Episode 7: Getting the Word Out – Branding

Introduction: Branding as a Lighthouse

CHERYL: Hi, Sofia!!! [laughs]

SOFIA: Hi!

THOMAS: How are you?

SOFIA: I’m doing great. I’m so happy to be here.

THOMAS: Yeah, let’s get into it, then. So, we’re here to talk about branding, your expertise.

SOFIA: Cool. Sounds great. My name is Sofia Webster. I use she/her pronouns. I am a light-skinned Ecuadorian American woman. And I’m coming to you from my closet [laughs] in Sacramento, California. Literally in the closet.

I work with LaVant Consulting, Inc., and my title with LaVant Consulting is Lead Consultant of Content Marketing and Strategy. So happy to be joining both of you today.

THOMAS: Happy to have you. And so, if it makes you feel any better, I am also in my closet.

CHERYL: I am surrounded, literally surrounded by sofas.

THOMAS: So, Cheryl’s at a sofa store, apparently. [guffaws]

CHERYL: I’m in a sofa store. [chuckles] We’ll get on script in a second. You know how we are.

You gave the title that you have at LaVant Consulting, Inc. Do you have any nicknames for your title? You know, like I’m the Lead Scooby-Doo or something?

THOMAS: [laughs]

CHERYL: Or something that you call yourself?

[recorded clip of Scooby-Doo laughing]

SOFIA: No! But I kind of wanna start calling myself the Lead Scooby-Doo. The Lead Scooby-doo. That’s so fun!

THOMAS: Lead Scooby-Doo. That means you have a follower Scooby-Doo.

SOFIA: Her name is Scrappy-Doo, and we are all part of The Mystery Machine.

CHERYL: The Mystery Machine that is branding! Would you typically refer to branding as a Mystery Machine or just with us?

SOFIA: Oh! Kind of. It can look like a Mystery Machine from the outside, but actually on the inside, it’s not a Mystery Machine. It’s a very well-oiled machine.

THOMAS: Welcome to POD Ask Us.

CHERYL: Isn’t it POD Access?

THOMAS: Can’t it be both?

CHERYL: Connecting d/Deaf and disabled podcasters to audiences and each other.

THOMAS: Ba-dum-dum bap-bah-dum.

CHERYL: [happy giggle]

[1960s pop-rock music break]

THOMAS: Our episode today is all about branding, featuring a special guest, Lead Scooby-Doo Sofia Webster from LCI. She tells us exactly what it is and how it can benefit podcast creators.

CHERYL: Sofia starts with this way of thinking about branding.

SOFIA: I like to think of branding as a big lighthouse. And the light of your lighthouse is going to be sending messages to everyone about who you are and what vibes you have and what vibes your podcast has. You can also think of your lighthouse as uniquely decorated, depending on the vibe you wanna display to other people. Maybe it’s a plain white lighthouse, or maybe it’s painted neon green and has a bunch of flowers on it. That would be a very pretty iconic lighthouse.

I know that branding can sound like some marketing mumbo jumbo, but it really is critical to think through because if you get stuck on questions like, “How do I talk about my podcast? How do I explain it to other people? What should my visuals look like? What type of voice do I use?” All those questions are addressed in branding. Branding’s gonna be helpful for you. 

Benefits of Branding

THOMAS: That’s such a great point that I think often gets lost. Branding is for you as the holder of the brand as much as it is a way for others to recognize and think about you or your product or service.

CHERYL: To start thinking of your podcast as part of your brand, Sofia encourages us to answer this question.

SOFIA: What do you want people to feel when they listen to your podcast?

THOMAS: Do you want your audience to think of your podcast as a source for serious news or opinion? Maybe it’s the opposite, and it should never be taken seriously.

CHERYL: How you answer that question should help you develop your presentation style, your artwork, and who you invite on as guests or co-hosts.

SOFIA: If the answer to that question is, “Oh! I want people to feel like they’re hanging out with their friends,” okay. Well, you can use your language and form your podcast around emulating that effect. If I was to make my podcast sound like the listener’s listening to a bunch of their friends, I would do things like avoid jargon, keep the tone really casual, maybe make some jokes, going on tangents. Maybe I would insert my personal life in some way.

As far as aesthetics go, maybe I would incorporate something playful or fun. Or if I’m thinking about a logo or the cover art for my podcast, maybe it’s me and my co-host laughing together into a mic! The type of cover art that you use is going to send messages about what type of tone, what type of voice people can expect while listening to the podcast.

It also covers other things like how to choose the guests.

THOMAS: I’m sure many listeners, especially those new to podcasting, are wondering how this impacts choosing guests.

CHERYL: For many new podcasters, finding guests can be such a challenge. Some podcasters end up inviting people on who aren’t a perfect fit because they feel kind of related, and they gotta get an episode or a story out, and this person’s available.

