Speaker 1 00:06 Hello, and welcome back to the audience podcast. I'm your host Craig Hewitt from Casios. And this episode I'm joined by Ashley and Gaylen from the Belo collective. Bella collective is a really popular online publication covering kind of all aspects of podcasting, a lot of, kind of best of lists and a lot of curated content around other shows that people are putting out there. The Belo collective is a really unique publication in this space and that they have a large contributor base and not just one or two people's voices. That's why I wanted to have Ashley and Gaylin on today to talk about how they manage this kind of community aspect in this almost crowdsourced content creation that they have here. We dive into that and a lot more in this episode, I hope you enjoy this episode with Ashley and Galen from the Belo collective.
Speaker 0 00:52 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:57 Ashley and Galen in kind of your own words. Can you give folks an idea of kind of where Belo collective tries to sit in the podcasting, I'll say kind of education, updates, inspiration kind of ecosystem.
Speaker 2 01:10 So we are a publication, a digital publication and a newsletter. And our main mission is to amplify hide casters, especially independent voices and provide resources for podcasters who are getting started to looking to grow. I'm looking to find new approaches to making their work and also really carved out originally was carve out. And now I would say it's deepen and widen the space for criticism in the podcasting space. When the publication was started, we like there was very little criticism and it was kind of all sort of ad hoc and the medium was quasi developed, but there were not a lot of people speaking about it and around it. And so that was the goal of the collective. And that continues to be our goal as well as helping people to, you know, develop their own critical years and to develop their own craft.
Speaker 3 02:07 I know out to that, you know, when we first started, which was in 2016, there were not a lot of ways to discover new podcasts. You didn't have the really robust interface that you have on Apple podcasts or pocket cast or any of these other mechanisms where you had people who were curating and thinking about how to elevate those voices. And so bellow collective was really started as a way for this community of folks who knew about podcasts and were excited about podcasts and saw the potential in the medium to really have conversations about podcasting his potential and to share episodes and to really look deeply at everything from someone, you know, this old idea of people podcasting in their garage or in their basement, and really speaking to a small audience to networks like NPR, who really had a lot of ownership in that space. And as the community has grown, and there are more people who are about this,
Speaker 2 03:00 You know, we've been fortunate to continue to have a role in an elevating voices that people might not have heard about through more traditional means,
Speaker 1 03:08 Use the term community. Uh, I think before we started recording to, to describe what bellow is today. So it's not just a digital publication, but it's a community where there's kind of this one to many or many to many dialogue going on in your circles. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about? Because I think that's like the Holy grail for a lot of us. It's like we're doing a lot of this for an end goal of, of connection with people and for them connecting with each other in our world, I'd love to hear kind of how that morphed from just a publication.
Speaker 2 03:42 The publication was created by two women, Dana Grueber, Margie and Brittany Jesuit, who each had a newsletter that recommended podcasts for the recommended podcasts. And this was in 2016. There was, as Ashley said, not a ton of opportunity to discover podcasts outside of word of mouth. And they really had two of the first newsletters that were trying to surface podcasts, and they realized that they were each speaking to an audience, but they could do a lot more if they joined forces and build their audience together and also brought in other people. And so they evolved from having just these two wonderful newsletters to establishing the site and this publication, this static publication, as opposed to an inbox based publication. And from there, the collective has grown. And we, I think one thing that sets us apart from some other publications is the range of voices.
Speaker 2 04:38 So we have different people who recommended our newsletter and who write articles, whether that's on a one time basis or throughout the course of our lifetime, as a publication who all like different shows. And, you know, some people listen to fiction and some people listen to a lot of like NPR shows and some people listen to more chat casts. And that enables us to talk to, I think, a much wider range of listeners and readers. And then we also have a Slack community where our writers and our members are able to hang out and talk. And that is really the sort of robust, active 24 seven space where our community is coming together. But I would say we're also, you know, I would say we also have a Twitter community and we also have our newsletter as a community. And these are the people that we're talking to.
