Heather Furr is the Director of Digital for the Bob & Sheri Show. They have 70 radio affiliates that they work with. Inside the walls of one radio station, digital strategy is an ongoing discussion and debate over best practices, staying on brand and what makes content go viral. Heather's work day is about deciding what is important in the moment and making sure the show is represented online whenever and all the time. (Yes I wrote that)
Our discussion included the challenges faced by young people in the radio industry, including limited opportunities for growth and development, lack of competitive pay, and the need for radio to adapt to changing times. Heather the importance of adapting to industry trends, managing expectations, and providing education and training to support young talent. We also highlighted the often-overlooked contributions of industry professionals, including promotions assistants, traffic department staff, and digital content creators. Additionally, Heather mentioned the significance of social media in creating a sense of community and connection among their audience, and the importance of building a strong online presence for radio stations. Finall,y (and this is the best part) Heather shared her strategies for creating a community around their podcast and prioritizing digital platforms.
One of the best things to come out of the pandemic was Happy Hour with Bob and Sheri. Here the team gets together for an hour of catch up and fun with their fans. With so many people stuck in their homes - it was a great way to keep one another company.
Here are the co-founders of NOW! Media, Tony Garcia and Sheri Lynch discussing how businesses can see their way up to becoming a national brand. As I mentioned earlier, these are all sharp radio people who know about radio, digital, brand building and the power of personality.
If you a regular listener of the show, you know Sheri Lynch. Tony Garcia is an accomplished radio industry professional with extensive expertise in syndicated radio programs, platforms, and services. He owns Global Media Services, founded in 2014, and co-owns Now! Media, launched in 2017. He was recently named one of Radio Ink's Top 20 Leaders for 2024!
TRANSCRIPTION
Tara Sands (Voiceover) 0:02
The sound off podcast. The show about Podcast and Broadcast - Starts Now!
Matt Cundill 0:13
So two of the biggest episodes we have ever done on the podcast involve the Bob and Jerry show. It was the first time we had Sheri Lynch. And the second time we had Jerry ledge. Just to recap, the Bob and Sheri show is a syndicated morning radio show that runs across 70 stations in the United States. They bought the show from intercom back in 2017, and took the show independent. That meant they would be covering the production costs and managing the relationships with radio affiliates and handling all the business around the show, including social media. The thing that really strikes me about the people who work on the Bob and Sheree show is that everyone is smart. And everyone is radio smart. One of the first moves they made back in 2017 was to retain Heather for she manages the digital and social elements for the show. And what emanates from her computer is often more than what comes out of entire radio stations. So today, I thought I would ask her how she does it. And now Heather furred joins me from Concord, North Carolina. And we start at the beginning,
Heather Furr 1:15
it started for me when I was about 12 years old, really truthfully, not like the job portion of it. But the interest in it, I would sit in my room at night because I didn't have a television in my room. Let's sit in my room and night with the radio and switch through all the different channels and listen to the nighttime DJs. And I just really loved that. Sometimes I would call in and talk to them. Of course, they knew I was young. So they never heard any of that. But because a very obviously sounded like a 12 year old child, but it started there. And then my best friend won a radio contest when we were in high school and I got to go to the local I heart station and walk around it was to meet an artist but they gave us a tour of the station. And I remember seeing the big board with all the buttons on it. I said I want to do that I want to push those buttons. That's what I want for my
Matt Cundill 2:08
life. What was the station and who is the artist? The artist
Heather Furr 2:13
was Sarah Barelas. And the station it was a 96 one contest?
Matt Cundill 2:17
Have you ever won a radio contest yourself?
Heather Furr 2:20
No. But then, you know, I immediately started working in radio after college like the day I finished my internship, I had a job. And so I've never been able to actually enter radio contests.
Matt Cundill 2:35
For college you went to Western Carolina, is that right? I did. Would you take
Heather Furr 2:39
communication with a focus and radio actually just recently went up there and did a panel for them for their radio students. But I used to work at power 95, which was volunteer station there. And I would do a 12am to 2am show where it was just playing whatever. I didn't really like the DJ side of it. I'll be honest, I don't like talking. This is not my natural thing. But I love the touching the buttons. I love the editing, I love the choosing the songs and clipping things together. And all of that sort of behind the scenes thing.
