Starting your own podcast is exciting, but sometimes it can also be lonely. Without professional podcasting advice, you may feel your show is going nowhere and not getting the traction it deserves. Juliet Clark sits down with two amazing women who can help address this problem: Corinna Bellizzi and Julie Lokun. They share how they help fellow podcasters gain a profitable return on investment through Femcasters, emphasizing how to leverage the impact of video casting. Corinna and Julie also discuss building a strong following and online presence through content repurposing and running ads on social media, including Pinterest.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Mediacasters With Corinna Bellizzi And Julie Lokun
The Intersection Of Podcasting, Publishing, And Presenting
We have some pretty cool guests. They’re magazine contributors to Breakthrough Author Magazine. We’re going to talk about podcasting and repurposing. These ladies know their stuff. Before we get started, remember to go over and get your free subscription to Breakthrough Author Magazine. You can find that at www.BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com.
We have a challenge going. You can get on board with it. It’s a ten-day author platform-building challenge. There’s no opt-in necessary. If you’re over on LinkedIn, go over to BreakthroughAuthorNewsletter.com and subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter. You don’t have to give us your name or an email address but you can follow along, read all of the articles and see the videos from our thought leaders on the topics that you need to have integrated for your author platform-building.
There’s a lot of work there. We’re going to round that up to a paid workshop where we’re going to do our author platform-building planning for 2023. It’s well worth your time to go over and check this out. Once again, it’s BreakthroughAuthorNewsletter.com. It will take you right to the page on LinkedIn where you can hit subscribe. It will be from October 17th through the 28th, 2022.
I’m excited about Corinna Bellizzi and Julie Lokun. Both of these ladies are a team at Mediacasters and also contributors to the magazine. You probably see articles from them all the time but you get to see them in an interview this time. Corinna Bellizzi, MBA is a natural products industry executive who pioneered the growth of the omega-3 giant, Nordic Naturals, from less than $1 million in annual revenue to over $100 million.
As the mom of two young boys, podcaster, executive and author of Audiocasters, her mission is to leave the world a little better than she found while inspiring others to do the same. Corinna began her broadcasting journey as a guest on many nationally syndicated radio shows and even acted as an emcee for fashion shows in her spare time to improve her public speaking skills.
As part of her longtime education journey, she earned her MBA from Santa Clara University graduating at the top of her class with a triple focus in entrepreneurship, leadership and marketing in June 2021. Corinna launched her first podcast show, Care More Be Better, to share the stories of inspired individuals and conscious companies to show us that 1 person with 1 idea can have a big impact. It ranks in the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally.
Julie Lokun is a legal eagle and facilitator of dreams. She’s changing the trajectory of underserved entrepreneurs who are using their voices to make an impact. As a mom of four boys, Julie has learned to leverage her power to lead a bustling household while also serving as the Head Maven for Crown and Compass Life Coaching. She adeptly anoints and points to directing the strategic growth of businesses and professionals around the globe. Julie has delivered presentations on the big stage and in virtual events.
With a background in law, she teases through complex information and gets to the root issues, telling deep and compelling stories that resonate with audiences far and wide. She is a celebrated bestselling author of an entrepreneur series, Hustle Smart, the Owner of Mediacasters Publishing House, which boasts several bestselling titles and is a five-star business coach. In the spring of 2021, Julie launched a swiftly growing podcast, Obsessed With Humans on the Verge of Change, which is already in the top 3% of podcasts globally.
In 2021, these two business besties and podcasting partners with six boys between them co-founded Femcasters to elevate the voices of women through podcasting, branding and public speaking. In February 2022, they merged this effort with a podcast, a community, a publishing house and a launch platform that elevates the voices of inspired people of all ages and identifies with the power of the three Ps, Podcasting, Publishing and Presenting or Performing. This is a great interview.
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I told you in the introduction that I’m excited to have these two here because they own a publishing company but they do so much more in the way of platform-building with Mediacasters. Welcome, Corinna and Julie. It’s great to have you.