Speaker 2 05:27 It's really exciting to be able to, you know, ask people the newsletter, Hey, this is what we're thinking about. This is an event we're going to, this is a playlist that we just published, let us know, you know, are you going to be here? Are, do you have a recommendation? Because again, I think sometimes the recommendations can be rather one sided where you go to a discover page, you go to a place and you are absorbing and finding out what other people are recommending. And then you, as a listener also have all these wonderful recommendations and shows that you get. And so we really try to give opportunities for our readers to be able to recommend things to us that we can then pass on to other readers
Speaker 3 06:10 Dialogue is very much the spirit of what Bello is about. And it's, I think folks who are regular readers of either the website or the newsletter know that when Galen and I approached that, it's, it's very much with the dialogue in mind and we regularly invite people to offer that feedback. And, you know, to the point of our Slack community, I mean, it's, it's certainly a bit of a family for me in that regard, in that we have these folks who are interacting and are passionate about the things that they're listening to, not just as a form of art, which I think we all agree podcasting is, but really what they're learning from that and how it has impacted their day to day lives. So there's very much a, an intentionality and a dialogue to what we're doing.
Speaker 1 06:52 Was it difficult when you were getting your Slack group started to kind of foster that communication, but I would guess based on what you just said about kind of discussion and dialogue, being the cornerstone of a lot of what you do and it kind of being embedded in ecosystem and the, and the listenership and the readership that it was a pretty natural transition. Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 07:11 That's a great question. And this is something going back to the intentionality of that community that we have talked about a lot initially with the original editors, uh, you know, Galen and I were there pretty early and the origins of Belo and now are the primary editors and owners of the publication. And as the community has evolved and grown and people have come in and people have left and, you know, as their lives change and their relationship to podcasting and audio changes, you know, we decided a few years ago to make sure that we had community guidelines that were in place for every new member and every new writer who joins. And we are pretty clear about the fact that our entire Slack community is off the record and that you have to have, if you, if there's something that you would like to have on the record, or maybe you're working on something, and you'd like to take that information and share with your team outside of the community, that you get that in writing from the folks that you're looking to share that information from. And we just found that that established a different level of trust and candor for the community by having those guidelines in place. And so whenever someone joins a collective, you know, when we have a new member who supports us on Patrion at a specific level, and they're invited to join the community, they agree to those community guidelines before they're actually invited in. And I think I've just personally found that that really inspires a level of trust that we might not have otherwise.
Speaker 1 08:34 Yeah, no, I can imagine. I think even now in 2020, a lot of people are hesitant about really sharing the good stuff. The really kind of emotional connections are the things that create the emotional connections that we're all looking for. And so giving the permission and kind of the disclosure that everything you say here stays here, uh, and, and isn't shared outside, I think really smart. I would love to hear a bit more about like, kind of the nuts and bolts, or maybe the lessons you've learned about kind of onboarding and managing expectations and really what the workflow looks like with all the different contributors you have to the publication. Cause I mean, that's a real project I'm sure Galen has that, has that been hard to kind of get working smoothly, to have so many people contributing to kind of one voice?
Speaker 2 09:22 Yeah. I mean, that's a constant conversation that we have is who is contributing. How can we make sure that our contributors remain engaged, that we are always keeping that dialogue open as we've talked about and keeping that community active and open, I would say it's evolved over the time. It's interesting having gone from starting as a writer like Ashley and I joined the collective and began writing really at its inception. And so going from there to being an editor and seeing it evolve from one or two articles to this robust site, we like Ashley said, part of that evolution has been writing, you know, writer guidelines and putting in place a contract and making sure that we are setting up the expectations as much as possible at the beginning of this is the timeline. This is what our process looks like. This is what it means to pitch.
Speaker 2 10:14 We have a pretty robust editing process. So, you know, making sure people know we're going to be going through multiple drafts and just making sure that people understand as much as possible at the beginning, what we look for in an article and what the process is going to look like for them. And we going back to the Slack community, we try as much as possible to give people different ways to pitch articles or pitch series and, you know, have spaces even within that community where there is sort of a separate space for writers to be talking about ideas or articles they want to see. We have also put in place, um, various tracking mechanisms. Um, so, you know, making sure that that, because people come and go because people aren't necessarily always contributing to every newsletter. For example, we want to make sure that there's consistency across the newsletter, that we're not recommending the same show over and over because somebody might really love that show and want to recommend it all the time.
