Preparing to Podcast - Decentralized Inputs Appreciated!!

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(Edited)

It is with great trepidation that I find myself all planned out, ready to do the first test-record this weekend and get myself started. Podcasting.

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Living in Thailand these last 20 years, much has changed. In my Thai business, perhaps the greatest change has been technology, and the legal-tax-immigration framework within which we conduct our business.

Big step back. Firstly, what do I do? I run a fair trade, sustainable & natural company here in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, producing wellness, body care & lifestyle products which we ship all over the world. Pure Thai Naturals.

What makes us unique??

We are a social enterprise, Thai family business working with displaced ethnic Karen people to create opportunity and social profit.

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It's quite the challenge having people relying on you so they can EAT - and these are largely stateless people who have no employment benefits or income, no right to work, per se, and no citizenship in any country. They're surviving high in the mountain regions with a lot of Christian NGOs (shudder) and few prospects. They're not looking for charity, but opportunity. And they happen to be camped out in some of the most pristine, organic land that is (thankfully) not hospitable to big business or mass tourism.

We teach them to grow what we need, buy it all back, and use the raw organic materials to make niche products.

I've been steadily blogging on Hive for 4 years now, and have a nucleus of core supporters who are really into what we do. But, fundamentally, they're not really CUSTOMERS buying product in any sort of volume. And volume is what's needed to enable this growing refugee community to survive after more than 70 years of civil war. When I share my Hive posts to my facebook pages, I get comments of some frustration from my followers who would like to comment on the blogs, but can't without opening a Hive account.

If there's one thing I've learned from 16 years on facebook etc, it's that I utterly dislike it. And it's also increasingly less profitable. Short form content creation is also a HUGE time sucker! You spend half a day creating some snappy bit of IG content that literally has a shelf life of not even 2 days. Blogs and long form content? They're not winners in terms of SEO in a world where video and other formats are automatically outranking them.

Unlike many podcasters, I have a HUGE and unique story to tell. And I've been working HARD to set my podcasting program up for success.

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Each week I will interview one guest. My Thai sound/video guy will edit the raw files to create x1 audio podcast of about 25 mins (for RSS & spotify) and a 5 mins video highlights version for youtube. All of those obviously will be shared via my mainstream social media to help build SEO and drive traffic to build audience and, ultimately, sales. During that week I will publish some long-form blog versions of the content and am thinking to create a separate account here in Hive specifically for that - publish that original blog content simultaneously to my own website and to the Hive account. Thoughts?

Which brings me to the reason for this post: how best to engage with the decentralized Hive world with this content?

I'm 100000% open to dialogue and suggestions, but NEED people who respond to this post to understand that only using Hive right now is not an option - it simply doesn't lead to sales right now and we need mainstream appeal to drive enough sales to enable us to do the work we do with the refugee communities.

  • So, who is doing a great podcast I should be learning from and perhaps emulating?

  • Who is using Hive effectively to bridge the world between mainstream and decentralized social media?

  • What should I NOT do in terms of publishing content on Hive that's "out there" on other platforms?

Hive gurus - I'm ready. Hit me. @jeanlucsr I'd REALLY appreciate some guidance!

I have the first 2 months of guests agreed and confirmed, great microphone, the questions developed and my editor guy on standby.

How can I both showcase and use Hive to my advantage, whilst still publishing mainstream and driving sales?

Braced & ready for your input! 😆



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Come check out my Pure Thai Naturals online store

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Find me on Twitter: Pure Thai Naturals @BreugelMarike & @HiveLift



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24 comments
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(Edited)

https://twitter.com/BreugelMarike/status/1492026053841195009
https://twitter.com/Riverflowws/status/1492034779528982532
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the person sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.

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Can you remind me again how to open a new account? I've done it a few times but soooo infrequently LOL.... I have combed every option on my account and it's not intuitive or clear. Or do I simply create a new account at the PeakD login point and use my own referral code?? Help pls. Almost reinstalled discord just now but heck.... I really want to streamline my processes online!! LOL...

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I wish I could help!!! I saw something about your podcast come up on Facebook? Love the idea of it's own blog/account so it auto posts to save you the trouble. x

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I changed up my Natural Thai Life facebook page to be Natural Impact Podcast, since it has 600 odd likes from people interested in what I'm gonna be talking about. Trouble is FB has started "showing" the page to people (like you) before I'm 100% ready.... LOL. I LOVE that I have manifested myself out of procrastination & stage fright. 😆

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It is a good idea. I've been starting to post my own off-hive podcasts and was wondering if it could be done.

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Oooh - cool - can you share the link for me here please?

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no worries! At the moment we're on anchor https://anchor.fm/ligaya-garden
but shifting soon. We also work with another group called Agriadventures and we do a live show that's streamed and will be turned into podcast episodes https://www.agriadventures.com.au/online-live-experiences/

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Oh that looks like some good listening ahead. Shifting from anchor to RSS? Shifting why?

Forgive my podcasting newbie-curious questions. 😁

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Woohoo!!

Awesome Marike! Looking forward to this.

In case you haven't met @epodcaster, Marike, meet Jennifer! She is awesome and probably will answer the questions better than I ever will.

