By Cheval John

February 7th, 2018

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Today’s episode of What’s The Word? featuring Kate Frappell, Design Lead at ManageFlitter is a very special show.

Kate is also the co-host of It’s A Monkey Podcast and is the producer of the popular twitter chat, #socialroi, hosted by Madalyn Sklar.

This episode marks the fifth year anniversary when I started the podcast on this very day.

I basically used my cell phone to host the show because I felt at that time I did not have the resources to spend on a microphone or editing type of equipment that goes into podcasting.

The platform I still use to this day to launch this show, blogtalkradio, made it simple for non-tech people like me to schedule the show and allow me and the guest to dial into the platform.

From there, the show goes live as an online radio show and then they process the interview and turn it into a podcast feed to distribute to iTunes (now apple podcasts), stitcher and google play music.

I honestly had planned to start the podcast in january after I had created the account with blogtalkradio.

However, the guest basically changed her mind and let me know she could not be a part of the podcast.

This taught me a lesson which I basically would recommend to anyone who is thinking about starting a podcast.

Never ask someone outside of the people you know very well to be a guest on your show if you are just starting out with a podcast.

Most of the time, the outside people will be nervous because they do not know what to expect if you are launching a podcast for the first time.

It is much better to have a track record of your show when you are pitching to most of the big name people because they want to make sure that your podcast fits their business or their brand.

My first guest was a professor at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), who had served in the white house during the ford and reagan administration.

I will admit that a bit of miscommunication led to a shaky start in the early going of the show.

But when the guest arrived, the show went well and had over a 1,000 downloads to my surprise.

In the first year and a half of hosting the show, the majority of my guests were professors and college coaches from S.H.S.U.

From there, the guest became more diverse due to the fact that publicist were reaching out to me to interview their clients and even from building long term friendships on social media.

Then the live stream revolution changed the direction in how I host the show.

Meerkat was launched in february of 2015 and was introduced at South by Southwest the following month of the same year.

Ironically, Periscope was launched in March of that same year and became an “instant hit” with consumers.

The live video platform, blab, was launched around mid-summer of 2015.

This app was the first to host entirely on computer and not on smartphones which gave people like me who did not own phones with apps at that time to participate in the live streaming revolution.

It also had the ability to record the live stream which would be saved as an mp4 video and a mp3 audio which made it easy for me to upload to blogtalkradio.

This also made me realized that I would need a quality microphone to make the live stream work.

So I bought my first microphone and jump right in the live streaming revolution.

As the saying goes, social media changes in an instant.

And that is what happened to the live streaming apps.

Meerkat disappeared within a year and blab basically disappeared in that same time frame.

While Periscope later integrated with Twitter and Facebook Live was officially launched in early 2016.

What is interesting to note is that the smart video companies have pivoted their services to be as compatible with the bigger social media platforms which are dominating the live streaming revolution.

Platforms like Zoom and Blue Jeans Network, which has been in business for years before the live streaming revolution, integrated their platform with the likes of YouTube Live and Facebook Live.

So now I am recording all of my podcast using facebook live via blue jeans network and today’s episode is part of it.

In this episode, you will hear:

-how Kate decided to become a designer
-how she became the lead designer for ManageFlitter
-what inspired Kate to live in Canada for an extended period of time
-the importance of live streaming
-why businesses should embrace social media

This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network in January of this year before ManageFlitter’s one year anniversary of hosting the #socialroi chat.

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.katefrappell.com

Twitter: @katefrappell

Quotes from Kate Frappell on:

STARTING THE #SOCIALROI TWITTER CHAT

I think mainly we just wanted to get the manageflitter name out there and better build relationships with our customers and our audience.

From our point of view, get inside the minds and find out what products they are using, how they are using them, why they like certain things and learn from them so that we can implement it into the internet social as well.

It’s been really good.

When I first started, I was like, “Oh, I’m not sure this twitter chat thing is all about” and now, I really like it.

I think they’re great.

I’ve met a lot of great people through twitter and joined all sorts of different twitter chats and had opportunities like this to talk on podcasts.

It’s been really good.

Great exposure as well.

That’s sort of the journey for #socialroi.