Speaker 2 11:14 And like we have to hold ourselves back, you know, Ashley and I as contributors and that as well, and making sure that, you know, we are maintaining the kind of diversity, making sure we, you know, have an idea of what countries are the, are the podcasts that we're recommending coming from. Are we accidentally skewing towards having, you know, way more U S shows, even though we have mostly us writers, then we would really like to have, and always kind of encouraging people. And sometimes that's saying this newsletter is going to be focused on this one type of show, or we're going to do sort of a theme for a holiday that's happening or something. And speaking of holidays, I mean, we have a couple of events and annual moments in our life as a publication. One of those is the 100 list, which is a hundred outstanding podcast episodes, which we publish every year.
Speaker 2 12:03 And we have since the first year 2016. And so we always have that as kind of a moment to look forward to and a sort of exciting moment where we are all coming together and not just building this publication that goes out, you know, the newsletter every other week or these specific articles, but something that everybody is coming together to create. And then we have a holiday that the collective invented a few years ago where we celebrate that's specifically about giving back to the community, you know, and rating your favorite shows and reviewing your favorite shows and talking about how you can donate and all of those things. And that's another kind of nice moment where, where we can all remember why we're doing what we're doing.
Speaker 3 12:45 I think something, you know, Galen said there it's important for us and talking with folks who are associated with the collective or who read our website or our newsletter, we view ourselves as active participants in the shows that we love and that if we love these shows, and if we find value in the programming, then it's our job to think of ways to support them. And that can be through, you know, a financial donation, but that can also be through a good review so that other folks help find them, or, you know, when you're in, in positions to be able to recommend them to other people that you do that. So we really try and activate our listeners to be active listeners. And the, in the process,
Speaker 1 13:23 You mentioned a kind of diversity and inclusion and kind of being a, an open publication that welcome certainly and encourages participation from all nationalities and walks of life and backgrounds. I'm surprised just in podcasting in general, how I'll say how poorly this is performed, uh, and podcasting that, you know, gender and race and nationality and creed and religion, and none of this is something that nobody's supposed to talk about. But I think, you know, right now we all kind of have to be, especially is, is why do you think that in a medium, like podcasting that is so accessible to so many people that it's not more diverse kind of already,
Speaker 2 14:04 I think that a sort of quote, unquote, democratic open access medium like this without really intentional actions can often just replicate the inequalities that exist elsewhere. And I think that's kind of the base of it. I think podcasting has sort of two ancestral legacy is, or two major ancestral legacy is, and one of them is public radio and one of them is blogging. And the public radio ancestral legacy, you know, is one of traditional media. And so that already is going to be dominated by certain voices. And I think the blogging side, there's the same kind of problem that, that there always is of whose voices then get recognized and whose voices get lifted up. And who's in community with whom and are we seeing those communities connecting or are they sort of talking to themselves?
Speaker 3 14:57 And when you, I mean, when you look at major media institutions who could be, or are covering this topic, you know, there's a diversity problem there as well. And so the people who are assigning these stories may not be looking in the same places that we try to, to try and find the next great profile. I think that's something that we've been really proud of. You know, we had, in our earliest days, we had an interview with the anonymous Breakmaster cylinder and founder really fun way to be able to interview them. Uh, we recently had a great profile on Caitlin pressed and her new network, mermaid palace. And we also recently had a really wonderful profile with Avery Truffleman. And so we're always looking for, for the next voice, someone who's doing something unique and we're excited about finding those and discovering them and sharing them with other people.
Speaker 1 15:47 That's exactly it. I think from my perspective, looking at all my show and your shows and everybody out there is, is like, anybody can make it right. And, but guessing is you don't have to know somebody, you don't have to go to the best college. You don't have to be from anywhere. If you make the best content, the chances are you're going to be successful. And that's, what's really great. And so I think it gives, I hope that it gives a lot of people hope that, you know, they can kind of break in and make it if you will, in the medium. And that's super cool. Cause I think that by its nature, it is really accessible, which is great. If more of that kind of indie blog spirit winds through
Speaker 3 16:23 The reason why we are attracted to those voices are these are often people who are also making audio and unconventional ways in situations. And this was part of the inspiration for why we created our podcast one Oh one section, which really looks at how to make a podcast from a technical perspective, how to think about it from a business perspective. And then as you are ready to launch your podcast, like how do you make sure that you're finding and connecting with your audiences and making good decisions in that post-launch space? And so that's another section that we've really intentionally built out to help be a resource for folks who just don't have traditional structures or who are thinking about audio. That looks a little unconventional.
