For Headliner Highlight 18, we hear from Mandy Connell of the Ladies Chit Chat Club Show.
Tell us about your podcast.
The Ladies Chit Chat Club Show is a panel discussion of grown women, no offense to you 18-24-year-old creators; you guys are awesome, but we’re all a little more long in the tooth, over 40, and we talk about all kinds of stuff.
It’s ridiculous, it’s funny, we talk about pop culture stories, talk about news, talk about things we’ve learned in our lives that we wish somebody had told us. And it’s a rotating cast of women, and it’s just incredibly fun to be a part of. And it’s really fun to listen to. I happen to think. But that’s just me.
Why did you start podcasting?
I’ve been podcasting actively for a little over a year on a couple of different podcasts, but I come from a background of commercial talk radio and that’s kind of also my “why did I start podcasting?” We not only have our individual podcast, we also have a podcast network for women because, in the industry of talk radio, there are not. It’s not that there were not, there are not a lot of women in the industry.
And I have all this knowledge and all this information. So I wanted to share it with other women so they had the opportunity to share their voices as well.
What do you do to share & promote your episodes?
Promoting our podcast has been a really interesting learning curve for us. Initially, I think you think you’re going to put it up there and I have name recognition in the market I’m in any way and millions of people are going to listen, but the reality is you have to put a lot of work into it.
We started by doing pretty basic promotion on social, and now we’ve moved into Google AdWords.
Why do you make Headliners?
The most effective way to promote our podcast as of late has been using a marketing tile that we create and then using Headliner to put it on an audio clip behind it.
The engagement has gone from pretty decent to really incredible with just that one change, and it’s simple, and it’s easy, so it’s been a huge thing for us.
Current podcasting setup?
We have a pretty complex setup for a podcast. We have a mixing board, and we load into Adobe Audition through a laptop, and I’m using a lot of my radio skills and engineering to make that happen.
What is something you think is overrated or underrated in podcasting?
In general, I love the concept of democratization in podcasting. It’s one of the things that I love, and I think it’s underrated that everybody can create a podcast.
But what’s overrated is the notion that if you create a podcast and put it out there, people will somehow listen. It requires a lot more effort and a lot more work, and you also need to constantly be working on your product because people have a notion that podcasting is, “Hey, let’s just sit around and talk like friends!” That only works for so long, and then somebody’s gotta do some work.
So that is the notion of what’s kinda overrated, that everybody can be a star because everybody can’t. This isn’t as easy as it seems.
If someone was to only listen to one episode of yours, which one would you send?
It would have to be a recent episode where we started talking about Game of Thrones and ended up spending about 15 minutes on Jason Momoa, and Jason, if you’re listening, call me. And it’s just funny, it’s fun, and we had a great time doing it. And I think it’s a very entertaining snippet of what we’re all about, so it would have to be that one.
Do you have a favorite podcast?
Do I have a favorite podcast besides my own? Yes, I do! Actually, I have several, and they’re all the women on my network. We have The Wine Yogi, a female ninja, Grit ‘n’ Grace, but I will tell you, my OG favorite podcast is A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan. I know them, they’ve been podcasting for a long time, and they are hilarious. And really, they’re my idols.
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