While you might not get away with watching tv or YouTube videos at work, it’s often easier to listen to a podcast in your spare time. That’s why podcasts and other audio content are becoming so popular—and why you should take advantage of this growth and think about creating a podcast yourself. In this Feature Friday episode of the ROI Online Podcast, Steve talks with Molly Ann Hale, Social Media Producer at Vurbl (the YouTube of Audio), about how to get your current or future podcast discovered by more listeners—and even make money from it.
Molly is a Producer, Executive Assistant, Social Media Specialist, Web Designer & Writer. She’s currently the Social Media Producer at Vurbl, an audio streaming destination for all types of audio creators, and anyone that loves listening to audio. Vurbl supports audio creators build their station and helps listeners connect with meaningful content.
Promoting, marketing, and monetizing your podcast can be hard at times, more so when competing with platforms like YouTube. Luckily there’s a new tool that can get your podcast out there so you can increase your listeners and achieve your goals.
Among other things, Molly and Steve discussed:
- Mollys’ background
- Everything you need to know about Vurbl–The Youtube for Audio
- Good Audiobooks you should listen to
- The best ways to market and monetize your podcast
- Some great tools Vurbl offers to share your content and get more engagement
- What makes Vurbl different from Internet Radio, Anchor, and other platforms
You can learn more about Molly here:
Follow Molly on LinkedIn
You can learn more about Vurbl here:
Read the books mentioned in this podcast:
The Golden Toilet by Steve Brown
Thinking of starting your own podcast? Buzzsprout’s secure and reliable posting allows you to publish podcasts online. Buzzsprout also includes full iTunes support, HTML5 players, show statistics, and WordPress plugins. Get started using this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card and to help support our show!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Molly Ann Hale (00:03):
So many people want to ingest content while
they're working. But they can'twatch something. You know, they
they need to be on theircomputer. So podcasts and audio
is perfect for those nine tofivers that they keep
themselves, you know, occupiedwhile they're doing busy work
with audio. So yeah, I agreewith you, I think they are
leaving audience on the table.
And I mean, look, I love RuPaul.
(00:24):
Because RuPaul is like, he's gota TV show, he could, you know,
he could retire a million timesover already, but I think he did
his podcast a because he hadcontrol over it. But also, he
understood the power that youneed that audio to, and it
allows you to do so much more,you know, you can really explore
inside of the audio in wayswhere TV and video are there
certain rules or expectations oryou know, structure around what
(00:48):
is expected or how it should go.
Whereas an audio like there's somuch more room to play.
Steve Brown (00:54):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:17):
learn together. Malian Hale,welcome to the ROI online
podcast.
Molly Ann Hale (01:27):
Hi, Steve.
Thanks for having me.
Steve Brown (01:30):
So what do you get when you put together a stand up
comedian that does off the cuffstuff? And then you mash in a
little social media expert? Whatdo you get when you do that?
Molly Ann Hale (01:50):
Somebody who wears a lot of hats easily?
Steve Brown (01:52):
Yeah. Mother, you you've got some funny stuff on
YouTube. But we're talking aboutverbal today we're gonna I'm
gonna get to that. But we'retalking about verbal, you are
the creator, Ambassador, forverbal, it's a brand new
platform for audio creators.
When you think about how hard itis for podcasters to get their
(02:14):
podcast discovered.
Molly Ann Hale (02:20):
It's a challenge. It can be very
difficult, yes. But verbal, bythe way, have a podcast. So I
know. Who doesn't these days,though, right?
Steve Brown (02:30):
Right. But when when you start a podcast, you're
wanting to connect with youraudience. And it's like, Where
do I post my stuff. And thenwhen you go and you do a search
for that, it's hard to findthings. And yet, there happens
to be this brand new platform.
That is for audio, what YouTubeis for video, and it's called
(02:50):
verbal v URBL. That's, in youryou're that person that
connecting all the creators totheir audience, right?
Molly Ann Hale (03:04):
That's right. So I'm spearheading the ambassador
program preverbal. And we arereaching out to anybody who has
an expertise in some kind offield that they want to share
via our platform by creatingplaylists, or curating thought
leaders in their category. Andas we're in exchange, we are
giving these creators lots offree promotion for their
(03:26):
content, their audio, theirplaylists, their station, across
our social, our homepage, ouremail newsletters and marketing
that we do. So we think it's agreat way for people to get
discovered in their audio to getdiscovered.
Steve Brown (03:39):
Yeah, so when you say a creator, it's not just
podcasters.
Molly Ann Hale (03:44):
That's right.