Matt Cundill 3:15
Did you know what behind the scenes things were available to you when you said I want to get in there and push the buttons? What does somebody who does not want to be a personality per se pursue to get into radio.
Heather Furr 3:27
I thought I wanted to be a producer. You know I work for the Bob and Jerry show. Now I thought I wanted to do what I saw Todd do I thought I wanted that job. But it turns out I actually don't want that job. But that's what I thought that's what I went to college to try to do was to be the producer behind the board with all the all the stuff and then I had sort of always had a knack or a talent for building communities on social media. I used to run fan clubs for certain bands. I had a very thriving Jonas Brothers fan club back in the day that had millions of people in it that I ran. And so that ended up being the path that I veered off of in in radio instead of being the person at the board cutting the audio. I ended up doing something completely different that I did not anticipate.
Matt Cundill 4:20
And when you left university, you jumped right into radio. I
Heather Furr 4:25
did my internship was with ace and TJ at the time. And then I got sort of scooped up out of that internship by one of the producers. I went on an interview with the director of digital at 1079. The link who knew one of the producers at the stations I had just interned at and they spoke very highly of me when I came over. So immediately I had a job, which is a very rare thing. And
Matt Cundill 4:52
you started doing exactly what you set out to do which is to really push the buttons and paint the pictures behind what we're hearing On the radio
Heather Furr 5:00
well, so I was part time as a digital Operations Assistant to start with. And I wish it was that jump of like immediately doing something super interesting. But what I did for the first several years of my career was put the ads on the website. That was all I did. You know, at least it was still behind the scenes, but and I did find it interesting. And I would volunteer myself to pitch in every department, I could. But yeah, I did, I did end up behind the scenes, but it took a little bit to get to something that was more in depth.
Matt Cundill 5:33
I know, it was just a summer short period of time. But what did you learn from working with ace and TJ,
Heather Furr 5:38
I think that I learned that it was going to be a lot harder to navigate through radio than I anticipated. Those stations, they were so big, there were so many of them, there were so many people in that building, it's a lot to navigate, you know, and you're in college and you're in an internship, you're just a silly kid, really, and you make a lot of mistakes. And you say a lot of things you shouldn't say, you know, that was the thing that really I took away from that was just being like, it's going to be a little bit harder to navigate the people of the industry than you think you always think the job itself is going to be hard. It's really the people. And
Matt Cundill 6:16
you're getting into radio at a time when there's a lot of people who have answers. There's a lot of pressure, and especially between the department you were in and what you did versus what radio traditionally was known for. So I'm speaking about the dichotomy between you're in digital, we need digital money. This is on air, we've always relied on this money. So was it stressed from day one for you? Yeah,
Heather Furr 6:43
so that was 2015, the job that I was doing, nobody had ever done at that station before. When I was working as a digital Operations Assistant at the link. Nobody had ever done that before. So they didn't know if I was doing a bad job or a good job. They just knew, you know, there's revenue coming in, and we need to manage these clients. And then when my job sort of grew into content, on the, you know, websites and social media, that's another thing that like, there was an immense amount of pressure to never make a mistake, to never get negative feedback. And then everything had to sort of be a smash hit. And I had a lot of people ask me, you know, what's the point of this social media thing? And that was really odd to me. And there, you know, I worked with a lot of really, really much smarter than me individuals then. But you know, there were some people that really still at the time, rallied against social media. And they thought it was a waste of our time and resources.