Speaker 1 17:04 One thing that I think contributes a lot to people being successful, uh, and, and making it and being a full time podcast, or which I think is the dream of a lot of us is finding a way to, to monetize their content or their brand. If you will, in some way, that's authentic and aligns with their values. You all had a really great piece talking about when we make art and money. So this like fusion or this balance of like podcasting as a passion and a side hustle or a way to earn money, I'd love to hear kind of what you've seen and kind of what you've seen from the community around this. Because I think it's something a lot of people struggle with internally, at least.
Speaker 2 17:42 Yeah. I mean, it is a challenge. I think that's not a challenge that's entirely unique to podcasting. I think that's, that's sort of to say is that, you know, there's always the conflict when you're trying to make something artistic between, you know, how do you make what you really want to make and how do you make something that's gonna succeed in the market. And I think that's why a lot of people, you don't have day jobs and are making work on the side, which should be fair. Like, I think it's completely valid. I mean, I have a day job. Bella was not my job. And I think that that's a completely understandable and fair way to be doing things. I don't know. I mean, I think it's been interesting for me to see all of the different ways that people approach this problem within the space, both from an individual perspective and the kind of tools that are out there, whether they are something like a Patrion or, you know, different tipping functions and membership functions, whether that's ads, you know, whether that's, um, grants and, and, uh, connecting with institutions and, and sort of joining together in that way.
Speaker 2 18:46 I don't know if it's a problem that can really be totally solved. I think it's going to be an eternal struggle that everyone finds in their own way. It's also been interesting for me to see the way that this happens on the individual level, in terms of, for example, having a day job and then creating a podcast on the side that you're not monetizing or trying to monetize in a much more limited way. And then the way that, that happens on the larger scale with something like pre Spotify Gimlet, having Gimlet creative, and then which made branded content and Gimlet studios, which creates shows that are not branded. And I think that happens all over the place where individuals are finding a way to do work, that supplements that paid work, that's maybe not their heart's desire that supplements the work that is their heart's desire. And then on the larger scale doing the same thing. And that is a model that I assume that I think is successful financially. And for many people successful sort of spiritually and emotionally as well.
Speaker 3 19:46 And I think we support people who want to make podcasts or audio that isn't intended to be funded or isn't intended to make money. I think we talk with a lot of folks who maybe have two gallons point day jobs in podcasting or audio, but who also make this separate thing that may be a very experimental form of audio that are just completely for themselves or for their friends and their family and folks who are interested in an unconventional audio. I think Sarah guys had a really great experience or she had, it was called audio playground. And it was really just this project that encouraged people to go out and practice making sounds. And she would offer these prompts. And I don't think for most people that those prompts or the audio that they collected were necessarily intended to end up anywhere. It was really about the action of going out and collecting these great pieces of audio and looking at sound in a different way, telling a story in a different way and making that for themselves. And for others,
Speaker 2 20:44 We've talked about kind of doing what you love and the content that you want
Speaker 1 20:48 To make and juxtaposing that, or you contrasting that against making money and doing this as a full time job. Do you think that that is a different balance that we have to try to strike and podcasting versus say blogging or YouTube channeling? And why like, do you think it's a unique problem to podcasting or can a blogger write whatever they want and people will come and read it and they can make money on ads or product placement or whatever.
Speaker 2 21:14 I think blogging is much easier blogging. It has a much lower barrier to entry. It always, I always sort of pushed back against like, there's such a low barrier to entry to podcasting because it takes a lot of time. It takes technical knowhow. It takes resources. I think the real barrier, the lowest aspect of the barrier to entry to podcasting is that, you know, if you are able to speak, you know, you speak, it's not like writing. It is something that we are all doing all the time and blogging. I think again, like in certain ways as much lower barrier entry, the technical skill is much lower. The sort of different pieces. You don't have to go over here for hosting over there to get a mic. And you know, here to figure out how to use squad cats and everything. You can just go to medium or WordPress and, you know, set it up much more easily.