We've got all kinds of audiofrom musicians to podcasters, to
interviewers to people who justhave, you know, there's so much
audio in the world that I thinka lot of people don't even know
what to do with. And we havelots of people that say, Oh, we
really love verbal because Ihave all this audio. Now I can
put it in one place, I cancatalogue it, I can actually
share it on social, which wassomething that was very hard to
(04:04):
do, and make playlists thatcombines their audio with lots
of other kinds of audio to makethese more interesting listening
experiences.
Steve Brown (04:14):
So not only can creators go plop their content
there.
Molly Ann Hale (04:20):
Yes, we say upload, but pop is funny.
Steve Brown (04:25):
And then connect with your audience. But people
that love to listen to freeaudio, they can go there and
find almost anything.
Molly Ann Hale (04:35):
We have almost all of the audio in the universe
and how they started was byingesting all the public domain.
Audio so that that was that wasthe beginning. And then we have
pretty much every podcast youcan think of plus a lot of old
concerts, historical speeches.
It's just a really fascinatingworld of audio that you it's
(04:58):
very hard to find in otherplaces like old time radio,
these are things that, you know,the websites that used to house
this audio aren't evenfunctioning anymore because the
people either let the websitesgo or they're just you know,
they get old and they move on.
So we're happy to be a placewhere we're gathering up all
those orphans and serving themup to you guys for free.
Steve Brown (05:19):
I was amazed when I was doing the research for this,
how many people search for sleepsounds? Oh, yes, that
Molly Ann Hale (05:26):
is a big one.
That is a big one. And we've gotsome great sleep sounds craters
on our platform. Dream sounds isone of them. We've got
yellowbrick cinema. reallyfascinating genre. And I think
because people like to listen toit all throughout the night,
it's like just hours and hoursof this really interesting
soothing music.
Steve Brown (05:48):
So you can not only just put your long form content,
but you can chop it up intolittle short bite sized pieces,
and then put it in a playlisteven.
Molly Ann Hale (05:58):
That's right. So one of the functions of our site
that is unique to verbal is oursnippet tool. And what this
allows you to do is take a chunkof any piece of audio that we
have on the platform and shareit. So you know, before you
would listen to a 45 minutepodcast episode, and you would
say, Hey, friends, I reallyliked this podcast episode and
you, you know, tell them aboutit. And they maybe would or
(06:20):
wouldn't get to it. But now withverbal, you can take the best
five minutes of that podcastepisode, share it on social and
then if people like it, they cancome back and listen to the
whole episode. So it's really acool function and allows
podcasters to make promos rightinside of the platform. So they
don't have to, you know, buy allthis other software. It just
makes sharing and going viralwith audio. Easy, which has not
(06:44):
been available to creators upuntil now.
Steve Brown (06:47):
Yeah, I think all the times that I've sent, I
forwarded a video, or even apodcast and asked someone Hey,
listen to this, there's thispoint in it, it's really good.
And they get it and they look atus 45 minutes long. I'll do it
later. And they ask them later,did you listen to it? And they
always say no, no.
Unknown (07:07):
Yeah.
Molly Ann Hale (07:09):
And to that point, you know, in the past, as
a podcast creator, you werestuck with this old model of the
RSS feed where people would haveto download your podcast to
their computer, and maybe theywould or maybe they wouldn't
listen to it. At some point,maybe they would. Or maybe they
wouldn't get through the wholething. You know, but now they
can stream your podcast anywhereanytime they have Wi Fi. So,
Steve Brown (07:31):
you know, the thing that's really exciting about
this is like, if you go intoYouTube, and you start posting
videos up there, over time, youcan get monetized after videos
are good. That's the model thatverbal is creating here.
Molly Ann Hale (07:47):
Absolutely, it is exactly the same model. So
what I love about this companyand what Audra has done is
really made available to audiocontent creators a way to
monetize your podcast. And yes,you could say, you know, we had
a way to monetize our podcastbefore we had ads. But you know,
the thing about those ads isthat you're usually betting on
(08:09):
what you have already done. Andyou're not allowing for
something to go viral for you tohave many more listeners this
month. Also, you know, in thepast, if you were buying ads on
podcasts, you could not get themetrics on how many people was
listening to those, you know howlong they were listening for
now, with verbal advertisers aregoing to be able to see people
are listening for five seconds,and then they're cutting off or,
(08:31):
you know, they're listening allthe way to the end. And it's
gonna, I think, reallyrevolutionize the way ads are
put against audio just likeYouTube revolutionized the way
you know, commercials were madefor video. Because YouTube
video, advertisers can see, oh,people are not watching past
eight seconds. And so now whenyou watch a YouTube video, they
come at you hard and fast, rightup top, you know, they get you
(08:52):
in those first three seconds. SoI think this is gonna change for
audio as well. You know, the,
Steve Brown (08:57):
I have a podcast, obviously. And I upload it to
buzzsprout. And I watch mydownloads from there. But since
I went in, claimed my station atvariable, I'm getting way more
exposure way more listeners thanjust expecting buzzsprout to do
the work for me.