Matt Cundill 7:45
How much effort do you need to put in to sell people that it isn't in what you tell them, and I'll be the dinosaur on this. I've always been a proponent of this. But I used to get the same sort of pushback. And I sometimes wonder if I didn't tell people the right thing, in order to convince them that it was worth our time, then
Heather Furr 8:02
I did it completely the wrong way. But now I know you should show them rather than tell them. So if I can show examples, like when I'm talking to students, or other people in radio, who are struggling with Why do I have to make videos and post them on Instagram? I try to show them, you know, the impact, we do this thing for Bob and Sheri, it's a weekly happy hour. And people will sometimes question you know, that's a, an extra hour of work. Why? Why would you do that? Why would anybody sign up to do that, because of the value to the listener. They feel there are some people that's the only adult interaction they get all week, some people in our audience were the only people they talk to. And it's that it's creating that bond with the listener, you have to have boundaries, and you have to be careful parasocial relationships. But it's important to also still build a bond and be a friend to the listener, and be somebody that makes them feel seen and heard. And so it's, it's so much easier to convince people the power of social media, if you show them, you show them these instances of people reaching out and, you know, my boss, Sheri Lynch, she, she is so great at this and that people will send her DMs with their, you know, about their kid being born, and she remembers that they were pregnant, you know, nine months ago. And it's just really creating a sort of community with people.
Matt Cundill 9:27
So I remember happy hour, because I was very bored in March of 2020. And you guys came to the rescue shortly after with happy I want to think well, I'll just sit and watch this. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think it's still going because, you know, Sheri has that empathy as well. We can't stop this. People are liking this. And there are people who will be disappointed if we stopped this.
Heather Furr 9:50
Four years later. We're still doing it for that reason. There are still people who, for whatever reason, they they still can't get out and it's is a really nice for them to be able to spend some time with friends and they make friends in the comments with each other, you know, so it's not just us, they're there to talk to you, they're there to talk to each other, we have some that call themselves, they're the happy hour besties. And they're always talking to each other in the comments. And that's really like that is when somebody asks, Hey, you know, what's the point of this social media thing? That's what I'm showing them. That's, that's the proof, because they're always going to remember that we were the ones that brought them together, you know, they're always we're always going to have a place in their mind and their life because of that. Wow,
Matt Cundill 10:35
I think back to the four years of happy hour, what have you seen from the social media side that you needed to change? Or changes along the way to keep this thing sustainable? And going? Or how did you grow it? Did you add any platforms, for instance, once
Heather Furr 10:52
life started to return to normal, we had to change the format a little bit, to where we don't do it every week, it is three weeks out of every month, because turns out, you know, we do have events, we have to go back to now. And there's usually about one week a month that we all just can't make it. I also try to provide different content, you know, artists, interviews, we've had clients that want to come on and talk to the audience. That's been great. And I try to give the different things that we bring true weird stuff for examples of podcasts that that Sheri does. And so we do one of the happy hours a month around that true weird stuff content for just that portion of the audience. So it allows them to have a specific time to talk about the stuff that they want to talk about. With us. That's really the major change I've made is the the formatting.
Matt Cundill 11:44
So I'm just imagining, because you did have a very extensive digital life in commercial radio for six years. And I can see something like Happy Hour getting shelved after a particular period of time. And instead of evolving it like you have, you know, as an independent group, it probably would have been shuttled, perhaps in the radio world. Yeah, I was doing
Heather Furr 12:07
something at the link with a friend of mine, it was What's up Wednesday, and it eventually did get shelved in a similar way, because of time constraints. So I do think it would have been shelved in typical radio fashion, because it wouldn't have been seen as important. And it's not a what you would consider a major revenue builder. It's about creating that core group of audience. And you know, sometimes people will see it, and they'll say, well, there were only 300. Live watchers this week. Yes. But if you got 300 people in a room with you at an event, you would notice that would be considered a smash hit. So there's also you know, that side of it,
Matt Cundill 12:46
if you could tell radio, a couple of things about what they're missing a social media and give them a shake. How do they screw up digital so badly?
Heather Furr 12:53
I think they're doing it with the wrong thought process. Like a lot of things in radio, they don't put much effort or money into it if they can't see an immediate return. Right. And social media doesn't work like that. It's a slow build, it's a tool for yourself more than it is a tool for your clients. Like it's great if the client can get some value from coming onto your social platforms. But radio station should be using it the same way like Duolingo does, to really build themselves up and create a sort of fun, interactive community for themselves. And they don't do that. Because that's ultimately that's what radio is supposed to be right. It's a voice of the community. And the social media has somehow just gotten either forgotten or isn't treated that way.