SOFIA: I know that there can be some questions about how to stay in line with your brand. What a podcaster should do if they don’t feel like someone who hits them up as a potential guest is really gonna fit the vibe of the show, I would go back to that lighthouse again. How would my listeners feel if I invited this guest onto my show?

Let’s say for this podcast that my guests are usually disabled adults who are trying to tell the story of the relationship that they have with their parents. And I try to keep the tone of my podcast really light and funny to kinda offset the heavy tone or nature of the topics that people are going to likely try to talk about. And that I want people who are listening to the podcast to feel seen and heard and to also offer a space to heal from these experiences that they had with their parents.

So, let’s say that I’m looking through my inbox one day, and I see a inquiry from a woman who is a parent of a disabled person, and they wanna come on my podcast to share their experience as a warrior mom of a disabled person. Okay, so let’s go back to our lighthouse! I want my listeners to feel heard. I want to create a space for those disabled people to heal from these experiences. Would having Warrior Mom on my podcast create that type of space for my listeners? No! My listeners are probably really tired of hearing from parents, and Warrior Moms is a really common trope that disabled people have to go through with their parents. So, having this warrior mom on my podcast would probably make my listeners feel frustrated and confused.

I’d be more interested in hearing from the adult disabled child in that scenario, not the warrior mom. So I would send a very polite but firm decline to that person, explaining this is a space for disabled people only, disabled people first, or something like that and give some rationale as to why I don’t think that her voice in this space would be appropriate for our listeners.

CHERYL: Even when a guest does appear to match your podcast’s vibe, you should make sure you’re both on the same page.

SOFIA: Consider prepping your guests beforehand with some sort of quick tipsheet on the overall vibe of the podcast and the tone. Sometimes when I’m listening to podcasts, I hear guests say things like, “Oh, can I curse on this podcast?” Because cursing is going to change that explicit label or not. I know some podcast hosts are very particular about whether they want that explicit label or not. So, prep your guests beforehand about the tone of the pod.

THOMAS: Branding not only helps with guest selection, it can also determine how much or little you edit.

SOFIA: So, if I’m doing something where I want the vibe to be like it’s a conversation between friends, maybe I’m not gonna do a lot of heavy editing. But if I want it to be more formal, a deep dive, and the guest goes on some random tangent, I would probably cut out the random tangent in editing [laughs] and try to slim it down to make the story really stick.

Let’s say my podcast is about disability justice, and I’m trying to get some sponsorships or have it be a ad-supported podcast, I probably don’t want Northrop Grumman to be a sponsor of my podcast! [delighted laugh] Because that’s very anti-disability justice. They are a weapons manufacturer. It’s something that you as a podcast are gonna have to reckon with is, what are your criteria for sponsorships? I know from other podcasts I’ve listened to the creative team doesn’t always have control over the advertising, which is really a bummer especially if you go with a podcast network, because then you don’t have say over that part of the listener experience. There could be a ad on there that you fundamentally disagree with. There’s a line between having to have brand partnerships and also have creative control over what the advertising space looks like. I know that it’s tricky for a lot of podcasters.

Taglines

THOMAS: I can’t help but think about how different my podcast would be if I had this information and acted on it before I began.

CHERYL: What do you think you would’ve done differently?

THOMAS: The biggest thing for me is the name of the podcast itself. Reid My Mind Radio says nothing about who my target audience is or the type of content you can expect.

SOFIA: That’s okay. Neither does LaVant Consulting, Inc. That doesn’t tell you anything about what we do, but it does include the name of our founder and leader. And her lived experience and her identity is absolutely critical to the work we do. Maybe something you could do is start thinking about a tagline that does incorporate disability somehow. Or you could choose not to have it in there and avoid the pigeonhole.

CHERYL: Which, by the way, is the name of my podcast!

THOMAS: And I think the name works well, especially with your tag line: “Don’t sit where society puts you.”

CHERYL: [chuckles] Thanks!

THOMAS: [laughs]

CHERYL: Okay. Let’s hear more about taglines from Sofia.

SOFIA: LaVant Consulting, Inc. has a tagline, and that tagline is “Speak disability with confidence.” And all the credit for that tagline goes to Andraéa LaVant. I think it’s an amazing tagline because it says so many things. “Speak disability with confidence.” Speak is a command. Okay, I’m not saying I strongly suggest that you consider talking about disability. No, I am commanding you to do it. Speak disability with confidence. It’s also a promise. Speaking is language, and we are a digital communications firm. So, naturally, we do a lot of speaking in our work. It’s also about speaking up and verbalizing a brand’s commitment to disability. We often encounter this myth that disability is impossible to talk about without being canceled, folks being afraid of saying the wrong thing and being canceled for it! They’re so scared. It’s not enough to just learn how to speak disability. You have to do it with confidence with the skills, the knowledge to back that up.