Molly Ann Hale (09:16):
Excellent. We love to hear that. Well, we also
know that verbal is great forpodcasters SEO. And our snippet
tool transcribes every snippetthat you make. So if you're, you
know, putting audio up andmaking snippets of your audio or
other people are making snippetsof your audio, you're just
getting exponential SEO and thathelps everybody.
Steve Brown (09:36):
You know, you put up one, when you're talking
about snippets, you just put upyour one episode, the full
episode. That's one URL, okay.
But when you cut out, maybe youhad four or five little Mic drop
moments in long conversation. Ifyou snip those out, you can even
do an intro to that playlist andnow you have four or five more
URLs.
Molly Ann Hale (09:59):
You That's a great way to put it, Steve. And
it's a great way to think aboutyour content as a creator that
you can, you know, get those hotflash moments to get people
excited about the rest of thehour or the rest of the half
hour and lead with thosesnippets. So just a great way to
promote yourself on social.
Steve Brown (10:17):
So let's talk about you You are a producer, you
produce some movies, one calledunlovable, I went and watched
the promo for it. And it seemslike it's really cute.
Molly Ann Hale (10:32):
It's a darling film. And it didn't win some
awards it you know, it did thefestival circuit, it was
produced by the duplassbrothers. And those guys,
obviously, you know, they knowwhat they're doing. But it's a
very darling film. And thedirector says Yoon se did a
really good job with thematerial. She's very sweet.
Steve Brown (10:50):
So that makes sense, why you would be the
ambassador for the all thecurators because you have a
heart of helping something goodget produced and put out
Molly Ann Hale (11:01):
there. I honestly love people who create
I love creators, I love theprocess of creating, I love
being on a team. And I lovebeing able to create something
with others and see it allfinished, and you know, have
that feeling of we made thistogether. So I'm I'm very pro,
you know, creator, I'm very pro,anybody who's who's following
(11:25):
their heart and making art oryou know, making content. I
appreciate them. And I want topromote them in all ways.
Steve Brown (11:32):
So we're one of your ambassadors for one of the
categories on the verbalplatform for podcasting tips and
tricks and stuff. But what arewhat are you looking for?
Obviously, you still have spotsto fill?
Molly Ann Hale (11:49):
Absolutely,
Steve Brown (11:50):
what are you looking for to create, or that
would be perfect for what you'relooking for, as a verbal
ambassador.
Molly Ann Hale (11:57):
We're looking for First of all, somebody who
creates audio and who is activein creating audio ongoing, and
we're looking for somebody whohas a an expertise in some kind
of thought leadership. So youknow, if you've been, you know,
studying comedy for 20 years anddoing comedy, or if you've if
you're a scientist, and you knowa lot about undersea fishes, or,
(12:19):
you know, you are very deep intomusic for mental health. And you
know, that we have lots ofcategories that are open. So
there's, there's no real, youknow, this or that there's
there's plenty of space toexplore. But we're just looking
for people who have some pointof view about their topic and
can bring some kind of thoughtleadership in a way that the
(12:40):
normal average man just doesn'thave words, you know, thought
leadership is the way I like tosay it, because I think that
that is clear, you know, youhave some kind of expertise.
Steve Brown (12:51):
Yeah, what what I think I really am attracted to
your platform, you know, whenyou think, oh, should I start a
podcast? Well, there's thisdefault way that you need to
approach it, you think, but withverbal, what you're saying is
any topic, you can startproducing content for your way
(13:13):
that couldn't get discovered inyou just be your, your freaky
self on there. No,
Molly Ann Hale (13:19):
absolutely. And I think that's what YouTube
proved for audio, you know,anybody can be a creator. And
that's what we want. We havetools on the platform, the app
is coming out either like in thenext two weeks, and that is
going to allow even morefunctionality for you to be able
to directly just talk into yourphone, and upload to the
platform. So we're not sayingyou have to have a podcast,
(13:40):
we're just saying you have to bea audio creator. And I think
we're at a time now before time,where we're gonna see audio
influencers, that we don't evenunderstand what that sounds like
yet, because we're juststarting, we're just at the
beginning of this idea of audio,as you know, a world of
creation. So, beyond podcast,there is something that is going
to happen, but we don't knowwhat that is yet. And it's not
(14:02):
until people really start usingthe platform and snipping things
and you know, just get lettingtheir freak flag fly. And you
know, podcasts do have theseformats. And I think there's
something even beyond that, youknow, that we haven't discovered
yet. So we're open to who thosepeople are. And we're excited to
be here to watch it unfold.
