Building Your Local Audience with Matt Medeiros

Intro: Hey, real quick before we get started, we’re talking to Matt Maderos today. And he decided after our interview to offer Start Local listeners a fantastic deal on Castos, if you want to start your own podcast. So you can use the code STARTLOCAL, all one word as a coupon code over at castos.com to get 50% off for three months. That’s 50% off for three months with the code STARTLOCAL over at castos.com. This deal is good until October 6th, 2020. 

Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. And welcome to another episode of Start Local, a podcast focused on helping businesses in Chester County, PA and the greater Philly area, as they try to navigate through the COVID-19 economy. My name is Joe Casabona, and I am here with my fellow co host, Liam Dempsey. Liam, how are you today?

Liam Dempsey: Fantastic, Joe. Thanks for the introduction and the welcome. 

Joe Casabona: Always glad to join you. My pleasure. And I am honored to have our good friend, Matt Medeiros on the show today. Matt is the director of podcast success at Castos and he’s the host of the Matt Report, and a locally focused podcast called SouthCoast.fm. Matt, how are you today? 

Matt Medeiros: Gentlemen, thanks for having me. It’s the first time someone’s read my new title on air. So it sounds kind of,  sounds kind of strange to be called that. 

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, I’m glad to get that scoop. And I’m really glad that you’re joining us today because you in part were the, not even in part, you were pretty much fully the inspiration for this podcast after we spoke on my other show. I kind of thought about having a locally focused podcast, and then Liam reached out. And we decided to start this. So, thanks for the inspiration for this podcast. And we’re going to talk all about how you built your locally podcast. But, your locally focused podcast. But first, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?  

Matt Medeiros: The super quick backstory is I grew up in car sales. My family owned a car dealership for over 40 years in our local area. And fast forward to my college days where I went to school for, what was business information systems is. Then transferred over to computer information systems and network, specifically networking, and started a job at a local IT, ISP, which is an internet service provider. I did all kinds of things with software, Drupal development, WordPress development, open source stuff, started an agency maybe 10 years after that. I’m really starting to date myself. Ran the agency for 10 years. And then I have now started this new position at Castos after leaving Pagely for just a touch over 3 years where I was doing sales for managed WordPress host Pagely. So, just a lot in sales, marketing, software. And actually to a degree, a lot of exposure to like radio and stuff like that, which I believe is probably just in the DNA of why I like doing podcasting so much.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Very nice. And I remember when you made the transition to Pagely because it was at the same time I was moving into self employment. We were kind of moving in opposite directions. My first child was just born. I think your second was on the way at that point, right?

Matt Medeiros: Yep. Yep. 

Joe Casabona: So, yeah. Your move to Pagely has always been ingrained in my head, and now your move to Castos, it’s timed with the birth of my second son. So, I’m just going to know my second child. So I’m just going to know your whole career based on my children’s birthdays. 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I feel like I should see myself out the door on this conversation, real personal and private.

Matt Medeiros: We were talking, we were talking pre show that this is like our fourth, like Joe and I have, you know, written, you know, we’ve written books about podcasting, podcasting together, right? We’ve done shows together. We’ve done live streams together. Liam, you know, you’re there.

Joe Casabona: Liam’s here. Of course, Liam’s the mastermind behind asking all the questions. He knows the right things to ask and you’ve prepared quite a few good ones, Liam. So I’ll tee you up there. Thanks for your intro, Matt. 

Liam Dempsey: Thanks for the cue. Matt, Joe shared that you were an inspiration for Start Local in your own show up in the area south of Boston, along the coast in Massachusetts. So, your show is SouthCoast.FM and you had show shared with Joe on a previous podcast, and you shared on the podcast that I have with Tara Clay’s Hallway Chats about how it was really a locally focused podcast to help businesses learn from each other, learn about each other and network with each other.