A couple of things to consider:

  • Make sure you check out https://aureal.one/. It is the podcasting platform of Hive
  • As for mainstream, a lot of people use anchor.fm, because it has the best distribution. But... it is the most centralized option and basically they host and semi-own your content
  • Facebook Pages has a podcasting feature, just connect your rss feed and it's set up
  • Definitely check out Twitter Spaces

So basically, you use Mainstream to generate traffic and Hive to monetize. There is nothing wrong with that. In the ideal situation you host on Hive and drive the mainstream traffic to Hive. But, not sure how realistic that currently is.

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and am thinking to create a separate account here in Hive specifically for that - publish that original blog content simultaneously to my own website and to the Hive account. Thoughts?

The Exxp Wordpress Plugin is a great way to have the best of both worlds.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/exxp-wp/

Post on your blog using Exxp to autopost to Hive. Bonus is that your blog post readers and commenters can also see the comments (and earnings) from Hive.

*Thanks for the ping @jeanlucsr. I'm always glad to encourage more folks to dive into the wonderful world of podcasting. *

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Hey @epodcaster - we use shopify due to contractual commitments with retail partners and NOT wordpress. Also shopify works better and so much easier to manage for non-techies like me!!

I'm happy to manually upload the podcast manually to RSS and aureal.one

Curious if there is any frowning re uploading the same file on both sites? And what might the reaction be if I ALSO upload that same file to my spotify account??

My SHARING via mainstream social media would be primarily from the hive blog containing the aureal.one and RSS links - but I want to be on spotify for content discovery & SEO reasons, since the primary purpose is to grow a new audience for sales. I don't mind doing it manually every week - is there any reason I shouldn't? I'm thinking host on RSS, upload to spotify and then also upload to aureal.one. All links to all 3 platforms on my purethainaturals.com shopify store. And then highlights with video goes on youtube (again for content discovery reasons and SEO). And then a couple of long-form blog posts exploring the same content in words/pics via Hive blog. Thoughts??

Getting this part sorted is doing my head in - and I want to do it WELL.

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"we use shopify..."

I'm not personally familiar with Shopify's backend. However, it does look like Shopify has RSS feed apps and podcast players in their app store. Will they be your podcast host as well? If not, Aureal.one or even 3Speak are hosting options if you want to utilize what Hive has to offer. In the traditional podcasting space there are hosting companies like Blubrry, Libsyn, Buzzsprout and so many others.

"Curious if there is any frowning re uploading the same file on both sites?"

You only need to host your podcast episode audio files in one place and then share your RSS feed with directories/aggregators.

"And then highlights with video goes on youtube (again for content discovery reasons and SEO)."

Agreed! YouTube is one of the top 3 locations people listen to podcasts. Which is sort of a surprise, but also sort of an obvious choice. Since YouTube is number two for search. Having podcasts (audio only with album art/audiogram) or a video version of your podcast on YouTube is a good idea. Discoverability and search is key. Plus we don't want to limit where our audience can discover our podcast.

Words of Wisdom: RSS = Freedom
Own your work. The great thing about using your own RSS feed is that you can change hosts whenever you want without losing your listeners because they are subscribed to YOUR RSS feed and not any third party RSS feed. So, host anywhere you want, but submit your RSS feed to directories.

Best of luck with your podcasting adventure. Cheers!

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podfathergear.com

Take a look at the No Agenda podcast, and see what @brianoflondon is doing with podping for the podcast index.

Cheers!

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Agreed. What @brianoflondon and other developers are doing in the Podcasting 2.0 space is changing the very nature of how podasters, developers, listeners, etc engage, support, and grow. #Value4Value

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Agree @epodcaster and @ecoinstant - have been watching and following @brianoflondon since the beginning on Hive - but his style and purpose for podcasting is very different to what I'm trying to achieve, which is fundamentally an informational support structure to drive a retail store.

I'm actually finding very few good podcasters in this niche... and the retail driver I have changes the kind of platforms I need to be on.

It's the bridge building part between mainstream and decentralized I'm struggling with - most people on Hive would rather burn those bridges down, it seems. 🤣 And so would I. But we grow decentralized social media ultimately by showing it off in the mainstream world, as an alternative.

I'm unclear about the "original content" and putting my same audio files on 3 platforms. Yes, it's all mine. But what can of worms might I inadvertently be opening??

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

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The RSS feed is still yours. Adding in the value block (#Value4Value) is what enables the your listeners (using Podcasting 2.0 enabled apps from www.newpodcastapps.com) to "Stream SATS" or send you "Boostigrams"

Anyone subscribed to your show with the exact same RSS feed and listening on a legacy podcast app (Apple, Spotify, etc) will not see the value block or any of the Podcasting 2.0 namespace features. Those features can only be seen and engaged with with a podcast app that is built specifically for the new namespace features.

BTW, you do not need to make the decision to add in the value block or any other Podcasting 2.0 features before launching your show. You can make the decision when you are ready. There is a simple process to add these in later.

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Yes, I think its best to think of podcasting 2.0 as a protocol, not a style. You can make your own style, and podcasting needs that!

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One of the things I’ve learned with those platforms and things is to just get out there and do it! We’ve made a bunch of videos now for YouTube, none that I’ll be sharing on hive here but we swirled the idea around for making a YT channel for a while. We eventually just went ahead and did it! We don’t have a lot of followers but one of the important things is to have content out there waiting for people to consume. If you can have a decent base of content and keep it consistent I think the exposure and success will come in time.

An important thing with FB and YT as well though is comments and activity are critical! If the stuff gets views but no comments there’s little reach. If there’s a bunch of comments though and quick replies it ranks it higher on peoples lists for things to check out.

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