It’s great to be here. Thank you.
It’s amazing to be with Juliet in person.
I get articles from these guys from the magazine all the time but we never do anything but email. It is exciting to see their beautiful faces on camera. We’re going to talk a little bit about podcasting, videocasting and repurposing content. We’re going to tell you where to find their book at the end because these guys wrote the Audiocasters book, which is great. If you’re not podcasting, listen to why you should be because it’s easy. I find it fun. Do you find it fun?
Super.
It’s addicting.
How did you get into podcasting? What brought you to the podcasting world and what you’re doing?
It was a dare for me but then Corinna and I met on a social audio app called Clubhouse. We found out that we had so much in common. We were brainstorming. We were like, “Let’s do it.” We started doing it and then took it to another level. It kept snowballing from there. It has been a passion and something both of us are obsessed with.
I had a podcast called Ask Juliet back in 2015. This is why you need people like Julie and Corinna. I did it on my own. It was horrendous. I don’t even know if it’s still on there but my bright idea was that I thought I would bring authors on to promote their books. I learned so much about how authors don’t build their platforms and media kits. Their presence is awful. I had to edit it myself and do all the graphics, which I’m horrible at. Talk about all that and why they should work with people like you who know how to get this done correctly.
I would like to start by answering the question you first asked that Julie answered for me. When it came to launching Care More Be Better, it was something I felt compelled to do. Sometimes people have that. They feel like, “I have to do this. I’m not sure why so I’m going to figure it out.” For me, it started with someone finally lighting a fire under my tush and saying, “I’m going to give you the intro and the outro,” which I didn’t even know what that was. “I’ll give these to you so your podcasts sound professional,” but then I floundered in the beginning.
This is why I want to make sure we talk about this because this is why we started Mediacasters. That’s the founding principle of it in the very beginning anyway because it’s so easy to feel like you’re completely alone. You have no idea how you’re supposed to approach this. You don’t know what an RSS feed is. You’re not sure how to get it out there, promote it, find your guests and do any of it.
You’re floundering by yourself. That’s not necessary. We don’t need to go it alone. That’s where the community aspect comes in because we can learn from each other. We don’t have to sit there and pay out the nose to a specialist who may or may not guide us in the right direction for us because every podcaster’s journey can be a little bit different. That’s the root of it for me.
It’s a lot like the isolating experience of being an author.
The wonderful thing about podcasting too is if you’re building your platform, going along, exposing yourself and building your audience, that author piece isn’t a go-it-alone because you’ve already gotten feedback on what you’re doing. You’re already building relationships. Relationships are, believe it or not, what sell books as well as products and services. How do you go about podcasting not feeling alone?
It is about joining a community because there is something called podfade, which is a real thing. A lot of podcasters give up after 7 to 10 episodes because they’re not seeing the return on their investment. This is normal. You shouldn’t be seeing a huge return on your investment from day one.
Talk a little bit about that return on investment because I was telling Corinna a little bit before that I don’t have a one-to-one relationship, “X amount of dollars go out for that podcast. X amount of dollars comes in.” It is more about the content for me and that relationship building through the content. Do you have that experience? Do you get more of a one-to-one relationship with the ROI?
I don’t see ROI as everybody else does. I see podcasting as a marketing arm for your book. It gives you more visibility. It’s hard to quantify it in my mind.
It’s like most marketing efforts that are broadcast. You don’t necessarily always know how someone found out about you but putting that message out there into the world and on a variety of platforms enables you to reach more people and ultimately to reach them where they live, work and play. If they love listening to podcasts, they’re going to find you there. If they love being on social media or social audio, they have the opportunity to find you there.
If you are able to multi-purpose your podcast in such a way that you’re leveraging it on each of these platforms and even with videos on YouTube, then you’re suddenly in many different places at once starting from that first effort. It enables you to amplify this message in a longer format but also short format because you can take snips, do fun things on TikTok or social media in general and ultimately position yourself as an authority in a way in which your audience wants to reach you.