And one of the questions I had from you is how do businesses in Chester County or in your area, once they started a podcast, once they have a newsletter, once they have something new online that they’ve started in the wake of COVID 19, how are they going to tell local businesses about it, local leaders about it, when they can’t pop into the cafe and have a coffee with the owner or show up at the restaurant, and sit down with the manager there, and have a sandwich, and, you know, put money behind the counter so to speak. What are your thoughts on getting the word out locally when the old fashioned knocking on doors isn’t an option?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So, you know, the approach that I took and one of the reasons why I started a local podcast and we again, like you mentioned, we talked about this on both respective shows, both of your respective shows previously, it was the right time for me to start a local podcast not because of the economy or not because of, you know, the COVID stuff. But because it started my show, started back in 2018. It’s because people in this local area, and I imagine other local areas, they’re starting to get hip on what a podcast is like, you all know as servicing a local market in terms of digital marketing, web design software, there’s a tremendous curve of catching up that people have to do with technology. And, you know, you and I, the three of us here, we all were on Twitter. We’re talking about the latest trends of coding and software development. Like we are far ahead of the curve than most, let’s say, small, you know, sandwich shop owners because they’re just far too busy running their businesses. 

And in 2018, finally struck me as people were finally catching on to podcasting as a listening medium, as entertainment medium, number one through big shows like serial and, you know, all the top, you know, ones that you’re going to find on iTunes and of course, Spotify coming into the game. So, it was the right time for people to just nod their head and go, “Oh, I know what a podcast is now”. Cause it was funny, like 2017, 2016, 2015, people like podcasts. I don’t even know what that is, right? Like, what does that geekery that you’re talking to me about? And it was the right times that people started to catch up. Right. And so that’s, you know, striking while the iron was hot there. And that’s what really helped it.

And now that people have caught onto it, the next thing that people are starting to catch onto, because we were literally forced into it with Zoom and all these online meetings because COVID was, you know, causing closures and stuff is now people are finally understanding how they can promote other  businesses and become, you know, podcasters themselves. Whether it’s through Facebook Live, a podcast, YouTube live streaming. I don’t see any of this stuff as just podcasting, right? I see it as broadcasting because we have all of the tools in front of us. Again, all of these mediums that we can stream to.

So it doesn’t matter, like a lot of people go, well, I’m never going to be a podcaster, but then you see, like, they spend, like, I have friends that say I could never be a podcaster. They have like small, like, apparel stores around my area, right? So the very fashion, you know, oriented, you know, very forward thinking people, and they’re like, “Oh, I never started a podcast” but all they do is Instagram stories, right? Instagram live. And that’s, they just pump out all this content and it’s great content. It’s like, you’re halfway there, you know, you’re halfway there to starting a podcast. But it’s fine as long as they’re broadcasting. 

And I think you know, what’s really going to help or how you can help other businesses like you without going through the door and without shaking their hands and exchanging money is to promote and support other businesses in this area. You become that voice for people. This sort of ties in, I’ll skip ahead just a touch, this sort of ties into your second question, but my cheat code here is I’m a mentor and a local accelerator. So I see a lot of startups and new businesses coming through to the south coast that I’m like front line with, because I get to meet them, I get to interview them, I get to coach them. So, It’s easy for me “to dip into new stories and new people” because i’m just like right in the front lines with them. So, that’s how I sort of get that leg up. And I help promote them right, and they’re excited to be promoted on a podcast. They share it with their friends because they’ve never heard of podcasting before and have never done it themselves. So that’s a quick win there.

You know, a lot of the things, one of the things I did when Covid started was I just quickly put up a survey for my listeners, for the Facebook fans, and for people who are in my local business circle. And I said, how is COVID affecting? How is the shutdown going to affect you? This is like pre shutdown. This is before we knew we were going to be shut down for months. We were thinking we were going to be shut down for like a week. Yeah. It was two weeks or something like that. It was months. You know, and I put up a survey in a spreadsheet for everyone who is going to be affected by this closure, In this uncertainty more so than anything, you know, what their business was. How can we get contacted? Do you have a way to buy something from you online? like a gift card or something like that so that we can support you during this. Again, what we thought was going to be a couple weeks of shutdown, and it’s just using your platform to help support and promote other local businesses right, in the space.

