Episode 1 – The Community Karma Podcast

Here it is! We’re ready to start down this road and Erin and I couldn’t be more excited. We thought with the first episode we’d talk a bit about why we decided to start this podcast, and what we hope to deliver to our audience in the form of information, strategy and actionable tips that will help them build a brand online and offline.

Transcript:

Intro: 00:05 Welcome to the community karma podcast with Erin Jones and Carrie Hill join as they discuss building community branding and how any business can benefit from a holistic approach to grow.

Carrie: 00:21 Hi everybody. Welcome to episode one of the community karma podcast. I’m so excited to be starting this project with my partner in crime. Erin Jones. Hello. Hello Erin.

Erin: 00:32 Hi. Good to be here.

Carrie: 00:36 We have to try really hard not to get screechy because we’re both really excited to start this. We have lots of great ideas that we can’t wait to share with everybody. Um, so we thought we kind of use this first episode as a way to introduce ourselves and our concept and our idea and talk about why the community karma podcast and I guess the history of it. Community Karma is a term that my business partner Mary Bowling coined quite a few years ago, talking about reaching out to your community and building a great brand to help with your SEO work. Well, Erin kind of comes at community karma from a different angle, but for all the same reasons. And so with Erin’s reputation management background and my SEO background and the fact that we do some of the same things, but for different reasons, we thought that this was a great way to kind of show business owners and marketers alike. The benefit of kind of creating this community, whether it’s local, you know, your local community or your online kind of global community. What did you call it? The, what would you called it? Something?

Erin: 01:56 Oh, now you’re putting me on the spot.

Carrie: 01:57 Virtual, your virtual community unity. Sorry. It was right there. I just, I couldn’t get to it. So I’ll be like a really good interviewer. And I say, so Erin, why did we decide to do a podcast?

Erin: 02:17 Well, Carrie, this is what everyone’s gonna get. They’re gonna get us real, completely transparent. And I think that was something that was getting a little bit lost in translation in blogging or, you know, doing written content. And, um, we just, we feel like this is information that, that helped us a lot as we were getting started and, that’s helped us with our clients. And we would kind of like to share that love with our community, whether that be virtual or geographical. Um, you know, we both have a lot of love for sharing information and getting things out there to the public and, and creating these communities of our own. And what better way to do than to create one. So this is kind of kind of, here we are.

Carrie: 03:04 Yeah. And so we were both at Pubcon a couple of weeks ago and we went to a session about podcasting with Dave Roher and Matt Siltala (shout out guys to the BizOfDigital podcast. We both think it’s great ). We hadn’t really talked about doing a project together, but then we were in the session and they’re talking about podcasting and we sort of looked at each other and went, Oh,

Erin: 03:35 Oh, light bulb.

Carrie: 03:38 Right. And, um, I think we both kind of are at the point now where we, like you said, writing another piece of textual content on a website, on a blog somewhere. It’s just, it’s kind of a chore now. And it’s not to say I don’t write occasionally and I don’t have things I want to share that way. But to do it on a regular basis is more of a drag than a joy. And, um, we thought this podcast format would be a really great way for us to share our enthusiasm, um, without having to write 800 words once a week, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, that, you know, I’m, I mean, you guys are all great and you read our stuff and we super appreciate that, but it’s just one more thing you have to read this, you can listen to when you’re doing the dishes or driving the kids to school or whatever. And our goal is to kind of keep it around, you know, 20 to 30 minutes, I think max per episode. We have some really cool topics lined up. We’ve got some neat little parts that we’re going to kind of plug and play like, karma kudos. And that’s just like it sounds people that are doing it right. I mean, let’s give a shout out to the brands that really are trying hard, from big to small man. And if you hear of one that you think should be featured, we’d love to hear from you. And then we also have, uh, karma catastrophes because let’s be honest, right Erin, everybody loves a good train wreck.

Erin: 05:14 Very, very true. And our hope is that in presenting some of this information that we can help some of our community prevent these kinds of disasters in their own futures. That & the entertainment value is pretty up there.