We talked about podcasting versus videocasting because most people associate TikTok with more videocasting. Talk about that a little bit.
I’m not a TikToker. Corinna is one of the most famous TikTokers I know.
That is so not true. I might have 60 followers. I just started but it’s something. However, at the same time, if I take a 1-minute snip from an interview that I’ve done that is also on YouTube and I repurpose it on TikTok and it gets 250 views, that’s 250 people I might not have otherwise reached because they’re spending that time on TikTok. They may not be on YouTube. It’s all in how you put that out there. One of the things I’ve seen that’s very creative in one of my friends who writes fiction works is that she is giving a real view behind the scenes of what it’s like to be in her shoes as an author.
She’s choosing to become more transparent about some of her motivations, the things that she’s doing and the reason she’s doing them. She’s engaging with an already engaged audience in a new way and developing an even more authentic connection with them. She’s doing that and then even picking up her book, reading a little bit or some of the foreword, showing it on screen and having this real connection with them. TikTok can be as simple as that. It doesn’t have to be highly produced. Sometimes the less produced they are, they will do well. It all depends on the content.
If you’re looking at something like YouTube, you can simulcast your podcast recording, make it videocast as well as a podcast on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube and even do things like an Instagram Live if you want to get tech-savvy, have your phone here at the same time that you’re doing this and be multifaceted or even doing that at the same time that you’re running a room on Clubhouse or doing it on Wisdom App to multiply your singular effort across all of these platforms.
I would never advise someone to try to do that all at once in the very beginning but as you get a little bit more comfortable with one, you can say, “How could I do this so I also have it broadcast on Clubhouse at the same time? Maybe I’ll have a co-host who helps me manage the audience. That becomes a more authentic connection with my community.” Maybe you only do that when you broadcast live but it enables you to create content that’s in a multitude of spots where you are putting your voice out there. You can always turn that into a podcast after the fact.
We do that with our monthly training on LinkedIn Live. We turn it into a podcast later even though it is restraining. I do want to caution what Corinna said. If you’re not super tech-savvy, get yourself a co-host because something’s always going wrong with Restream. We learned we had to run it through Zoom to get it to work correctly and get people on at the same time. You will be so frustrated if you don’t tiptoe into all this step by step.
The easiest thing is to record with Zoom because it tends to be the most user-friendly. You can even use Zoom to broadcast onto some of these platforms as well. You get the video and the audio. You only have to use the audio if you want but then you have the video if you later want to fall back on it and edit it into something different to put out there on YouTube or these other platforms.
We take ours and put it over on Rumble too because there’s a little bit different audience over on Rumble. Rumble is like YouTube. Only it has a little bit more conservative and probably a little bit older audience, which fits in with our demographic because we have older crowds. We can use different uses on different platforms but what about repurposing it? That’s where I hear from authors all the time, “I don’t have time to do content.”
That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Juliet. They have created content by writing your book. If you’re an author, you have created content. I repurpose my books and my podcast. I interchange them with my blogs. I take snippets out. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to do it like Corinna and I and be everywhere all the time because who’s going to buy your book? I find that the most powerful way to sell your book is to speak in front of audiences. You are wanting to gain that know, like and trust. This is an exercise maybe in vanity metrics, I’m not sure but you have to have an online presence. It’s being a little bit of everywhere. Don’t get overwhelmed.
The overwhelm is real for everyone. I do have a lot of content but I even find it a struggle to remember to take care of all the posting each week because I’m running so many different platforms. There can be value at a certain point in time. I’m looking at this pretty closely of collaborating with someone to take care of some of the nuts and bolts so that you can focus on creating the content because you’re sitting there and thinking, “I’ve created all this content. I have to create the post. I need to make sure that my text is SEO-rich so it gets more impact. What hashtags are trending?”
I don’t have to do all of these things and yet I take them on to do myself even though I would be more efficient, use my time better and spend more time on revenue-generating things if I would let go of it a little bit. I have partnered with Podetize to do the creation for assets for my first podcast, Care More Be Better. They do an excellent job. I end up with videograms, audiograms, quote cards and all of these things.