Well, I
Steve Brown (14:19):
can imagine that someone would take your app on
their phone, and they just wouldlike in the moment, then you
record their thought, whateverthat is, they get hit. And in
that moment, they just stop andthey record it and then they
post it. It can be one minute.
It can be 30 minutes, it doesn'tmatter.
Molly Ann Hale (14:35):
Absolutely. And there's so many ways you can use
the platform that if peoplereally thought about it, like
talking about your recipes, orI'm making a playlist right now
all my grandfather used to do alot of limericks, he just wrote
tons and tons of limericks I'mhaving my family you know just
record his limericks into theirphone and then we're making a
playlist of my grandfather'slimericks as you know said by
the family, and I just think youknow, you can really if you just
(14:59):
let your mind go There's so manyways you can use it because you
can catalog and you can makeplaylists. And you can make
snip. I mean, it's just infinitepossibilities.
Steve Brown (15:08):
When you think about the business model of
shorts, like YouTube shorts or,or the Instagram stories, this
is a platform where you can doAudio Stories like that.
Molly Ann Hale (15:20):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And
everything on our platform isshareable. You know, down to the
snippet. So yes, I love thatidea. You can set up your
stories.
Steve Brown (15:30):
Yeah, you can set up your own station. It can be
malines. Limerick station. Yeah.
And just when you feel like itrecorded Limerick and made him
push it there.
Unknown (15:41):
Absolutely.
Steve Brown (15:43):
You have to pay for hosting. You don't have to pay
for all the things that
Molly Ann Hale (15:46):
are free, totally free. This is not going
to be a subscription model. Thisis free, free to you free to me
free to the players free to theplays.
Steve Brown (15:57):
So I was on your YouTube station the other day
and I was giggling you. You didthis skit where the couple's
breaking up? Yeah. And they do aused furniture sale.
Unknown (16:12):
That's a good one.
Steve Brown (16:13):
Is that from a real story? Is that a real
experience?
Molly Ann Hale (16:16):
No, no, I've been writing comedy for many
years. And that that thatgentleman in that video is
actually one of my writingpartners, Philip Morris, who I
think is very, very funny. Weactually have a podcast
together, cheap plug for. It'scalled Ramones of the day, where
we break down every Ramon songalphabetically from 53rd, and
third to the word zero. So ifyou want to see more of him, you
(16:38):
can check that out. It's onverbal Of course.
Steve Brown (16:41):
Awesome. All right.
So we're listening to Molly andHale. She's the Creator,
Ambassador for verbal verbal isthe new platform. It's in a beta
stage right now you need to geton that stage that platform.
While while it's early. Butwe're going to ask Molly, a
couple of questions here. So Iwas doing my research, you know,
(17:03):
and I'm surprised at how manytimes people search for what
audio book should I listen to?
Yeah. And yet, this is where youcan go and listen to all these
free audio books.
Molly Ann Hale (17:18):
Yes, we have tons and tons of free audio
books. You know, especially Ithink, a lot of people like
audio books and podcasts before.
But COVID really opened up thisworld of audio to people who
didn't want to be trapped ontheir screens all day, because I
think we were all on zoom allday long for work and family and
all this stuff. And then theidea of consuming content on the
(17:38):
screen. It just it became veryburdensome. So everybody wanted
to get off their screens, butstill want to consume content.
And this really opened up thefloodgates for audiobooks in
podcasting. And now, everybody'sgoing to be traveling and taking
road trips. And these things areperfect for on the go, you know,
because you can listeneverywhere in anywhere.
Steve Brown (17:58):
I remember as a kid laying in bed listening to my
little portable radio, and itwas like, mystery theater radio.
Yeah. And then on Saturday, itwas this comedy it was it was
called chicken man. He was apart time superhero on the
weekend.
Unknown (18:15):
We might have both of those things.
Molly Ann Hale (18:19):
I'm not sure.
But we should check afterwards.
Steve Brown (18:22):
That I love that one. So when you're thinking
about you have a podcast, youhave a book you're wanting to
get discovered. And you'rethinking about how to market
your podcast. How would you goabout it on a verbal platform?