Carrie: 05:29 Yeah, for sure. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with kind of dissecting a catastrophe and thinking about, you know, no brand is catastrophe proof, right? So a lot of what Aaron does in her reputation management work is just positioning a brand so if something bad does happen, you have a plan for handling it. And you know, you have a tribe to help you have that, um, that virtual community or local community that can kind of step in as your ambassadors and say, Oh, “I think this is a fluke. This, this brand is not really awful” kind of thing. And so, um, you know, I think we can use the kudos and the catastrophes as learning experiences, right, for both sides, what to do, what not to do. And then the last thing, little kind of piece we have is what Erin aptly named and I am in love with the karma clap back where we sort of play a little bit of devil’s advocate and take both sides of an issue and, and try and come up with a few reasons why you might want to do it that way. And a few reasons you might not want to do it that way. And, um, you know, each one of these won’t be in every episode for sure. But, um, you know, when things come along that are timely and, and we’re excited to talk about them. We’ll, we’ll throw them in as we go along. I’m sure each episode we’ll have at least one because that’s how we roll right, Erin?

Erin: 06:57 Absolutely. And I think that, you know, in the issue of, of full transparency, this really helps you see what, what may or may not work for your brand applied in real life. You know, where one thing might be a total catastrophe for one industry. It could be what skyrockets and other industry, you know, into visibility and different audiences have very, very different reactions and responses to situations. So if we can help dissect that a little bit and help show how some of these responses and issues can help grow a local community, you know, be it online or in person, you know, the, the do nots, and the dos often work together. So we’re hoping that we can provide a lot of value, um, in an interesting format.

Carrie: 07:46 Sure. And I think, you know, that that goes with your brand’s voice, which is a topic we have coming up down the road for sure to kind of go in depth with creating voice for your brand. But like some brands just have a very kind of sarcastic or irreverent voice. And so they seem to be able to get away with being sarcastic and irreverent in their communications. Whereas, you know, one that comes to mind, like Duluth Trading Company, their commercials are kind of, I don’t know if I’d say crude, but kinda, I don’t know….

Erin: 08:20 maybe a little gritty,

Carrie: 08:22 A little gritty, that’s a good word for it. But that’s their brand voice and their brands identity. And so that goes along with that, that same voice and identity couldn’t work for a brand like, oh gosh, now I’m gonna draw a blank on it.

Erin: 08:36 Edward Jones,

Carrie: 08:38 Edward Jones or chase bank or something like that. Like there’s, there’s the audiences that can handle that and there’s the audiences that don’t expect that and don’t want that from you. And I think, like Erin said, there is, there’s a time and a place and there’s a brand and there’s a reason why and there’s reason not to. And, and so, um, part of our goal is to sort of help brands, whether it’s small, large single location, multi location, national, international. I feel like a lot of our content is going to apply to a wide range of audience. That’s really what our, our plan is for. Sure. Um, so, um, we hope to be, um, posting on Fridays. You know, life gets in the way and you get us raw and unfiltered for the most part. Um, so it might be Saturday, let’s be honest,

Erin: 09:38 real here and very transparent.

Carrie: 09:40 Yeah, the parent, Aaron has two small children. I have four large dot. Well, two large dogs and two small dogs that are obnoxious and two adult children and a husband and a house. And I mean, we all, we all have lives and stuff gets in the way. So if you don’t find us on Friday, maybe we’ll be there Saturday, but we’ll let you know.

Erin: 10:02 Yeah. We, we intend to be fairly reliable, but like Carrie said, life gets in the way. Um, obviously our clients need to come first. So if we have a client emergency that’s going to buffer this out a little bit at least until we’re making a million or two an episode.

Carrie: 10:17 right. Yeah. Well let me find, let me make us a patreon link and then,

Erin: 10:25 Ya know, the more you want us…..

Erin: 10:25 Although if you are interested in sponsoring, we’ll have a conversation. Thank you very much.

Erin: 10:33 Absolutely.

