Spinning Up a Hyperlocal Podcast with Matt Medeiros

In episode 5 I chat with Matt about his podcasting history, the ins and outs of podcasting and his most recent endeavor, a local podcast called We Are Here.

In episode 5 of our podcast, I am chatting with my good friend who nudged me into the podcasting space when I started in 2014. Matt Medeiros is well-known in the WordPress space and hosts his long-running podcast, the Matt Report.

He wears many hats, but I wanted to dive a bit deeper into his podcasting history and explore with him his hyper-local podcast.

Podcasting. The Past and Present for Matt.

I start out with digging into Matt’s podcasting history which leads up up to the podcast he does for his local community called We Are Here, which serves entrepreneurs in the South Coast of Massachusetts from New Bedford to Fall River.

He shares both pros and cons, and the unique experience of doing in-person episodes vs. the remote podcasting he has done for numerous years. This leads to the concept of local business and how the future of digital marketers may end up in their own backyard.

I couldn’t let Matt get away without digging deeper into why he podcasts and what tips he gives to those who are considering this popular medium.

To wrap it up, I ask Matt to share with us one of his biggest bloopers. What he confides in is beyond an on-air blooper and shows an example of just how powerful podcasting and SEO can be.

What Matt Had to Say

Matt’s podcast timeline

I’d like to take it back to when I was like seven or eight years old. I remember having a toy, a sort of DJ box, where it was like a microphone attached to it and you can make sound effects. I remember carrying it around and just like doing crazy things with, like audio.

So I’m going to try to be like the Mixergy of WordPress. And I interviewed my first guest. From there, I just knocked on doors. I just went up to people that I saw on Twitter in the community. And I said, Hey, do you want to be a guest on this WordPress podcast that I’m starting?

The decision to do a local podcast

Hey, you want to start a business? You have an idea that’s okay. Come into this accelerator ….. they bring in like 15 or so people into a cohort who want to start a business and they prop them up through this accelerator. As a mentor there, I’ve done it for six cohorts now. I was like, well, this is the time because now there are literally a hundred entrepreneurs that I have seen come through this program that need to have their story told and broadcast much like I do on the WordPress side.

I have three kids. What am I doing on the internet? Creating content, creating relationships and doing this Matt Report thing, which is great for me in the short term, but it won’t help my children in the community right here. There’s no way that you know that I’m going to do anything tangible with the Matt Report. It’s going to have a dramatic effect or open up opportunities potentially for my kids. So that’s why starting the local podcast is putting my feet back on the ground in the local community.

Pros and cons of doing a local podcast

I’m just gonna run it like I did the Matt Report and I’ll tell somebody to book me with Calendly. I’ll send them an automated link and they’ll have a Zoom link or we’ll connect on Skype, and then it’ll go from there. And from the first episode, I realized it’s not going to work that way for these folks because they don’t understand.

Then we connect on the call and all I hear is techno music and yelling. And I’m like, where are you right now? And she says, well, I’m at the studio, we have a spin class happening right now. And I’m like, this is not gonna work. Then that same person schedules for another day. She went home and the wifi connection wasn’t very good.

It is now a little bit more difficult to schedule it and I have to drive to a location. But again, these are coworking spaces so I can just get there and do some work and then meet for the podcast.

Measuring success

I need to build an email list. Can I get to 250 people? Right? Can I get to 25 reviews in iTunes? Like I’m taking baby steps.

After two episodes of the We Are Here podcast, I was in my local coffee shop and somebody came up to me and they’re like, Hey, you’re that guy that does the podcast. And I was like, yeah, the Matt Report. And they’re like, Matt report? No, I heard you on some other thing though. We Are Here podcast. I’m like, how did that already happen?

It is interesting to see the opportunities in local. I think they can get amplified a whole heck of a lot faster than if you were to just jump into the general pool of podcasting on the internet.

Going digital locally

Five years ago, if you went to your local coffee shop or , you were at a co-working space, you weren’t trying to sell that digital product in-person because people just didn’t get it.

If you’re like, I can’t compete on the internet or I don’t know where to get started with this training course or this service, pushing it locally is now, I think, something that is a bigger opportunity than it was before because the customer’s much more educated now.

Matt’s tips on podcasting

You have to have a conversation with your audience. You have to stay connected with your audience and it’s a difficult challenge. And it varies, depending on who your audience is and where they spend a lot of time.

I think that to avoid burnout, you have to give yourself a break creatively and on the calendar.

This is the emotional roller coaster. I think that if you look at artists, whether it’s like painters, structural artists, musical artists, I think everybody goes through this. Where they put their efforts into something and even if they are seeing successes, it gets to a point where it doesn’t fulfill you anymore and you want to move onto something else.

I just want to have the conversation, get it out there and hopefully it impacts somebody. It’s not the smartest method, but I do it because I feel motivated by the people I talk to.

Where to Find Matt

Matt Report

We Are Here – SouthCoast.fm

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