I have some other strategies that I use that we could get into which is not rocket science. But  you know, I think that that’s a good base right there for anybody who’s becoming a podcaster, especially local, especially for small businesses. You use it as a platform to help and serve these other businesses first, in your community first.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And I think… So, I think you raised a really interesting point that I am finally just coming around to right because when I was freelancing I was like this is great. I don’t need to just find businesses in my local area. I can make a website for anybody who is anywhere, and this is amazing.

But you talked about how you’re a mentor and a local accelerator. You’re involved in the local community.  It’s maybe slightly harder now. And I know there are things like meetups, right? You know, Liam runs the local meetup for our area here for WordPress. But what are some ways that someone like me who’s mostly focused on the internet can get involved in my local community. Like how did you find this local accelerator? Are there other local meetups you go to? Do you go to a co working space? 

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So, I got a cheat code again, Joe, is that my family has literally been in the community like serving the community through local businesses for literally over 80 years, right? So, there’s sort of a lineage of the Medeiros’s that have, you know, been in the community. So it’s just like second nature to be always going to local events, local networking events, but most certainly going to coworking for me anyway. Again, this is striking when the iron’s hot. We’re an hour, and an hour and a half ish. Well, three hours with traffic South of Boston and coworking, you know, has really just come to this area. And at you know, again pre-covid, there was three co-working spaces that were had been open for you know, well over a year. So, co-working, internet person, you know, the solo entrepreneur was really becoming a thing around here. And it’s a great place. Those areas are a great place to connect with. 

One of the tactics that you can leverage with a co-working space, I talk about this in the mentorship that I do, is when I started the local podcast, one of the most more tactful things that I did was, I wrote, and you guys both know this coming from the internet marketing world is, I just wrote a piece of the five co-working places on the south coast that you can go to. And it’s just a little quick review of them, how they, you know, kind of differ from one another, a photo gallery, and of course, like contact information and address. It’s just, and then a little helpful tip for those who might be co-working if they’re the first time co- working. So basically, this is an SEO piece, right? To kind of get technical where people are searching for co-working on the South Coast. They come about my blog post, and they see, “Oh, there’s a podcast here too”. Oh, well, obviously this is my demographic, and they’ll start listening to the show.

But it doesn’t stop there. Again, we all know on this call we get those annoying emails from those spammers, like, Hey, can we inject this link of the top 20 pillows, you know, for your, you know, for your WordPress development site and you’re like, no, no. I don’t want you to do that. But I took that same piece and I email five. Those five coworking spaces, two of which I know. And I’m like, “Hey, I wrote a great piece about you. If you’re interested, share it with your Facebook group. Maybe your email, your email list or whatever”. So of course the two that I know that I’m a member of, they shared it. No problem. And there was three others. Two of the three others got back to me and they’re like, “Yeah. We’re sharing this with our email list. It goes out to 13,000 people. We’re sharing this with our Facebook group”. It goes out to, you know, whatever, a thousand people in our Facebook group. And it’s like, Boom! Instant success that you know, you kind of work a little bit of a strategy, a little bit of an SEO play. But also like hey, I spent time creating this content whether it’s a blog post, a video, a podcast. It’s about you. I’m featuring you. i’m supporting you. Maybe you could share it with your audience, right, and it’s something that we all get online all the time from random people. But when it comes from a local person, you know, and it’s a local you know, brand or whatever. Yeah. They’re way more apt to to share it, right? So it’s a little bit about getting in person but then imploring those same online “tactics” that we all are akin to on Twitter, to our local market at the same time. Does that?

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. 