Molly Ann Hale (18:37):
Well, like I said, verbal is extremely
shareable. Right, so the snippettool number one, the more you
snip and share your snippets,the more you're going to get
people interest in your contentthrough those small pieces of
your content. So number one, Iwould say use the snipping tool
(18:58):
as much as possible share onsocial tag out whoever is
relevant to your piece of audiobecause sharing on social will
get you more organic views willget you more likes. So if you
have a guest check them out. Ifthat guest you know is a famous
comedian, they they work a lotat the Comedy Store, maybe the
Comedy Store would would shareif you just tag them and let
them know that this content isthere. So number one snippets
(19:20):
and share on social. Number two,I want to say we are really
rolling out the red carpet forearly adopters and for
ambassadors. So that means youknow, we build a lot of our own
playlists in house. And we'realways looking for content to
put on these playlists that arevery long tail discoverability.
Right. So for our ambassadors,if you come on board, we know
who you are, we know yourcontent. We're always trying to
(19:42):
find ways to put you onplaylists to get you in front of
people in new ways fordiscovery. So those are two
major things Ambassador Did Isay Ambassador um, thirdly, I
would say you know, sharinggetting sharing with your
networks, right or networks arereally powerful tools and
(20:04):
getting together with otherpodcasters is a really powerful
tool because you have access totheir audience, they have access
to your audience. So I would sayif you're doing those three
things like and not even justambassadors, early adopters on
our platform, we are reallyworking to get you seen to know
we are in the back of GoogleAnalytics every single day
checking out who's sharing us onFacebook, who you know, who is
(20:24):
making snippets, who is justtalking about us, and we are
happy, happy, happy to resharethose efforts.
Steve Brown (20:31):
No, I think about people talking about being
successful on LinkedIn. And, youknow, we think, oh, my goodness,
what am I going to say, What amI going to post. But what I see
that verbal offers is a way foryou, you don't have to post
anything, you could actually goand search for theme based
content and create playlist ofreally good information that
(20:56):
wouldn't be valuable that maybethese creators don't even have
time to do themselves. But it isa way to flip that thinking and
to be extremely valuable.
Molly Ann Hale (21:07):
Absolutely. So a little SEO training goes a long
way. And thank you for bringingthis up, Steve. You know, people
might be searching for comedyinterviews. For instance, if you
make a playlist on verbal ofsnippets of different comedy
interviews, and let's say youhave a comedy interview show,
and you slip in some of youraudio. Now, when people go to
comedy interviews, and they'researching on Google, they might
(21:27):
not even know that you exist orverbal exists or your playlist
exists, but your playlist mightcome up. So just by
understanding a little bit ofSEO and key terms, you can
actually get discovered that wayas well. And verbal is an
excellent platform for SEO. Likewe were saying before, every
time you create a piece ofaudio, you upload directly, you
get SEO around the title and thedescription. Every time you make
(21:48):
a snippet, you get SEO aroundthe title, the description and
the transcription. So there's alot of boosts around SEO for
anybody who's on our platform.
Steve Brown (21:59):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledthe Golden toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you. Because I want to help
(22:21):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time
wasting time wasting moneywasting frustration, get the
book on Audible. You can get iton Kindle. You can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(22:42):
there. And let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode.
You know what the folks that I,that ROI takes care of, you
know, they're business owners,they're, they're wanting to know
what, what's this internetmarketing? What's this content
(23:03):
that we're doing? And we like,we help them understand the
value of a blog. A blog is likethis very nicely dressed
salesperson that stands quietlydoesn't annoy anyone doesn't
have bad breath doesn't havefood stuck in a tea. And when
someone has a question that'srelevant about that topic, the
blog shows up. And then what'sthe blog do? And here's some
(23:26):
more over here on their website.
And I see that these snippetsfrom all of these things can do
the exact same thing for you.
Molly Ann Hale (23:36):
Yes, that's a great point. Thank you for doing
my heavy lifting. So because thesnippets are shareable and
embeddable, they're perfect forblog posts, they're perfect for
websites to help drive trafficabsolutely 100% We highly
recommend highly recommend.
Steve Brown (23:52):
We'd like to take those verbals snippets and then
we'll do an embed on a blog justto supplement or to augment the
blogs so that it's moreeffective
Molly Ann Hale (24:02):
you know, some some AP news organizations are
using this as well because thenyou can have this audio maybe of
the interview of the person orthe doctors involved or you
know, the police officer who'stalking about you can have that
audio embedded right in the newsarticle. So a lot of people are
finding some excellent uses forit.