I could go out there and post. I usually post about 1/3 of them. I move on to the next one because every week, I’m like, “I only posted 1/3 of them because I’ll come back to it later,” but then I forget to come back to it later. I need someone to help me with some of that admin stuff and it’s time. It’s giving ourselves permission to say, “I need a little support. Here’s how. This is the benefit it’s going to have.”
I can focus more on pitching myself to the right people to get on that stage or write that book and be doing less of the busy work. I can bring more revenue in. It’s always a hard decision to make but so many people that are out there doing this type of work hire a VA. They might be paying $10 or less an hour for 20 hours a week and find that their whole world has changed. That’s the step that Julie and I are preparing to take as we continue our growth trajectory so that we can have our minds free to explore.
We need to free these minds. This is curious. Corinna is expounding all the things we feel we need to do. What do you see, Juliet? If you could pick one thing, what is the most important thing for an author to do in terms of content? What’s 1 platform or 1 thing besides speaking?
Podcasters don’t need to go out alone. Everyone can learn from each other. Share on XIt’s the content creation and then thoroughly understanding so you don’t get overwhelmed where your audience is and focus on that. I’ve told my audiences before. We had an author back in 2017 who insisted that everything be on Facebook but she was soloed as CEO. Her people were over on LinkedIn. We could not get her to let go of Facebook. She knew how to use it, connect with the LinkedIn expert and get in front of it. The whole thing failed. Understanding where your audience is and creating good content for them is essential because if I’m in the wrong place talking to the wrong people, I’m never going to get that visibility I’m looking for.
Certain platforms like a social media management platform will enable you to post the same content in multiple spots all at once. We use a tool like that here. There are dozens out there. Find one that works right for you that covers the platforms that you care about. You will ultimately have an easier time of it. Even that being said, I shared that I’m bad and I’m working to get better at posting more consistently on my more personal-related stuff.
What platform do you use? I use SocialBee.
It’s Loomly.
I was looking at that for a presentation I’m giving. That’s interesting.
We have a subscription that has up to twenty for a relatively reasonable rate considering it covers that many different platforms. We might have 3 different profiles on Facebook and 3 different on another.
We can’t even keep track anymore. It organizes. It’s so easy. You can even post on your Google Business. That’s another thing. Authors, you need to make friends with Google and dance with Google. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for getting your name out there. You need a Google Business. A lot of authors, especially non-fiction authors, don’t know you need a Google Business.
I was laughing because I do everything in my life to avoid Google. I use DuckDuckGo and all those things so that ads can’t track me.
My husband has an ad blocker on our house. None of our traffic is traced.
I have a VPN but I don’t use it a lot on my phone because it blocks a whole bunch of stuff I use regularly but I do use it to search.
That’s why you need to be on Google because Juliet avoids Google at all costs. You search, “What restaurant should we go out to dinner tonight? Who’s an expert on marketing books?” It’s Juliet.
Let’s think about YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google. I have some podcast episodes that have far more views on YouTube than they have listens. Sometimes it’s putting it out there and writing the show notes. You’ve already put the show notes together. You repurpose that on YouTube so that you become searchable there. It’s a search engine. People find content that way. We need to be cognizant of that. I have to be agnostic. Do I love Google? No. Do I love Facebook? No.
You don’t like Facebook?
I hate Meta.
I got off years ago.
Facebook is great for authors who want to have closed groups. They don’t want to pay anything. That’s where I see the power. We have Google and YouTube. What’s number three? It’s Pinterest. I use that with my authors.
If I made every recipe and did every workout that I pined on Pinterest, I would be a 400-pound fitness model.
You would be 120 pounds. You would be shredded.
I would be shredded but then there are all those recipes that I pinned.