Matt Cundill 13:42
So you said the word community probably five times even started to say it when you sort of referenced before you got into radio. So you've always thought of it as community building. And here we are in 2024, where these are the buzzwords now. I mean, this is stuff you've been like practicing all along. And Heather, now's your time. It's here. So what did you see 10 years ago that the rest of us didn't,
Heather Furr 14:10
I think I was one of those people that lived my life on the internet, I was a very introverted person, all of my friends joke that like I spent 95% of my life online. And it was much truer then than it is now. Because I'm, you know, I'm a big reader. I'm an avid gamer. I do all of these things that are in the internet space. And so I see the interactions, I see the people there. And I see a lot of people are just lonely. It's even more true post pandemic than it ever was before. It's
Matt Cundill 14:43
fairly well documented a couple of times because we've had Sheri on the show and she's talked about making that jump from working in radio to this is now going to be the business the shows the business. I'm going to buy the show from you. How did you get on that train? Sheri
Heather Furr 14:58
and I have always kind of Have you know how you meet somebody and you're just on the same mental wavelength? Like when I met Sheri? Yeah, that's how Sheri and I have always been. And I was going through a really rough time, at the stations where, you know, being a young person in radio these days is not easy. And there's no place for you to really grow anymore, truthfully. And one day, Sheri said, Hey, we want to bring somebody on to do digital. Do you want to do it? And I said, Yes, I do. And that just so happened to be March 4 2020 and 2 weeks later, the whole world shut down.
Matt Cundill 15:39
And you became the most important person on that team.
Heather Furr 15:42
I would not say that Sheri is still the most important person on that team.
Matt Cundill 15:49
You know, you and I have had conversations before about working in the environment with high stress, where your digital where you're frowned upon, treated secondary with the content that you're creating, you know, it's radio first, it's digital second, and it had a mental effect on you. And to the point where I think I was reading an article that Sheri had written, well, if we're gonna have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun at the radio station. Why? Why? Why am I in the bathroom holding this person? While she's like having a very stressful moment? And so you made a reference to young people not being able to connect with what's inside radio stations, is that changing, you think and not the working with no, but from what you've heard,
Heather Furr 16:30
I still have a lot of friends. And I will tell you young people are leaving the industry in droves. And one of the reasons for that is pay, obviously, there's not enough competitive pay. But the other thing is, they're not allowed to actually learn, you know, you're put in a in a job, and you're siloed off in that job. There are people that started in promotions, gigs and have been in promotions, gigs for five plus years, but can't seem to either move from that assistant job up to a manager or, you know, get to another place in the building that they would want to be, and they can't get the opportunities they're looking for. And it's not for lack of talent. And that's the other thing. But radios lost the art of growing young people up into positions. You know, and I just see so many people, you know, my age, I'm in my 30s now, and younger, who were sort of stuck. I stayed in sort of the same department for five years, I stayed in the same job for two without any ability to grow upward because I didn't fit the stereotype of what they were looking for in that upper level of people.
Matt Cundill 17:40
You had a chance to go back to where you learned radio. Are they teaching it the right way?
Heather Furr 17:47
Yeah, one of the things I really appreciate about like Westerns teachers, and the program is they're, you know, they're talking about AI. They're talking about social media, they're talking about podcasting. And the conversation of building your own voice on these digital platforms, is what they're doing with their teaching. So it's not just the towers and the editing, and, and all of that they're doing the other side of it. They have grown that program and changed the way that they've gone about teaching it. And so I really do think, yes, they're teaching it the right way. When I was there originally, I wasn't taught you know, about social media. They did teach websites and an elective course. And we weren't taught anything about podcasting. So they really have moved with the times on that.
Matt Cundill 18:38
And What questions did they have for you? Um, the
Heather Furr 18:41
students had a lot of really fantastic questions about how to build websites. You know, I was getting pulled aside after they were too nervous to ask but also navigating the industry as a young woman, how to begin with your podcast, how to market your podcast, where they should market, their podcast, how to find an audience and build a community. They were asking all sorts of wonderful questions.
Matt Cundill 19:08
How optimistic are you about their future?
