people to tag when you put that post up on LinkedIn, you've got that person and company built in to tag and it's going to show up on their streams, whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. So that's the beauty of using it in a way to sort of expand your circle of influence. 

Now, if you're sitting there and you have a circular economy conversation going on in your business and a couple of you do, which is why I made this video, There's another wrinkle that comes into play that is, this is a jump in with both feet proposition, but. 

Boy, there's, for example, circular economy being the topic, there's a number of branches you can take from there that could all potentially be fundable or underwritten if you'd like to see this be a long-term project. And furthermore, the nature in which this is structured as a project would lead to, you know, a tremendous circle of influence and some other goodwill-type marketing that's just going to be built in. but it's this. 

And I'm doing this with a couple projects right now. One is a community podcast, and I'm looking to do another one. Well, with one of you, we got pretty far in the conversation that's green, and this is it. 

If you build your podcast as a 501C3, and so boom, I've already spent $1,000 of your money and a couple of hours on time. Maybe not 1,000. I mean, if you're getting jacked up by legal zoom, you're going to spend a thousand. 
But if you incorporate with a mission of promoting, you know, green initiatives, green employment, circular economy development, economic development in media around economic development, or green initiatives and anything related to it, there's all kinds of private. and state and federal grants around creating media. 
And so all my cards on the table, yeah, this is a great way for me to make sure that there's a bucket of money on your end where you're gonna need podcast and media and video services. 

But if you bring to the table a list of six, or however many people you wanna have on your board of directors. for an industry-related nonprofit whose mission is somewhere in the neighborhood of promoting economic development within green industry, possibly even promoting if you're located in a particular place, promoting things as basic as history around that, or conservation if you happen to be next to a national park. 

And all of that can have green industry partners attached to it. Now that doesn't preclude you from focusing entirely on, you know, geeking out and doing deep dive industry content because that's really where the, you know, I'd like to go. I would love to hear you guys really get into the weeds and use words that I have to look up on Google to keep up with the conversation. 
Those are the types of podcasts that keep me sort of riveted is because I'm challenged, I have to be engaged. And so I do love to turn subject matter experts loose and let them run in that direction. 

But if you can picture, maybe you put together a panel of a list of people that you just would love to be connected with and that they have a mindset for the circular economy or the industry you're in or they're adjacent. So for example, if you were doing reclamation of electronics and you were in the IT asset circular economy podcast, not necessarily an IT asset disposition podcast. 

And so then you make a board of other people who are circular economy related, but not IT. You maybe work with people who are in oil and gas in a green capacity or with a green posture. 

Or you might find people, hell, there's gonna be a list of industries as long as my arm. where there is someone representing whose whole pitch revolves around the fact that their value add is, you know, this sort of circular economy or white glove circular economy environmental stewardship stance. I don't know that you get grants written for that kind of thing in two weeks. 

The people I'm talking to, I'm saying, let's expect year two to have a bunch of grant funding. 

But year one, certainly to approach industry partners, suppliers, people for whom an audience that's very interested in the niche topics at hand is extremely valuable. Even in the hundreds, that's how niche industry podcasts work. 

It's okay, not the question of how big can we grow our audience. My question is, okay, well, how many purchasers are there for this specific conversation? 

And usually the answer is, oh. "Realistically, if a couple hundred people listen to this and they all bought something from us, we would go into complete gridlock." That would crush us. 

That's real numbers. It's not about going, depending on your topic, if you're very general, A, I'm afraid to work with you because we're competing against everybody's conversation. 

But that's the wrinkle of sort of placing a a 503C wrapper on a really cool and cooperative media project. Now that doesn't mean anybody involved has to take on a new job of podcasting or anything like that. 

But if we could bring in our platinum launch sponsors of a few businesses who support this whole idea, then that gets you rolling for a few months of making content. Then you've got examples to reach out for round two to talk to people and say, hey, we would love to bring you in. We would love to have you participate with a package of this size and shape. 