Steve Brown (24:23):
Yeah, imagine you can listen to the person say you
don't even have to watch a videoyou know i i put my all my stuff
on YouTube as well and people golisten to your podcast on Yeah,
you don't have to stand thereand stare at it
Molly Ann Hale (24:40):
I can listen thing if people are they
associate YouTube with having tolook at a screen so that's why
verbal is exciting because rightoff the bat we're letting people
know you know this is all offscreen you can you can be
cleaning your house you can bedriving you can be you know in
traffic and you're playing withyour kids. It's wonderful for
like bedtime stories or youknow, keeping your kids active
while They're listening, or wewere talking a little bit about,
(25:02):
you know, Sesame Street and thatexample that you're giving
about, they didn't think thekids were paying attention,
because they were playing whilethe TV show was on, but really,
the kids were listening. So um,you know, verbal, I think is
great, because they don't expectyou to be connected to your
screen. And it just frees you upfor, you know, multitasking or
(25:23):
whatever life.
Steve Brown (25:25):
So when you think about internet radio, what's the
difference with verbal andinternet radio?
Molly Ann Hale (25:33):
Well, we don't have the capability at verbal
yet to live stream, thatfunctionality will be coming
down the road. So verbal forradio folks is best used for
replays or for promos, right? Ifyou want to share that you have
some some event happening or youknow, share that you have
broadcasts happening tomorrow,you might give snippets or
(25:53):
promos for what that is, butthen also just so you can have
that content catalogued, sopeople can come back to it at
any time.
Steve Brown (26:01):
Yeah, I love that.
So what's the what's the futureof verbal?
Molly Ann Hale (26:08):
I think if you ask the team, they'd say, taking
over the world, but I think it'sjust first of all the big one,
it's going to allow creators tomonetize their content. You
know, which right now a lot ofpeople, most podcasters are not
making any money for theirefforts, what so ever. So
that's, that's a big one. That'sa big one. For me, I've been
(26:28):
I've been creating content, I'vebeen a comedian, I've been a
producer for a long time. And Ihave, you know, you ask anybody,
you don't really see a lot ofreturn on that work. So now
there's a place where especiallyif you get in early and you know
to to our listeners now now's agreat time to get on because we
haven't quite turned on ads yet.
You have to you know, but itgets your station set up and get
(26:50):
get your bearings on how to useeverything. And then when as
already, you got enough listens,like bam, you're off to the
races, you know. So that's,that's number one. Number two,
like I said, I think it's goingto open up a whole new genre of
audio influencers that we don'teven understand yet. Because our
idea of an audio influencer is apodcaster. But that has a very
strict structure most of thetime. So I think there's a lot
(27:12):
of weird stuff that's going tocome out of this. I think
there's a lot of like creativestuff that's going to come out
of this that we cannot evenimagine yet. I think those are
probably the two biggest thingsthat I would say.
Steve Brown (27:26):
No, I think about authors, there's folks that
write books, and then theypublish them on the Kindle
platform or the audibleplatform. Right. And you have to
follow the rules that Amazondictates or audible does. But
let's say that you you wrotethat book for different reason,
you could actually read yourbook in the app chapter at a
(27:50):
time maybe in post it up there.
And all of a sudden, you've gotdistribution going that you
didn't have.
Molly Ann Hale (27:57):
Absolutely, that is a that is a wonderful
suggestion, Steve. And Iactually do work with some
authors that are getting theircontent up on the platform. And
yes, because also producing anaudio book a lot of times can be
some money, you know, and ifyou're using verbal, you can do
it all for free if you have agood microphone. So yeah, that
that is a wonderful way to usethe platform, and we highly
(28:18):
support authors that want to puttheir books up on verbal,
because there's thatshareability you know, you could
take a snippet of your thatcrazy climax moment or, you
know, everybody's got a greatfirst opening page. Right.
Steve Brown (28:30):
So I've noticed that it of all the books that
are printed on Amazon, I betless than a third are in an
audible version.
Molly Ann Hale (28:42):
Hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of people probably
don't think is worth their timeand money. Um, but for verbal,
because it is free. It's just afantastic way to do it.
