► Tell us about you and your podcast
A group of us from the telecommunications industry, thus the Bunch, started this podcast to shed light on the amazing work everyday Americans are doing to better their communities, schools and neighbors' lives by fighting for and deploying broadband. The pandemic put a spotlight on a very real problem in our modern world: digital inequity. Our mission is to continue raising awareness of this gap, as well as connect the communities that need each other to solve this problem quickly, affordable and effectively.
Our hosts and ambassadors are a collection of telecom professionals from different parts of the ecosystem. We come together to ensure all aspects of how broadband is changing our world are expressed.
Our listeners are the community leaders, policymakers and technologies charged with funding and delivering better internet infrastructure for their countries.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
We started this podcast in June 2019, after hearing so many stories of heroic efforts by normal citizens to bring broadband to their town or school. From retired professors, lawyers, construction workers, and teachers we were amazed at the passion and conviction of these individuals to risk their own well-being to solve the digital access problems.
Our aim was to shed light on the everyday folks who decided no one was going to fix the broadband problem, so they did it themselves. Over time, we added educational content, resources and found ways to unite our community to help us attack the broadband problem globally.
Little did we know that Covid would hit and amplify everything we were seeing, raising the stakes for all of us to find solutions fast.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We release two episodes a week as well as host monthly panel discussions monthly.
It takes us about three days to record, edit, transcribe and approve an episode.
Finding time is always a challenge, but our community is passionate and willing to be creative in helping us carve out time.
We are self-funded through contributions.
We spend about $300 per episode all in.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
We only are working with non-financial sponsors at this time. We want to stay objective and don't want funding to obfuscate our editorial direction.
We are not monetizing the podcast at this time. We are simply focused on building our reach and expanding our partnerships/ecosystem.
Our first sponsorship came from Utopia Fiber after interviewing them for the show. They quickly saw the value and need we were filling.
We are tracking about 1500 listens per month.
Professionally, this helps us expand our network, meet interesting people doing meaningful work.
► How does your podcasting process look like?
We outsource our post-production - I can get the details about the stack/systems they are using.
We use Zencaster for remote recording. We use Zoom H6 digital audio recorder, Sennheiser HD 280 headsets, Sennheiser MD46 mics, RDL 4-Channel Stereo Distribution Amp and assorted cables.
We use Soundcloud for hosting and Rev for transcription.
We have a pre-call with our guests to explain the process, and walk through key messages. We close that meeting with a flow of the show and schedule the record. Once we record, we provide a preview to the guest for approval, while we transcribe the episode. We convert the transcription into a blog post.
Then publish all assets and then publish social media/emails to promote the episode.
► How do you market your show?
All of our audience has been gained organically. We are not in a financial position to invest in advertising and other promotional tactics. We have built our audience through social media and working with our sponsors and guests to grow our reach. We attend industry events to do person-on-the-street interviews and support press rooms. The majority of our audience comes from ITunes and Google podcasts.
Given the community we serve, our best channels are Twitter and Linkedin.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Start small (one episode per month) but don't launch until you have enough content for 6 months.
Focus on content creation first! Don't over-engineer your episodes or process, it typically becomes hard to manage over time. Audiences love consistency: timing, release schedule, production value.
Once you've mastered content generation and honed your operational processes, focus on growing your reach. Most of your time in this phase should be spent on engaging with your audience, promoting your content and finding new topics and speakers.
Learn by doing - just start recording, publishing and sharing - it's the best teacher!