You cannot dismiss Pinterest though, especially for authors. Whatever your topic is, it is where people go to discover. They are in that buying phase. You need to know how to use Pinterest and make sure that your pin sparks the right audience to go straight to your website because it’s so easy. I get so much website traffic by using Pinterest. I always think you have to put a little bit of money into everything you do. There’s Pinterest and YouTube. It’s a pinch, not a lot but it does help a lot with traffic and gaining visibility.
What is the search capability when you run ads on Pinterest and put a little bit of money into it? One thing I do not like about LinkedIn or my audiences is the search capabilities. The ad capabilities are not very good.
I’ve never done an ad on LinkedIn. I can’t speak to that but on Pinterest, you can do an ad for as little as $1 or $2 a day for 5 days. They almost hijack you. You have to pay money to get into the algorithm of Pinterest. I checked. There are 10,000 views on 1 pin. I did $2 a day for 10 days. I would like to test things out. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see who’s responding, who’s pinning it and who’s clicking on your website. When someone pins your pin, that means that it goes on their board and then all of their followers see it if someone pins it. It can be exponential in terms of pinning. This probably doesn’t make sense if you don’t know Pinterest.
I’ve found on Pinterest specifically that doing posts as idea pins get you more traction. This is an organic way to do it. You can create the same content and do it as a pin versus an idea pin. In an idea pin, you can put more detail in the description or the notes card than you could otherwise do. I have found that to be successful to help get my content organically in front of people. I haven’t put a dime into my stuff.
On the professional side for some of my work in the nutrition industry, I spent about $7,000 over a few months. That’s a lot more than your office probably ever consider but it’s part of the launch strategy to do that. We got a ton of traffic from it but it didn’t result in sales. What’s different about Pinterest, in this case, was that I’m in the brand awareness phase. I don’t expect a ton of purchase power at that very beginning because it’s so new. We launched in May 2022. However, what happens when I shut off advertising on Meta is all of it disappears.
Is this on Meta or Pinterest?
I’m comparing it to Pinterest for a second. On Meta or Facebook and Instagram, the moment I stopped doing any advertising, all of my traffic disappears. I stopped advertising on Pinterest. I’m still seeing traffic, repins and energy behind people finding my page and following my page. This is one of the major differences between how Meta and Pinterest run things. I didn’t know this before when I dug into the analytics. I’m like, “This is surprising. I haven’t advertised with them for six weeks. Why am I still seeing this traffic? They are better organically.”
You should write a book about that.
That sounds like a lot of work but we probably could think of something or maybe a booklet. People forget about Pinterest.
Julie, what was that tool that we found that helps us make all these images of the book look pretty?
It’s Placeit.
Do you know Placeit? Do you use that, Juliet?
I don’t use it. I have a designer to do it for us. What does Placeit do?
It places your book in mock-ups to make them look professional.
It looks like somebody is reading the book on a beach or in a hammock or doing whatever. If you go to TheMediacasters.com, you will see an image that has this book on the front cover with a girl holding it up like this. It looks real. Granted, we didn’t pay to have this professionally shot.
The most powerful way to sell your book is to speak in front of an audience. Share on XIt’s worth the money. It’s Placeit.com.
It enables us to create all sorts of stuff. Even if you want to create swag or if you have a t-shirt and you decide you want to make it look like it’s not a real person and all these different situations, it looks real. They have done a good job.
Where can we find your book at?
Who rules the world and is taken over the publishing industry? It’s Amazon.
Something we have to talk to our clients about constantly is Amazon takedown and some of the games they play with the Ingrams of the world to get more visibility. There’s some unfair competition going on out there with them. I would love to see some solid rules in the publishing world that even it out for authors when it comes to Amazon but that’s for another episode.
It has opened the flood gate to the lowest-hanging fruit. You don’t even need an editor. You can jump on KDP and have a book. Someone I talked to was like, “I have $400.” The red light went off in my head. I’m like, “He probably uploads a new book every other week.”
It’s a booklet.
Are they good books?
They’re not edited, I’m sure.