Liam Dempsey: Very helpful, Matt. Thank you for that. You said a couple of things that I caught on to is as long as you’re broadcasting on some way, you know, to some extent, who cares whether it’s Facebook or YouTube, or a podcast. It’s, how are you going to connect? And that got me thinking about our second question is, if i’m doing something in one channel, so whether it’s i’m blogging and then sending out the emails to those businesses, Hey, I wrote about these kinds of restaurants or i’m starting a podcast and i’m mentioning local businesses or i’ve started a facebook group and i’m inviting people there, I’m doing one thing on one channel. And then as time allows, I’m kind of taking a couple of bits extra here and a couple of bits extra there. But as we’re thinking about, you know, so we’re getting X amount of value out of, let’s say podcast and we’re getting back. And we know though, or we believe that we could get two times that, or one and a half times value, maybe four times value. If we took our podcast and started a newsletter, we took our podcast and started some other online communication, online value content for our local business, but we’re struggling, you know, it’s COVID 19. There’s a business to run. There’s all the family changes to deal with. There’s the learning curve of, well, I figured out podcasting and that took me, you know, two and a half weekends of research and time and buying the wrong thing and sending it back and kind of thing. How do… what’s your thoughts on getting business owners, business leaders to take the next step, whatever that might be for taking their online marketing to the next level when it’s not the primary focus of their business?

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. So I’ll give you my approach. I don’t know if it’s the best approach, but I’ll share what I do. And I’ll preface it with, you know, what we’ve been hearing forever. Now, it’s extraordinary times. We went through pandemic to social, what I’ll say is injustice and warfare. And all of this stuff in the news, it is a very difficult time to stand out as a small brand.

One, because there is so much happening in the news that my God, how much of the pie is left for us, you know, to claim in somebody’s attention. And then throw a Netflix and big brands. And it’s just like, how do you compete? So the methodology that I take is I do the podcast, which is a very low cadence by the way,  for local podcasting. And I say this, the reason why I say, don’t worry about podcasting in the sense of what we’re doing right now, but think about broadcasting is because it can be overwhelming, right? to do all of this stuff, right? An hour long show, the show notes, the transcriptions, the upload, the blog posts, the promotion. if you can’t do that, 30 seconds on Instagram stories consistently Is great in my book because there’s so many people not telling their story, not broadcasting, to which I call is the digital handshake, right? You want to get your digital hand when people meet you. How are they going to meet you online when you used to handshake when handshaking was legal? You would handshake, give somebody a handshake. You’d know so much about that person, the firm, the length, the eye contact, the body language. All happens in a split second of, well, illegal handshakes, nowadays.

And what I want people to do is focus on just getting that story out there, getting that message out there consistently. That’s number one, you know, the most important part. But I do my podcast. I do a Facebook group. And I do an email newsletter. And It’s a three prong approach, of which is like, you know, I don’t know if you can do just one now like, I don’t know if there’s just one thing. I think you need to have something that ties it all together. And for me, my approach of the podcast, the Facebook group and the email newsletter, it’s the only way I know how to keep things full circle.

aAd I’ll do one podcast episode a month. One because I was really busy with Pagely. But now, going into this this new, ,I can do podcasting more. I might up that. Might up that a little bit. But I just did one episode a month, and then I would break that into of course its blog post, two email newsletters, right? I take one bit of a story for one newsletter, one bit of a story into another newsletter. And I make sure I promote that episode twice. And then the two other newsletters I put out for the month is just more like business information, right? So four newsletters go out. Two of them are about the podcast that I recorded once for the month.

And then the facebook group is much more of an autopilot kind of thing. But the value there is, and Joe, I think you’re in Kim Doyle’s facebook group and I stole this from her and maybe she stole it from somebody else, but it’s accountability facebook group is like what I like to say. So Monday, you ask the group, you know, what’s the plans for the week? What’s your goals this week? And it’s solely, it’s called South Coast content creators for people on the South coast. You know, that’s the whole point. It’s just for local business owners on the south coast who want to get into podcasting and content creation. So, what’s the goal for the week? How are you setting your agenda? Let’s everybody chime in.

And then Wednesday is Accountability Wednesday where we all just check in and say, you know, what are you struggling with? What can the group help you with,? And I try to encourage people to collaborate with one another, right? And it’s great. You know, once now that it’s off the ground and rolling, people are helping each other and that’s awesome.

And then Friday is where we, you know, you get to share your content. So if you set the goal in the first of the week to say i’m gonna get a blog post out. I really gotta promote my business or i gotta get a new YouTube video out. Come Friday, did you finish it? And if you did, share it with the group, Right? Let’s share it. Let’s get it going. Let’s get people clicking on it. Let’s get people sharing it to their Facebook feed. All that fun stuff. So it’s a bit of an accountability Facebook group. 