CHERYL: Wow, all that from four words, ten syllables?

THOMAS: And there’s more!

CHERYL: Yes! [both laugh]

SOFIA: We’re a 80% disabled team. Almost all of us are disabled, which we love. Disability really communicates a lot about our work. So when we put all those things together, “Speak disability with confidence,” it has a lot of power and zing behind it.

THOMAS: This is making me really think about updating my tagline.

CHERYL: Oh, do you have anything in mind?

THOMAS: I actually do. “Reid My Mind Radio with confidence!”

CHERYL: [big laugh] I don’t think you’re supposed to just copy and paste someone else’s tagline. It has to be unique and true to you and your podcast for it to work.

THOMAS: Hmm. Okay, that makes sense. But how do you know it works?

SOFIA: Sometimes we’ll get inquiries that say, “I really want your support because I wanna know how to speak disability with confidence.” [delighted chuckle] They use the tagline in their inquiry, which tickles me! And it means that it’s working and that it’s resonating with people.

As far as what advice I’d give to other podcasters who are in their early stages of, “what is my tagline?” I would spend some time in your lighthouse! The more time you spend in your lighthouse, the more likely certain things will come up over and over and over again. They’ll come out of the woodwork.

CHERYL: Well, that settles it. I’m headed to my lighthouse this weekend.

THOMAS: That sounds like a good idea. And even though Sofia didn’t mention it, I’m going to add in the importance of snacks.

CHERYL: Ooh! What kind of snacks would you recommend?

THOMAS: Scooby Snacks of course!

SCOOBY-DOO: Oh, boy! [laughs wildly]

[both hold back giggles as Cheryl crunch-crunches]

CHERYL: It’s a pickle!

[Thomas lets his laugh out]

THOMAS: Besides the snacks, what are some of the rules to creating a tagline?

SOFIA: Well, there’s not really any requirements for what a tagline should be. It just needs to communicate a message that you want to send to people. If you could summarize your brand in one phrase, what would that phrase be, is another way to prompt that question. But it’s not like there’s a word limit. It’s more about what feels right.

Resources

CHERYL: Well, first of all, I just wanna acknowledge that you’re not taking this lightly at all. You’re really giving us a ton! For folks who are not gonna hire a brand consultant or they’re gonna do it more informally, do you have any good ideas, websites, books, media you can point people to?

SOFIA: Yes, I find that branding does not have to be done with a professional consultant, although you can. And it’s probably gonna make your process easier. It also can be a very DIY process because it’s really just asking yourself a series of questions, interviewing yourself. Okay, self, what is the goal of my podcast? What type of podcast I wanna be? What sets me apart from other podcasts? Why would anybody in the world listen to me and what I have to say? Answering those questions are the first steps that you could take towards branding.

As far as resources go, I really, really like HubSpot. HubSpot is a resource for small businesses who want to grow their company but don’t necessarily have the resources to do it or the skillset. So, HubSpot has a lot of monetized resources, in other words, things you have to pay for. But a lot of their template library is free! HubSpot has a really good blog post called What Is Branding and Why is it important in 2023, which I think is a great primer for anyone who wants to start working on branding in a DIY setting.

Social Media

THOMAS: Is there anything that you could say about social media in terms of including that in the brand and how that incorporates with branding?

SOFIA: Yes. Social media’s my favorite topic [laughs] to talk about.

CHERYL: That’s coming up in the next episode! And if we’re being honest, social media isn’t our favorite topic to talk about.

THOMAS: And we would’ve gotten away without talking about it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids! [both laugh] Sorry, I couldn’t help it!

CHERYL: Yeah! Your Scooby-Doo and The Mystery Machine shirt sorta gives it away!

SCOOBY-DO: Thank you!

Wrap-up

THOMAS: So for now, we encourage you all to head on over to your lighthouse and answer some questions.

CHERYL: What’s the goal of your podcast? What sets yours apart from other podcasts?

THOMAS: What’s the vibe of your podcast? How could you sum up your show in one phrase?

CHERYL: Answer these questions for yourself whether you’re just starting out or you’ve had a podcast a long time. It’s always good to check in to make sure your show is aligned with your values and your vision for it.

THOMAS: Let us know. Answer one or all of these questions.

CHERYL: Or share your podcast tagline. [crunches the pickle]

THOMAS: Go to PODAccess.net and hit the Contact Us button.

CHERYL: And you can upload a voice memo or write a message.

THOMAS: And you might just hear it,

CHERYL: read it,

THOMAS: or see it in a future episode of the podcast or on social media.

CHERYL: Tell a friend and an enemy to follow or subscribe to POD Access wherever you get your podcasts and on Instagram @ThePODAccess. That’s @ T H E P O D A C C E S S.

THOMAS: PODAccess.net.

CHERYL: Meow.