Heather Furr 19:11
I am very optimistic actually. Because they are being educated to work with you know, I'm going to say the dirty word here, AI. They're being encouraged to work with it and not against it. So I'm very optimistic for the next group of young people. The one thing that always makes me nervous is I still don't think the rest of radio has caught up to giving opportunity in the industry to young people, and letting them make mistakes and working with them through the mistakes rather than just firing them.
Tara Sands (Voiceover) 19:45
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Matt Cundill 20:14
apps. When you and I spoke at Podcast Movement, it incredibly fair criticism. And one that has stuck with me about this show is there are not enough young people on the show. And my take, and I guess why I don't have as many young people on the show is because I'm not sure what stories they can tell, because they're kind of stuck being order takers and pushing things through. So what stories Am I missing here that need to come out on this show?
Heather Furr 20:41
I think everywhere in each part of the building, they're interesting stories. You know, I've known people who are promotions assistants, putting on some of the most miraculous feats of entertainment for an audience that have ever seen. With a shoestring budget budget, I mean, just zip ties and hopes. That's, that's what they're running on. And those are, to me, the unsung hero of most radio stations. And I, I know that they're not often looked at, because they're not talkers, they're like me, they were people behind the scenes. But they have some amazing stories to tell they've done some incredible things. I'm always at all when I go and I see the event and then realize these people are getting paid, you know, probably close to minimum wage, and they've just done this most incredible thing. And they're nice to listeners and their listeners that come to every event and know the names of all the promo staff and come to say hi to them and really love them. And those people to me, those are stories that are worth telling. Yes, they're young people, yes, they're relatively new to the industry. No, they may not have a big name or a big following. But there's so much that they do the same thing with the, you know, on air traffic department that does all of the commercial placements and things like that they pull together some of the most magical things fitting all of those spots in during the holidays. And they're working, you know, 1216 hours. And I worked in the traffic department for you know, a couple of months filling in for someone. So I've seen it firsthand what it takes to really do that job in its highest stress, because they're catching all of the attitude from upper management and from sales staff. And from on air talent, they're getting it from all sides of the coin, when they're just trying to do what is considered a just a task or anti job.
Matt Cundill 22:39
And to that one of the things that I've noticed, whether it's in the US or in Canada is that when we have those successes, we do not spend any time telling anybody about those successes, it used to be a press release, simply go out, it would get you know, run in all access.com and may rest in peace. I don't know where to go get my radio news anymore. It's tough to find those stories. So by the way, if you're listening to this, and you do have a phenomenal story about radio success story, do let me know, we'd love to have you on the show, that sort of thing. As for the digital stuff that you do with Bob and Sheri, here, you come with this huge skill set of what you know. And you come into the show. And pandemic aside. I'm just gonna guess you're super, super heavy on Facebook. But you've got to cover most of America with some of this content. You've got markets across the US. You're busy every day. Yeah, absolutely. And then there's podcasts. And there's the content from the show. What's your day look like?
Heather Furr 23:38
Most of it is spent on on Facebook, going through comments, sifting. Some of that is moderation. And then like most of us, I spend several hours trapped in the abyss that is my email. And then there's video editing right now website coding, website, rearranging, like all sorts of things like that. We have a premium subscription that I manage completely on my own, and then I run the happy hour. So yeah, it stays pretty busy. And it just floats from one thing to the next, which for me is really good because it keeps me engaged. Constantly, you know, I can edit a video or create a graphic and then bounce to doing something else. When I am done or need a break from it because staring at a video if you're especially if you're editing one that's particularly long, you can kind of become blind to certain things in that video,
Matt Cundill 24:34
named the Radio Conference. Somebody has talked about subscription radio in some capacity. They are doing it in in Denmark, but here you are with with Bob and Sharon, you've got a subscription tier that you can subscribe to. So what does the subscription tier Get me the super user and the super listener? So
Heather Furr 24:52
for us, it's some extra content. So some special exclusives that are just behind there like recipes or It is when we all are together, some older stuff that has never before been released, and we just put in there for fun. And then there's access to old chatroom bits, people really enjoyed the chat room from years ago. And it costs a lot to host those things on a regular, you know, just a regular podcast. So to offset that cost, we put it behind the premium. They have commercial free versions of the podcast that they can access through their preferred podcast listening software, whether that's iTunes, Android, Spotify, and it's completely commercial free. As well, as you know, we'll do specific, like holiday oriented releases for things, we'll put special episodes out, there's a lot of stuff back there, that just makes it a value.