Steve Brown (28:54):
I wouldn't say from my experience, I did the audible
version. And I bet I get tosales to audible two to three on
my audible version before I geta print sale. And it's because
people don't want to sit downand read like they used to, they
want
Molly Ann Hale (29:13):
to thing Yeah, nobody reads anymore. So if
you're selling I mean, I know alot of authors and in social
media, I have worked with many,many, many authors. It is hard
to sell books these days. Itreally, really is. And so if
you're a creator and if you justwant to reach an audience, you
know, verbal is a great way todo it because I got to tell you
video is a lot of trouble. Youknow, you got to look good, you
(29:36):
got to find the camera, you gotto edit you got to do all this
stuff. Audio, all you need is agood microphone. And now with
the app, all you need is aphone, you know, so just takes a
lot of the pressure off of therecording of it and makes it so
easy.
Steve Brown (29:50):
What wouldn't be the difference in verbal as
opposed to anchor
Molly Ann Hale (29:56):
um, I'm not sure I'm not I don't Use anchor a
lot. But I believe anchor is nota streaming platform we're
streaming and anchor believe isan RSS feed where you have to
download to your computer. Also,I don't know if anger charges,
but you know, we're free. And Ithink that that's that's the
main thing, those two thingsstreaming and free, which I
(30:18):
don't think any other platformis doing for audio.
Steve Brown (30:20):
Yeah, exactly. I think that folks that might be
familiar with Aker, they know,they can do it via their phone,
they can do these shortsnippets, and they're hoping to
get a little bit of advertisingon it. But there's so much more
freedom and discoverabilityhappening on the thermal
platform that I haven't foundanywhere else.
Molly Ann Hale (30:41):
Well, what I think is really sexy, if I can
is the option to make theseplaylists out of snippets of
other people's content alongsideyour content. So you're a
creator, you can get really, youknow, you can get juicy with
that stuff and make reallyinteresting playlists that
highlight your work, certainly,but add all this other texture
and thought leadership that alsoraise up your work, you know, to
(31:03):
put you alongside geniuses oryou know, it's very cool.
Steve Brown (31:09):
Most of the folks that do content marketing their
text First they think about it,or they may think about audio,
but I mean video, but hardlyever do they. Audio is like the
last thing that maybe Alright, Ineed to start a podcast. But
it's like, you don't realize howmany people out there prefer
audio only. And you're leaving alot of people on the table
Molly Ann Hale (31:33):
there.
Absolutely. Especially becauseso many people want to ingest
content while they're working.
But they can't watch something.
You know, they they need to beon their computer. So podcasts
and audio is perfect for thosenine to fivers that they keep
themselves, you know, occupiedwhile they're doing busy work
with audio. So, yeah, I agreewith you. I think they are
leaving audience on the table.
(31:55):
And I mean, look, I love RuPaul.
Because RuPaul is like he's gota TV show, he could, you know,
he could retire a million timesover already. But I think he did
his podcast a because he hadcontrol over it. But also he
understood the power that youneed that audio to and it allows
you to do so much more, youknow, you can really explore
inside of the audio in wayswhere TV and video are there
certain rules or expectations oryou know, structure around what
(32:18):
is expected or how it should go.
Whereas in audio if like there'sso much more room to play.
Steve Brown (32:27):
I'm interviewed this guy is actually on my very
first podcast episode, he has apodcast asking Well, why do you
think a podcast is such a bigdeal that he'd been doing it for
years, he goes, people, you'rein their ear all the time. And
you they develop a relationshipwith you because you're in their
(32:47):
ear. And then you think aboutpeople I have to admire you
before they hire you. When theythey're going to trust you if
you're in their your their earall the time.
Molly Ann Hale (32:58):
That is a great point. That is a great point.
Yeah. As somebody who's done alot of phone work, you know, at
desks and things. I think wedon't realize how intimate that
relationship is for somebody tobe in your ear. You know. And as
somebody who has listened to1000s of hours of Mark Marin, I
can tell you Yeah, I've I feellike Mark Marin is one of my
(33:21):
friends and I probably don'thave a friend in real life
because he takes up that spot.
Steve Brown (33:28):
So what's one of the your favorite stations on
verbal right now someone that'sreally doing it right that you
would point people to for alittle bit of inspiration?
Molly Ann Hale (33:38):
Well, there's a station called ROI online.
Fantastic Ambassador with agreat page. I think any of our
ambassadors are, are doing well.