And we can justify it truly as a marketing expense, but it has the added great value of A, counting as a charitable contribution, and B, putting you into the mix with all these other people who are like-minded and who with very little effort on their parts, as a co-op for circular economy media can get a ton of bang for their buck. 

And the fact is if you participate a little bit early on and you can keep it going with participants 48 months from now, everybody who's buying packages and producing media content and getting their own media kits so their social is full and it's all sort of branded to this cooperative circular economy media machine. You're not going to have any problem getting people to then just subscribe to the idea and say, oh, 

"I'm down and I've got a budget for this. Maybe every quarter we'll do something, some sort of short feature. Maybe we'll do a series of interviews, but we can totally use this. My marketing team would love it"

When you get to that point, It's fully self-sustaining. And I don't, you know, I see on our side, we're doing this already in a couple client conversations and I've had 501C3s formed that are rolling. 

We converted a community podcast in South Jersey to a 501C3. It immediately got adopted by the local chamber of commerce as a sponsor. They're gonna run series featuring people. 
And you can picture how that would work with an industry association or organization. who would have great speakers for a podcast, but damn if they wanna spend the money to start one, I reach out to them on behalf of your circular economy project and start lining up keynote speakers or start lining up big shots for whom this all makes sense. And it just continues to sort of flourish if we've all got the right vibe, if it's fun for the people who are participating and by right vibe, I mean, you know, we're doing it for the reason we say, which is like... 

This is cool and it's smart and it's sustainable and not just for the reasons that get me excited as like a marketer, because I get to throw those words into some promo material, gold, but because those are just better conversations to have and way easier to stay excited about for the next three years of making content. And it's obviously a hot economy for that sort of vocabulary right now, whether in marketing or news or what have you. 

I think this is the kind of thing that, you know, You get calls from PR companies six months into doing a project like this and they start saying, oh, I've got somebody with a book. We'd love to have them on your show. Or you get a call and it's a news organization that says, we'd love to have that guy come on. We saw your segment about this. And the more niche and nerdy the content is, the more likely you are to actually get traditional or existing even industry legacy media to wrap their arms around you because you're the guys doing this deep dive or even this. you know, just different take or look at creating media and doing it in a way that's so sort of not only beneficial to you guys and creates a lot of visibility but that everybody, it's sort of got this philanthropic if I say vibe one more time, I'm gonna punch myself... but it feels good. I've had a great time talking about these projects.

And I do have people taking action so I wanted to put it on the table for you but That's like the sort of varsity idea is that, hey, do you really want to go bananas on this? 

Because I can tell you the top 10, for example, news category shows on the planet, they're not on your TV. They are all on YouTube. to the letter. Yeah, it's not even close actually. So, boy, there's just audience and a vacuum for intelligent, qualified content that they can't find everywhere else. So, if that initiates a conversation or at least initiates another conversation that leads to you guys maybe wanting to take action, you know where to find me. 

So, that's a very sort of nebulous and... That was sort of a hippie pitch, if you want the truth. But the traction we're seeing and the concept has been proven out and proven out by associates I work with in the industry who've gotten six figure grants without half the production experience that we have. 

So that's me admitting to you and my shame, this is the kind of pitch I should have been crafting for people six months ago, if not 18. And with that, give me a holler, 239-351-5575. 

And we can talk about. some sort of creative application for media and maybe getting associates or adjacent types to sponsor it. And that actually goes when you're not a 50, when you're not nonprofit. If you're gonna do deep dive stuff in your industry, you might get sponsors in terms of your suppliers, even people who want to serve your market with software and things like that. 

So there are ways to underwrite a show without going bananas forming a board of directors and... you know, starting a non-profit. But it's a cool idea, and those who are acting on it are making the decision quick and acting quick, and we're developing quick. So it doesn't seem to be a terrible rollout to do that, even though I am admittedly novice in this field, it all seems very sensible, and I'm also surrounded by lawyers, which helps me not make stupid mistakes. 

But, there you go. 2393515575. 
Help me let you iron this out on your side. Talk to you later.