Matt Cundill 25:52
It's incredible to how many are on the team, I count 678, I think it's eight. And by the way, if you're listening to this, and you think, you know, the bobbin Sheri show is just it's a show that runs across, you know, the people who are involved with this. And I've got Heather on here, because Heather knows, digital and manages this, this big property in this big entity. And it's super powerful, because I've had Sheri on my show, and she shared it on Facebook and kaboom. That was 2000 downloads. I mean, I usually get that in a month, you know, and here here it was one share on Facebook and blammo. But Tony Garcia is also part of it. And in radio, Inc, he's listed as one of the most top 20 influential in radio in America. So what you guys are doing, you know, it really should be copied and emulated. And I really thank you, by the way for sharing some of this inside stuff. And Facebook is still is it King really with what you're doing?
Heather Furr 26:47
So that is a question I get asked all of the time, and it is highly dependent on your demographic. So for us, yes, but for maybe a younger group, they probably want to be on Instagram, I would say tick tock but you know, there's some up in the air about whether or not we'll have access to that, or YouTube. And it's very dependent on your audience. If you are geared more towards men, you may want to look at doing things on Twitch, or Twitter or x now, or Reddit, because that's more the male dominated populations of the audience. So it's really going to be highly dependent on your demographic.
Matt Cundill 27:27
And you haven't given anything up though, you're totally everywhere. I'm
Heather Furr 27:31
a little bit everywhere at the show, you know, we have names everywhere, but we don't necessarily use x, there are some shows that get a lot of value from it, we don't, that's one thing I do encourage people to do is let go of the platforms that one bring, you know, community value, you know, if the community in a place, you know, like x, for example, is not your listeners, they're not listening to the show and it's hyper negative, then you don't need to be there. There's no point for you know, it's it's just going to drag down, you know, what you're trying to accomplish, which is building a community.
Matt Cundill 28:06
I'm so glad you mentioned that, because I asked the question I sort of had x in mind. So I don't think I've seen the bobbin Sheri show do much on X in the last six months. You let it go. And I'm having a little bit of trouble letting it go. And maybe I shouldn't let it go. But kudos on you for recognizing that. So if I were to get into the Bob and Sheri community, what are the values with this ethos? What's the mission statement?
Heather Furr 28:30
For me, it's creating a positive environment where we can have some laughs because that's, that's what we do. We're a comedy show, where we can have some laughs and the front focus is always to bring the people back to listen to the show. But it's really just about having some laughs with people and making them feel like they're seen and heard. And I know that is like so cliche, but that, for me, that's something I have been doing, you know, for six, seven years now, is just trying to make the audience feel like they've got somebody they can talk to in
Matt Cundill 29:04
us. For those who haven't connected to the show. And I don't know, Bob and sharing my market, how can I listen to the show, we
Heather Furr 29:11
have a 24/7 Bob and Sheri stream. We have the podcasts which you can find it Bob and jerry.com. And anywhere that you get your podcasts, they're everywhere. And you can find them all over our social medias, which are always you know, Bob and Sheri on Facebook, it's Bob and Sheri radio. And that's also where you'll get the happy hour
Matt Cundill 29:31
if you have another three hours in your day. And I'm not asking you to do this because this is not commercial radio and I'm not here to make your work an extra. But if you can, if you had an extra three hours, and it wasn't going to exhaust you, where would you put the resources in those three hours? What would you add on what you wish you could have if you had another three hours?