I do have a friend who started and used Amazon very effectively. I wrote my first fiction novel in 2009. Hers came out at the same time but she became a New York Times bestseller in the last few years. She has built a book empire of good books and got some great strategies that she works with her list to make sure she makes the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller list every time. It took her years to build that. It took her at least six years to get on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal. It’s a while. Where can we find you? We know the book is over on Amazon. It’s called Audiocasters: The Ultimate Guide to Podcasting. Where can we find you besides in our magazine every month?
You can find us on TheMediacasters.com. We have a community that is run by Mighty Networks. It’s a vibrant community of creatives, authors and entrepreneurs at TheMediacasters.mn.co. It will remain free until the day I take my last breath. Google The Mediacasters. We have a podcast called The Mediacasters.
We’re on all social channels @Mediacasters.
We’re everywhere except for Rumble.
Rumble.com is attached to Locals.com. I have a Locals account but I don’t jump on it very much. I don’t even get on Rumble. My assistant uploads them.
Corinna and I are googling Rumble and being like, “Do we need to get on a Rumble? Is Rumble the next big thing?”
I get some pretty good traction over there. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention. My assistant puts it up.
Keep writing.
I don’t write that much but what it’s interesting is when you were talking about your social media, I do put my calendar together and then hand it off to an assistant that posts everything on SocialBee. We’re all at different stages. Thank you for being on, ladies. I appreciate you taking the time to do this. We have been trying to put this together for months. It’s great to get together.
We’re honored to be here. We appreciate you.
Thank you so much for this. This has been incredible. I learned 1 thing or 2, which I love.
I learned stuff too. I can’t wait to go check out Pinterest ads.
I love Pinterest. We will have to talk about Pinterest again sometime.
Important Links
- www.BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com
- BreakthroughAuthorNewsletter.com
- Mediacasters
- Nordic Naturals
- Audiocasters
- Care More Be Better
- Crown and Compass Life Coaching
- Hustle Smart
- Mediacasters Publishing House
- Obsessed With Humans on the Verge of Change
- Femcasters
- Clubhouse
- Wisdom App
- Restream
- Rumble
- Podetize
- SocialBee
- Loomly
- DuckDuckGo
- Placeit
- KDP
- Mighty Networks
- TheMediacasters.mn.co
- @Mediacasters – Instagram
- Locals.com
About Corinna Bellizzi
Corinna Bellizzi, MBA is a natural products industry executive who pioneered the growth of the omega-3 giant, Nordic Naturals, from less than $1 million in annual revenues to over $100 million. As a mom of two young boys, podcaster, and executive, and future author of “Audiocasters”, due out this spring. Her mission is to leave the world a little better than she found it, while inspiring others to do the same. Corinna began her broadcasting journey as a guest on many nationally syndicated radio shows and even acted as an MC for fashion shows in her spare time to improve her public speaking skills. As part of her lifelong education journey, she earned her MBA from Santa Clara University, graduating at the top of her class with a triple focus in Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Marketing in June 2021. Corinna launched her first podcast show, Care More Be Better, to share the stories of inspired individuals and conscious companies to show us all that one person with one idea can have a big impact. It now ranks in the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally.
About Julie Lokun, JD
Julie Lokun, JD. a legal eagle and facilitator of dreams, is changing the trajectory of underserved entrepreneurs who are using their voice to make an impact. As a mom of four (4) boys, Julie has learned to leverage her power to lead a bustling household while also serving as the head maven of Crown & Compass Life Coaching. She adeptly “anoints and points” — directing the strategic growth of businesses and professionals around the globe. Julie has delivered presentations on the big stage, and in virtual events. With a background in law, she teases through complex information and gets to the root of issues, telling deep, compelling stories that resonate with audiences far and wide. She is a celebrated best-selling author of the entrepreneurial series, Hustle Smart, the owner of The Mediacasters Publishing House which boasts several bestselling titles, and is a 5-star business coach. In the spring of 2021, Julie launched a swiftly growing podcast, Obsessed with Humans On The Verge of Change which is already in the top 3% of all podcasts globally.
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