Tag Archive | Brian Fanzo

Providing Value To Your Community

By Cheval John

December 11th, 2016

I had the honor of interviewing Rachel Miller on What’s The Word? about a month ago as she shared her story about becoming a social media strategist.

It was a dream come true because Ms. Miller has played an important role in my journey to become more proficient as a social media specialist and running my business, Vallano Media, LLC.

She was also the co-host with Brian Fanzo and Christin Kardos serving as the moderator of one of the most popular Twitter Chats at the time, #sbizhour.

I had interviewed Mr. Fanzo on the show early last year.

A few months later, I had interviewed Mrs. Kardos about her career as a community manager.

The story of how I discovered the awesome trio of #sbizhour happened in 2014 after I had quit a large retail chain I worked at for about four years while I was building my business (I submitted my two week notice to the human resource department there).

I was at the tail end of finishing my time as a freelance sports writer for the Huntsville Item as I was about to move to the Houston area at the end of July of 2014.

I heard about Twitter chats from people I was following on the social media platforms.

One of the Twitter chats I had discovered was #sbizhour, which was called #sshour in it’s first year of existence.

I saw how they ran the show as a Twitter chat and a Google Hangout and was really impressed by their multi-tasking skills.

As they changed the name from #sshour to #sbizhour in 2015, the Twitter chat got even more popular and was always trending on Twitter.

At the same time, live video was starting to get more popular thanks to Meerkat and Periscope.

I had no idea that they had moved their show to the live streaming platform called Blab later that year.

And when I got use to #sbizhour being streamed live on blab, I found out that the social media platform saved the audio and video of the live stream show if it was recorded.

That opened my eyes to the possibility of letting my audience see the live recording of What’s The Word? and even interact with the guest after the show was over.

It was because of Ms. Miller, Mr. Fanzo and Mrs. Kardos that I am now recording most of the shows on my business page on facebook live via huzza.io.

As #sbizhour continued to grow in popularity, each of the co-hosts has gotten more business opportunies for themselves.

Ms. Miller became a community manager for Pure Matter, a company co-founded by Bryan and Courtney Kramer.

Mr. Fanzo had gotten more speaking opportunities at major conferences including Social Media Marketing World.

And Mrs. Kardos became the community manager for Jay Baer

As the workload got extra for the trio, they decided that it was best to shut down #sbizhour after almost two years of providing value to their community.

What I can tell you is that Ms. Miller, Mr. Fanzo and Mrs. Kardos accomplished a lot in the short time of hosting #sbizhour than many businesses have done in their entire existence because:

1. They listened to the needs of their community

2. They were transparent with their community

What would happen if many businesses followed the example of Ms. Miller, Mr Fanzo and Mrs. Kardos in providing value to their potential customers?

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What’s The Word? Top Ten Episodes of 2015

By Cheval John

2015 was a challenging and fun journey with my show, What’s The Word?

I had the opportunity to meet some of the employees of BlogTalkRadio at Podcast Movement in Fort Worth, Texas.

They shared about the evolution of their platform and how it will enhance the audio quality of podcasters who are using their service.

The best part was discovering the live streaming platform called Blab.im where anyone can showcase their expertise if they are entrepreneurs, marketers or even sportscasters.

And the fact that they send you audio and video file of the show if it was on the record makes it easy for anyone to launch a podcast.

To me, blab is more interactive and you can engage with your audience while they are watching your live recording of the podcast.

With that being said, I will continue to use BlogTalkRadio because they are making improvements on their platform and I really don’t have to do much editing of the show.

And I am looking forward to what 2016 has instore for my show and also to uplift people who listens to the show for the better.

So I am delighted to share the top ten episodes of What’s The Word? from 2015 (not in order of course):

1. Laura Wilkinson: Olympic Diving Gold Medalist

2. Greg Walker, Author And Entrepreneur

3. Nicole Welch: Host of Real Time, Real Men Only

4. Patty Elizee: Host of The Brand You Economy

5. Kelly Hungerford: Moderator of #BizHeroes

6. Brian Fanzo: Partner and Chief Digital Strategist At BroadSuite

7. Adel de Meyer: Social Media Specialist and Hootsuite Ambassador

8. Gordon Tredgold, Author of “FAST”

9. Christin Kardos: Social Media Strategist At BayLeaf Digital

10. Melodee Meyer: Founder of The Fit Free Project

And here are a few honorable mentions from What’s The Word?

Amy Robles: Host of Think Enriched Podcast

Lara Galloway: Author, Speaker and Coach