Heather Furr 29:51
Oh, I would create unique content on YouTube specifically just show unique content on YouTube. That is such an underutilized platform for every radio station. But there's still a lot of value to be found there. And people are like, well, I don't see very much activity and comments on YouTube anymore. People are using it as the resource to search. So that is why YouTube is a value. Yes, there's not a lot of conversation happening there anymore. But it's the resource, just search for things. You know, if you're looking for a bit, you might go search it on YouTube, especially if you're just looking for something specific. And it also when you're sharing something on social media, you're going a lot of people are going to YouTube to share it, because it's a trusted source. And
Matt Cundill 30:41
that's the exact same thing podcasters are going through right now. Because they're like, oh, I don't do video. But you know, lo and behold, here we are. I mean, last one, I saw you I wasn't doing video. And now here we are doing video when we're putting it up on YouTube. But you've got a little bit more to think about more than I would. Because you've got the Bob and Jerry show, you've got multiple podcasts that you need to consider multiple properties. So when you're driving people to the product, you drive to the podcast, you drive into Bob and Sheri showed you drive to happy hour. How do you how do you use that, that marketing of YouTube and the power of YouTube? That
Heather Furr 31:19
is such a goal specific question, we try to make blanket statements in this industry to where it's like, oh, this is always what we're doing here. But it's really specific. You know, if I'm trying to drive listeners to true weird stuff, I'm going to drive them to that podcast directly. If I'm trying to drive people to happy hour from YouTube, I'm going to drive them to the Facebook directly. And it's going to be dependent on what I'm trying to do. If I want to drive premium subscriptions, I'm going to use all these different tools to push them to that funnel of place that I want them to go. And it's so dependent on what you're trying to do. If you're trying to boost listeners, you always want to push to the audio directly do not make someone jump through hoops to get what they want. What's
Matt Cundill 32:04
in it for the listener, right? Yeah,
I mean, make it easy. Not that you would be cheering for
such a thing, because there are people doing this. But hey, I hope there's no more Tiktok. So that's one less thing to worry about.
Heather Furr 32:17
I love tick tock so I really hope no, because I want to do so many things with tick tock. There's so much the power of audio and discovery on tick tock is so amazing. So like, I don't want that. But also I do a lot in a day. So putting that to the side right now is okay, but letting x go, for example. It was one of those things where I had I had a conversation like, am I keeping it because of my Am I continuing to do it because of my own? Like the effort I've already put into it sunk cost, you know, or is it really valuable? And when I really looked, it wasn't really valuable. It wasn't driving new listeners at all.
Matt Cundill 32:59
Are you finding any life on threads? There
Heather Furr 33:01
is actually for us, and particularly with true weird stuff. So I think with niche podcasters threads can be very, very good right now, you know, things change. And that may not always be the case. But right now, it's very good for that.
Matt Cundill 33:15
This is my big takeaway from our conversation. Because I You're making me think about evaluating each one of these social media platforms. It's not a numbers thing. It's not impressions. It's, it's really does this fit your community? Yeah.
Heather Furr 33:28
And does it add something? Does it bring something new? Because I can tell you how Instagram brings a different group of our audience into the fold. And it's wildly different than Facebook, even though the same company different audiences.
Matt Cundill 33:44
Heather, how do you look at the future for the next year for the Bob and Sheri show as it pertains to digital? I kind of said, well, if you had an extra three hours, you'd love to sort of pushing into YouTube. We've already talked about tick tock could stay could go. Is there anything else that you're looking at as maybe being a trend or somewhere else that you think that there's an opportunity for some community building? For anybody doing a podcast or a radio show?
Heather Furr 34:09
I think that there are a good amount of, you know, just for radio in general, there are good of good amount of women targeted demos that could really get value out of being on Pinterest, and putting time and effort into Pinterest. There's also a good amount of value from being in places like Reddit and creating boards on Reddit. And you see this with podcasters all the time. They have their Reddit communities. And there's conversations in Reddit happening. So I think there is value there. And that's one thing. In the next year I see myself doing more of is creating more of that community feeling in places like Reddit and Pinterest.
Matt Cundill 34:50
Are there. Thanks so much for doing this. This has been a long time coming and thanks for waiting up the two years when I said we'll get to it next year. We'll get to it next week. I promise. Thanks for doing this library. Get it. Yeah. The
Tara Sands (Voiceover) 35:01
sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill. Produced by Evan Surminski edited by Taylor McLean social media by Aidan glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company, there's always more ad sound off podcast.com