And I say autopilot because you know, you can schedule these things to go out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Right. And I kind of prep all that stuff ahead of time, a couple of weeks in advance. So that’s just sort of autopilot posting, you know, and I’ll dip in on Tuesdays and Thursdays to post other more unique things. 

And again, what I’ll do for that from that Friday post, when people share their content is I also feature them in my email newsletter. So every newsletter goes out every Sunday, it’s called Sunday notes, right? And the whole idea is like this, you’re only going to get this unique piece of content through my newsletter, and we’ll share not only my perspective on local business. But oh, by the way, these three people share their awesome blog posts from the Facebook group. Here they are, and don’t forget we have a free facebook group. The numbers aren’t staggering, right? I think it’s just over a hundred members that are in this Facebook group. But when I look at the local chamber of commerce that has you know, maybe a thousand Facebook fans or whatever, I’m like, well, you guys have been around for 300 years. I’ve been around for two, and you’re only 10X bigger than me right now. A couple more years, I’m going to start, you know, chipping away at that mountain that you have. 

So that’s my three prong strategy podcast. The newsletter and Facebook dabble in some blogging as well.  And just really promotion. Getting it out there and not just letting it rest. It’s not an SEO play a hundred percent, but you really got to get people pushing and promoting the content. 

Joe Casabona: So, how do you do that? How did you build your email newsletter and your Facebook group? You said admittedly, right, that locally, people weren’t really listening to podcasts. So, I suspect it’s not really a podcast CTA. Is that really where your, like your coworking space blog posts came in? You have like a call to action at the bottom saying like, you like this, get more of it, stuff like that. 

Matt Medeiros: The call to action, the main call to action,  well, the call to action on the podcast is always the email newsletter.

Joe Casabona: Okay. 

Matt Medeiros: it’s always the email newsletter, right? I do that across all my podcasts. It’s always, you know, whatever podcast I’m running, /subscribe. So don’t forget to subscribe, Southcoast.fm/subscribe.  

I’ve also built the, I built up the brand of, you really have to, in my opinion, you kind of have to sell email newsletters these days. If you’re not a prolific, you know, writer, author, you’re not world renowned, people are just simply not going to join it. And you also have to provide value on it.

Of course, number one, but I consciously brand it as, well, I call it Sunday Notes. I don’t just really call it an email newsletter. I call it Sunday Notes.This is always gonna come out on Sunday. It’s these little personal notes and messages for me about local business. I have a little quote in there that’s, you know, inspirational quote.

And then of course, any relevant content from the community. So people get hyped up to kind of see their links in a newsletter. Satisfies them. It feels good. I give them some information. It’s not super long. It’s not super short either. It’s somewhere in the middle. And I talk about it that way. So this is if you want this kind of personalized business advice for me and from the community, you’re only going to get it on Sunday notes. Go to Sunday notes. Email to subscribe, right? That’s the website. So I push it like that.

And then the call to action on the website is to join South Coast Content Creators. So, it’s southcoast.fm/creators. So I just have a URL that forwards to the Facebook group so that when I am speaking to people, right, I do a lot of speaking for that accelerator or other local speaking gigs, I’ll always make sure to say, if you want to join the group… It’s not like, hey, go to Facebook, search for South Coast content, just southcoast.fm/creators. And it’s just going to forward them to the Facebook group. Very, very simple, you know. And that’s when I say, look, if you’re somebody who’s struggling with all of this content creation, digital marketing, podcasting, video production, a hundred plus people in there that are all local, (I only let local people in and you’ll help each other. It’s a little community) so you get to see what other people are doing, learn from other people, you know. That’s how, you know, that I, it’s the way I brand it. The way I talk about it to push those three things. But most of it does come originally started from the podcast. 

Joe Casabona: You have a question? You have a question that you only ask, like you ask that only local people would know?

Matt Medeiros: Like in the podcast? 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. 