Carrie: 10:36 Um, so yeah, Fridays look for us. Um, my goal is to have it uploaded so that East coast commuters on Fridays would have it available on iTunes, which probably means it goes up overnight. Um, but if it’s not there, like I said, uh, don’t despair, it’ll be there soon. And, um, yeah, that’s it. That’s the, the plan. If you have an idea for a topic or you want to guest on, uh, the community karma podcast, there is a form on our website, communitykarmapodcast.com that we would like you to fill out. If you try and pitch us a topic or a guest spot by a social media or email, we’re probably not going to pay much attention to, it’s got to go on the form. Please, please, please and thank you. Love it. Use it.

Erin: 11:28 Absolutely. And in the effort of practicing what we’re preaching, um, we are in the process of building out some virtual communities for this audience so that we can really dive a little bit deeper off of the podcast on helping each other grow these brands and helping with any ideas. You know, business owners communicating with each other. It doesn’t just have to be with us. So keep an eye out on social media. Also, Community Karma Podcast. definitely on Facebook, Instagram, you know, all the standard sites and then we’ll have a private group as well. I’m still working on deciding how we’re gonna vet, how awesome you have to be to get in. But I think it’ll be a really great resource and a really great place for people to share problems and successes and you know, the real day to day life of owning a business, not just the shiny things that the public sees.

Carrie: 12:21 For sure. I’m excited for that too because you know, we both love to share knowledge and help and we have lots of ideas. In my case I do a lot of audits so I don’t have a wide variety of retainered clients that I can keep testing and trying things on, but I have lots of ideas. So, you know, being able to help people use those ideas is really appealing to me for sure. You know, and not only that, we have quite a wide network. If you run into something weird, you need some help with something, generally Erin and I can try and find you some help. That’s the goal.

Erin: 13:00 Absolutely. And the other thing is, is that great businesses elevate each other. So the better we all do at business will force other local businesses to do better. So you know, if we can help uplift this community in a way that leads to better local communities, you know, that would be a great by product of some of this effort.

Carrie: 13:21 And, and you know, being proactive and building your brand and not reactive. I can’t say enough good things about that. So that’s the Community Karma Podcast plan. We feel like hosted by, I am so excited to, Erin and I have known each other for years. I guess since like 2007 right here.

Erin: 13:44 Yeah, I was like 12,

Carrie: 13:45 You were probably seven or something like that. And I was like 50. Yeah.

Erin: 13:54 I mean we’ve been in the trenches from the beginning together. You know, we kind of started the industry close to the same time and then we were really lucky to both find passions in niches inside of that industry. And so it’s been really fun to connect and see where we cross paths and where we have parallels and where we completely don’t agree on things because I feel like even those disagreements really spur a lot of growth for me especially. Um, you know, I, I feel very, very lucky to have been able to maintain a professional and personal friendship with you over the miles and the years and all of the crazy things that life has thrown at us.

Carrie: 14:31 Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that I love about working with Erin is that, um, we both sort of give each other different perspectives on things and I think that that’s an advantage to anybody, to have somebody to say, well, yeah, that’s true. But you could look at it from this point of view as well. And I think that’s why doing this kind of a podcast with a partner is so amazing because we sort of look at things, some things we’re very alike on and some things we’re not alike at all. And so being able to bring different experience and different sides to a problem or to an issue, or to a topic even can provide multiple opportunities for growth on anybody’s part. So I’m hoping that that kind of relationship between us can help you guys learn more about community and brand building and the benefits of it for SEO, for local branding, for community outreach, for building the karma within your virtual or local community. And you know, that’s the plan. So

Erin: 15:41 Yeah,

Carrie: 15:43 Right on. We’re going to wrap it up here. Get to work on our next episode, which is going to post this Friday. This is sort of a one off, it’s gonna post in the middle of the week, I believe on Tuesday or Wednesday. So we’ll have our first real episode posting Friday. We’d love to hear your feedback. We’re going to keep comments off on the website, but you know, you can get ahold of us via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, any of those other places. Um, we’d love to hear what you think, even if it’s a, “I can’t hear you”, or “your audio is crap, Carrie” You know, please let us know. So, we’ll be in touch, look for the next episode and thank you so much for tuning into the community karma podcast.

Erin: 16:27 Can’t wait till next time.

Outro: 16:33 Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe via iTunes, Google podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. And don’t forget to sign up for reminders via the website, communitykarmapodcast.com. See you next time.