Speaker 2 21:59 But I think what is interesting about podcasting is that it's so much easier to connect to an audience and people spend so much time if they are podcasts listeners, often listening to podcasts. And there is a lot of content out there, but generally any individual show, it takes a long time to sort of rack up X, many episodes. And so I think that's something that's different about podcasting. I don't think it's such a big difference in terms of like, how do we balance making work that's meaningful and being able to make a living? I think that's an issue that's very much a multidisciplinary issue.
Speaker 3 22:36 I, 100% agree, Galen, you put that so eloquently, but there may, I think because we are having this moment where people are really discovering podcasts at a mass scale, there may be additional pressure to monetize that or to feel like there are certain markers of success that by not achieving those, you haven't achieved success. And I think, you know, we, that's something we really try. We are not listening for podcasts that have perfect sound. A lot of our favorite shows. Don't and I think we want to celebrate the fact that people are making these sometimes with limited knowledge, but always with interesting stories.
Speaker 1 23:11 Yeah. I think one thing that we see a lot, uh, along those lines is that the benchmark for success, if you're just talking about downloads is, is very different for every podcast and every audience they're talking to and kind of what the purpose of their show is. And I think if we all give ourselves a little bit of grace there to say, like, I am not Joe Rogan, I'm never going to be Joe Rogan. I'm never going to have a million downloads an episode, but I could still have a very successful podcast for myself and kind of serve my audience and give them what they're looking for. Even if my audience is only a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand people, you know, I can still be very successful myself in that. And maybe not in abstract terms kind of relative to some other podcasters, but I think that's important for folks to realize, especially if you look at across different genres and for different purposes and different audience audience types,
Speaker 3 23:58 I love that Craig from your mouth to listeners ears.
Speaker 2 24:01 Yeah. And I like, I'm not, I'm not the first to make this idea up, but I think it's important in terms of people who are listening and are creating their own show in whatever stage, whether they've just come up with the idea or whether they've been making it for five years, I think it's worthwhile to kind of introspect and interrogate for yourself. What does success mean? Does that mean I have a hundred listeners adapt, you know, an episode doesn't mean I get retweeted by one of my heroes. Does it mean, you know, I put out 10 episodes this year and I think that does look really different for everybody. And obviously for some people that is, I have huge numbers or I am able to make a fulltime living on this or I'm able to pay for hosting. And I don't think there's any single marker of success. That is the correct one that anybody should be necessarily aspiring to, which I think in podcasting, like in any creative medium, again, can be easy to lose sight of in, uh, especially when you see your favorite podcasters out there hitting milestones and, or your friends podcasts, you know, and feel like, Oh, is that what I should be doing?
Speaker 1 25:10 Yeah. I tell you, I'll, I'll stop doing this when I don't enjoy it. But for the, for the moment, uh, I'm having a blast and yeah, I mean, we have a very different metric for success here than I think a lot of people and that's cool. So I don't really look at our numbers that much cause I hear from our customers and our audience members. Wow. I love that last episode. This thing you were talking about was really interesting. We have a Facebook group where we kind of get this dialogue and, and as long as I'm hearing that, I'm great. I'll hop on the mic once or twice a week and, and chat with folks like y'all, if it's serving our audience. Cause that's, I mean, for me, that's the metric,
Speaker 3 25:43 That's, you know, Craig, that's so important because you know exactly who it is you're trying to reach. And when we talk with often new producers or people who are thinking about making their podcasts for the first time, they're like we ask who your audience is and they say, it's everybody. I want everybody to listen to this. And if you're making a podcast for everybody or making a podcast for nobody, I think a lot about Stephen King and his book on writing talked about his ideal reader and it was his wife. And he could imagine how he wanted his wife to feel when she would read a certain passage. And if, if he didn't see that reaction or he couldn't guess that she would have that reaction, he knew he had to go back and revisit it. And so I think for shows, thinking about who's listening, who's on the other end of the head of the headphones of the earbuds and what is their reaction to what you're saying and who are you speaking to? I think that makes ultimately for a much sharper podcast or a much sharper piece of audio because you know who you're talking to and you know what they're looking for.
