For Headliner Highlight 20, we hear from Jam Mayer and Rew Shearer of The Conversologist.
Tell us about your podcast.
Jam: Our podcast is The Conversologist. I’m Jam Mayer.
Rew: And I’m Rew Shearer. Jam’s the beauty and the brains of the podcast [and] I’m the…
Jam: Producer.
Why did you start podcasting?
Rew: Jam started the podcast in early 2019 as another way of spreading the message of conversology.
Jam: In a nutshell, conversology is the art and science of conversation in marketing and customer experience aimed at social media marketers, marketing automation specialists, conversation designers, chatbot developers, and business owners.
Rew: Mostly, we wanted to share the idea that in marketing, everything from social media to chatbots, genuine, and meaningful one-on-one conversations are the key to the long-term win.
Jam: Digital technology is my passion. I love it, and as social and digital move more towards the personalized experience, our message becomes more and more relevant.
What do you do to share & promote your episodes?
Jam: Besides using anchor.fm to distribute the podcast through all of the major broadcasting networks, we have a webpage, theconversologist.show, which we update with each episode. And of course, we upload to Youtube with help from Headliner.
Rew: We also create social posts, which we share and invite our guest speakers to share. Social sharing seems to be the most effective, particularly if we can get a well-known or well-respected guest speaker to plug it. We also have an email list in place for us to send a broadcast when a new episode has been published. We’ll soon be adding the same to Ali, our chatbot, who will send the same.
Why do you make Headliners?
Jam: The reason we make Headliners is to make the podcast available to people searching video content and not necessarily podcasts as another avenue of discovery.
Sharing through video also has a clickable aspect that our screen tapping fingers find hard to resist. We’ve also started to use Headliner for tidbits and promo videos to get more reach, listeners, and traffic to our podcast website.
Current podcasting setup?
Jam: For gear, recording, audio storage, and audio publication, we use Anchor.fm. It’s a great app. You can record, invite guests from anywhere in the world, add your cover art, and publish.
Rew: I use Audacity editing software to produce the podcast, clean up the vocal track, add music and sound effects, and compress the audio for the best sound.
Jam: And of course, we use Headliner to create videos for YouTube and social!
If someone was to only listen to one episode of yours, which one would you send?
Jam: I would say, if someone was to only listen to one episode of ours, I would send them to “Episode 8: The Conversologist Has Evolved.” It’s a great introduction to what we’re about, who we’re most relevant to, and where we want to take this.
Do you have a favorite podcast?
Rew: Favorite podcast? I started out with Freakanomics and the Astronomy Cast, but I was totally awed by Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon series. I think I’ve listened to all 18 hours close to six times!
Jam: I’m still getting started, so right now my fav would be Akimbo, a podcast by Seth Godin.