Matt Medeiros: Like how do you let ’em into the group? Facebook group Security password. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Matt Medeiros: Yeah. No, I just look at their profile.

‘

Joe Casabona: Okay. It’s not like, you know, what’s the guy on Yaki web say, or whatever.

Matt Medeiros: No. No. But listen, I am very strict and I, you know, I know this is a bit of an aside, but I’m very strict ’cause there’s so many other local groups, I don’t know how, if what your local community looks like, but there’s a ton of like, Businessy groups that people are trying to do things and it’s just a dumping ground of links in real estate people, right? It’s like open house, frree cheese and wine at the rotary mixer like all this stuff. It’s zero value. It’s just people just go down their list and they dump things in there. And I give people, I will literally give people warnings. I’ll write them warnings like if I see you just dumping content into the group, I’m going to tell you, and there’s a rules that I have on a Trello board that people have to click on. If you start doing that, you’re out. Like you can save your content share for Friday. Sometimes I allow it if it’s very unique and you’re asking for help and feedback, that’s okay. But if it’s just open house, you know, wine mixer, whatever it is, listen, it’s got to be value. It’s got to be stuff that you’re engaging with. It’s not a dumping ground. I’m very strict on that. 

Joe Casabona: Nice. 

Liam Dempsey: Yeah. I think managing expectations of the group helps a group move forward together. Matt, we are coming up to time here. Before we say goodbye, I want to talk to you about podcast hosting. You were kind enough to clear your schedule to come on and help the folks of Chester County and the greater Philadelphia area with their online marketing and COVID 19 economy. And as Joe read, you have a very impressive job title about podcasting success with a company called Castos. We’re talking about podcasts. We’re talking about putting content online and in the air. Tell us a little bit about podcasts. What exactly do you folks do? You know, I know it’s podcast host, but that’s where my knowledge stops. Can you expand on that?

Matt Medeiros: First I do want to apologize for any realtors that are listening to this. i’m not, I don’t mean to single you out. But just sell us a little bit more before you post that open house. Give us a reason why. Don’t just post the link from your real estate website.

Podcast hosting. Castos and the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin, castos.com is a podcast hosting service. So you need to find a place to put your podcast when you’re creating a podcast, and we make it super easy for you. A lot of people are looking at how many people are listening, how many downloads, what devices, what regions are they in? We provide all of those analytics. And we are the one that makes it the easiest to do on WordPress specifically. You can use it on any website. If you don’t even have a website at all, there’s a landing page builder built in. But if you’re using WordPress, the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin makes it dead simple. I’ve used others that were very difficult. This is really easy. And it’s, I’ve only been there for a week. So, we’re already doing some awesome things with the podcast player,  with feature updates integrating into LMS is, and membership plugins. It’s gonna be pretty fun. One of the things I know we’re focused on is how can we help podcasters monetize and doing things like private podcasting and charging a little bit of money for it is I think what’s on the radar coming up in months. So, it’s exciting stuff.  I’m happy to be there.

Joe Casabona: Nice. That’s, I will say, you know this is not like a, you know, #notsponsored or whatever, but Castos is the only podcast host I’ve seen that will like sync Show notes between the platform and WordPress, which is such a huge time saver, because people get confused, right? With like the feed that’s with their host and the feed that might be on their separate site. and Castos is the only one I’ve seen that makes it very easy to have parody between the two of thesm.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. Be sure to check out castos.com. And Matt, thanks for joining us today. I just pllugged one of them, one of your links, but where can people find you?  

Matt Medeiros: You can find me at Castos. You can find me at [mattreport.com]. If you’re into WordPress, that’s where I’m at. 

Joe Casabona: Awesome. And I’m just going to end by saying it’s very clear. I’m not a local because I referred to the street outside of Fenway as Yawkey way, but they renamed it to Jersey street, a couple of years ago. So they’re awesome. 

Well, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. 

Liam, always glad to join you on the mic. 

Liam Dempsey: Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Matt. Good hanging with both of you.

Joe Casabona: And to everybody listening, stay safe out there.