BUSINESSES HOSTING OR PARTICIPATING IN TWITTER CHATS

Twitter chats are an opportunity to log in and chat with other like-minded people or people who know more than you.

If you are an entrepreneur and you want to learn about, let’s say, social media marketing, you could jump on the #socialroi chat and find out how you can improve your return on investment using social media.

Everybody in the chat talking about the same thing.

We have different topics every week and you can just learn so much as an individual or as a small business.

You can meet people who give you business opportunities.

It’s sort of a never-ending cycle.

I think it’s really worth putting the time into networking.

From a personal point of view, I mean a lot of entrepreneurs starting out are very busy and there is a lot of networking events that you physically have to attend.

But for a twitter chat, you just have to log in.

You do not have to even leave your desk.

I think it’s fantastic.

LIVE STREAMING

I think it’s still growing to be honest.

I do watch some live streams, but they are not the first thing I go and look at.

If I log into facebook, I’m sort of just scrolling through my newsfeed as I am used to.

But, I will click on the occasional live stream and they end up being very valuable.

So I think it’s just a matter of time before people kind of adopt and get use to watching these live videos and understanding who’s behind the businesses that are hosting them.

I think I read recently that 80% of people would rather watch a video than read something, especially people on social media.

I think it’s gonna be good.

I think it’s really going to take off.

The other thing as well is it’s evergreen.

For example, even if someone’s not watching this video right now, it’s going to be on your facebook page and people can come back and watch it at any time.

PODCASTS

Podcasting is becoming more popular definitely.

Even if you look now at the amount of softwares that are out there to help with podcasting.

One of the big problems we have with the monkey podcast is not getting enough analytics.

The fact that Apple is actually building this software to look into the analytics of podcast listeners is saying a lot like where podcast is going, how popular it is, why people are listen to it.

Business people and entrepreneurs are going to need it if they are going to take on podcasting.

It has a lot of potential especially with mobile devices now.

It’s nice to listen to something other than music sometimes.

WORKING REMOTELY

We use slack internally.

That makes it super easy to message each other.

Slack made a huge difference in opening that communication online.

Plus, the time zone is not terrible.

9 a.m. in Sydney, Australia is about 2 p.m. pacific time here in the west coast of Canada.

So I have the morning by myself and then the afternoon, everybody is online.

It’s basically like working in Sydney, Australia in the afternoon.

It’s been really good.

Twitter obviously helps as well.

Everybody is on twitter quite a bit because the whole product surrounds twitter.

I would say that there’s e-mails as well and a little bit of skype.

Really, I just have to credit slack.

ON MOVING TO CANADA

What led me to come over here was I’ve always really liked Canada for some reason.

My aunt would give me travel guides to Canada for Christmas.

In 2015, I did a lot of traveling to New York, East Coast Canada, West Coast Canada and Alaska before going back home.

I got a taste of the different parts of Canada and most of the highlights which is sort of the nature of the bus tours.

I really like the west coast of Canada and knew I wanted to come back here.

I kept working and saved money.

Then I was like, “You know what, I really want to go and live there.”

I applied for my visa and I got it.

I had a chat with Kevin (Garber), who is the boss of Manage Flitter and he thought about it for a bit and said, “Look, we rather you keep the job and work remotely than quit.”

I said, “Thank you.”

I really like the team.

It worked out really well.

That’s how I ended up here.

BUSINESS OWNERS OR EMPLOYEES WORKING REMOTELY

I would recommend it in the sense.

If you have not worked remotely before, it’s a whole new adventure.

Make sure you put the time into your day and have the discipline to work, but also have the discipline to switch off because you can just stretch your work day out forever.

I’m finding a good balance and the flexibility is amazing.

So sometimes, if I want to do something fun in the morning, I can and then I can start my day a little bit later and I’ll be online when everyone in Australia is online and I can work a little bit late into the night to make up for that.

It’s a huge learning curve from a working career perspective.

If you go to a new place, it’s a whole new culture to learn.

You make a lot of new friends.

You have to put yourself out there.

It sort of pushes you outside of your comfort zone which is really important I think.

Who would you like to be a guest on What’s The Word? in the future? You can leave your comment below.