Speaker 1 26:39 I have not heard that story. I love it though. Cause yeah, we talk a lot about audience and yeah. Give them a name and, you know, gender and location and age and pains and aspirations and stuff like that. And yeah, I think if you can do that, then it makes a lot of those decisions. Like you're talking about a lot easier. That's cool. I have one last question and this is a total kind of geeky left brain question, but I think folks might find it interesting is, um, your website is a, uh, a publication. So I think it's rather natural that it's based on medium, but um, I think, uh, these days, at least we don't see a lot of entire websites on medium. I would love to hear kind of your experience about kind of the site running on medium and what you, what you like and what you don't like. I think, you know, a lot of people use WordPress and Squarespace and places like that, but I haven't run across like an entire site on medium in a while. So I'd love to hear kind of your impression of it at this point.
Speaker 3 27:31 You know, Greg, this has been a bit of a journey for us. Um, we originally as a publication started on WordPress and uh, moved the site pretty quickly over to medium. And part of, of our thinking around that is that it had a pretty clear interface. We didn't have to maintain the parts of a site like security or worrying about whether we'd had the latest patch or update or things like that. And it made it pretty easy for us to work with writers who were submitting their work as well. We've been able to use the template for medium to really create an aesthetic that we feel comfortable with and our navigation we've customized and things like that. But I think that we see that there are some drawbacks to that too. You know, we feel that sometimes maybe we're not easily found like medium can feel a little bit like a walled garden.
Speaker 3 28:23 I don't think it comes up quite as easily and a lot of search results and things like that. And so those are all things that we're taking into consideration as we look around the next corner of where, where we go next from a platform perspective, but really, you know, it's Galen and I who are managing the site from both an editorial, a technical, we are also writers ourselves. And so we have a lot of hands on work that we do elsewhere where having this technical aspect for right now, anyway, having that coming off of our plates is, is really helpful.
Speaker 1 28:53 Yeah. I love the concept of medium. I know I feel old a couple of years ago it was a lot hotter, I would say. And a lot more interesting. A lot of people were publishing stuff first there. And I think that's almost a little like podcasting, right? Like there's one place or two places where you can go to get a bunch of different information. And I think that's really, that would be really nice if that's what our that's kind of, how things were structured in terms of blog content, because the discoverability is just so rich there, instead of everything being siloed into everybody's domains and individual websites, if you just have a medium publication and it's all there, then people can find you much more easily. I don't feel like it's quite worked out from their end lately, at least.
Speaker 3 29:35 Yeah. I think that's interesting. Like we used to have our patron or our member program through medium. And when they really transitioned that experience to being more about being a medium subscriber, we transitioned to Patrion. And I think we've enjoyed Patrion because there's a layer of management and communication that we can have with our members in a way that we couldn't before with medium, but it is another platform. And we went through the process of having to ask our members to make that transition with us. And, you know, we were fortunate that that for the most part they did, there are other things that we're looking at. Like we just got a notice the other day that medium is launching a newsletter feature. And you know, we're evaluating that because we pay MailChimp fees. MailChimp is, is who we use to send emails through. And like, is this a way to really unify those systems?
Speaker 3 30:22 And then, you know, this week we had a newsletter or I'm sorry, an article that we collected 21 podcasts that help, uh, someone approached conversations around race and racism, particularly anti-black racism in America. And it's, it's been a very successful list for us. And we were really proud to be able to, to get that up and have it as a resource for people. And we noticed that medium had featured it to be selected on their front page. So we're, we're monitoring what that means for us. And to have this additional element where when we have something that strikes the right chord with readers, uh, that medium is there to help us amplify that as well.
Speaker 1 30:59 Interesting Galen and Ashley, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing kind of what you all have been through at Belo collective and what you're doing to help the community. It's really awesome to hear for folks who want to kind of learn more and check out all of your great stuff. Where's the best place to connect
Speaker 3 31:16 That would
[email protected]. And if folks are launching new shows, we highly recommend that you send them to us. Our email address is editor at doc about, excuse me,
[email protected]. And we take all of those shows. We share them with our writers and they, uh, have a chance to review them and decide if they want to write about them in our newsletter.
Speaker 2 31:36 Yeah. And you can also connect with us on Twitter. We're at Belo collective. And like Ashley said on our site, you can find how to write for us pitches articles. You can find how to submit your show, um, as well as how to sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker 1 31:50 Awesome. Galen and Ashley. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thanks Greg.
Google Trends interest over time for the phrase “how to start a podcast” in the last 12 months.