You can anybody in our audiencehere can go to verbal.com
backslash ambassadors to see whowe already have signed up and
(33:59):
who's already rolling and youknow, who we're still kind of
looking for. But my personalfavorites, I would have to say
clotet Robinson is the firstlady of Motown. She was married
to Smokey Robinson and she wasan original member of the
miracles. And she has a ton ofinterview audio up there talking
about the early days of themiracles and being on tour and
(34:21):
you know, Barry Gordy gettingMotown together and all they had
was a dream and I and a coupleof talented 19 year olds, super
interesting station. There'sanother woman I really love. Her
name is Mary Birdsong. And she'san actress and she has put up a
bunch of audio characters up onthe site. And so she's just got
all these like, one to threeminute weird bits where she does
(34:43):
like funny voices and you know,music and that's another good
one to check out. But yeah, ourambassador page is a great place
to start, because we have lotsof really interesting thought
leaders to highlight a few, Iwould say Dr. Thomas Lindley is
a deep sea scientist who was onthe group of scientists that
(35:05):
discovered the smallest fishliving in the deepest part of
the ocean. So he's one of ourambassadors super interesting.
harmar toony is a billion dollarreal estate guru. He's going to
be curating some real estatestuff on our platform. So yeah,
lots of good stuff there on thatpage.
Steve Brown (35:25):
So what's like a couple of topics, we if now was
like, they were listening, andthey need to hear this, what are
a couple of topics that youwould love to have a crate
ambassador for some weird, crazytopic that you have?
Molly Ann Hale (35:37):
Oh, my gosh, there's so many.
Unknown (35:41):
Um, this, this
Molly Ann Hale (35:44):
is a hard one. I know I look at this taxonomy
every day. Well, they're there,I wanted to say there's no limit
to how many ambassadors we canhave. So we're always open also
to adding categories on theplatform if you have a specialty
that we have not thought of yet,but we're looking for people in
beauty and we're looking forpeople in music, anybody who has
(36:04):
any like, you know, musicconnection or radio connection.
We're looking for journalists,film reviewers, people, authors,
anybody who you know, writesbooks or has an into science
fiction world or, you know,mystery world. We're looking for
some paranormal people, youknow, do you have a podcast
about true crime? We would lovethat. So yeah, there's lots of
(36:27):
good stuff still to be done. Butthe weirdest thing, I don't
know, probably like a court ofappeals. You know, Court of
Appeals. 32 and 33 are kind ofout there.
Steve Brown (36:41):
Yeah. All right. So you're listening to Molly
inhales she's the Creator,Ambassador for verbal. And
Somali. I like to always askthis question for my guests.
It's like, what's the onequestion that you wished? You
could answer that I haven'tasked?
Unknown (37:04):
Oh, my goodness. Um,
Molly Ann Hale (37:08):
hmm. That's so difficult. Oh, I don't know. I
wish you had asked me. What's mysign?
Steve Brown (37:15):
What's your sign?
Molly Ann Hale (37:17):
I am a Taurus.
Yes, CUSP, right on the cusp ofGemini, which I think is just
enough. But yes, I love being atourist and I celebrated daily.
Steve Brown (37:29):
Okay, awesome. So how can folks reach out to you
Molly?
Molly Ann Hale (37:35):
Well, if you'd like to connect about being an
ambassador, we'd love to haveyou can reach out at ambassadors
at verbal Comm. Or you can go tothe website, on the left hand
side on the navigation bar,there is a button down at the
bottom that says become anambassador, or you can email us
at pr evitable comm or info atverbal comm la discoverable.com.
(38:02):
So there's lots of ways to reachus. If you go to the platform,
you can find an email and theywere a small team. So if you
just say hey, this message isfrom all you don't get back to
me.
Steve Brown (38:11):
So that's variable Vu Rb l.com. They're an up and
coming scrappy, new platformthat's going to be what YouTube
is to video. They verbal is foraudio, you need to get on that
platform, you need to startproducing content, the share
(38:31):
what you love to share and meetthe folks that you wouldn't meet
otherwise, and make some money.
Yeah, I'll make some money.
Molly Ann Hale (38:40):
I mean, I've I've had videos up on YouTube
for about almost 10 years now.
I've made money on YouTube. Iwalked away from a couple videos
came back had a couple millionviews and thought all right, you
know, I mean, don't don't knockit like get your stuff up there,
guys. Come on, make some money.
Steve Brown (38:57):
That's right. And if you want to follow Molly's
YouTube channel, what's the it'sMolly's hilarious.
Molly Ann Hale (39:10):
Shorts, Molly.
Inhale, Molly inhale. Social,including verbal Amalia inhale.
Steve Brown (39:16):
All right, great.
Molly, you've been awesomeguests on the ROI online
podcast.
Unknown (39:21):
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Steve Brown (39:22):
This was fun. And that's a wrap. Thanks for
listening to another fun episodeof the ROI online podcast. For
more, be sure to check out theshow notes of this episode. And
feel free to connect with me onLinkedIn where we can chat and I
can help direct you to theresources you're searching for.
(39:43):
To learn more about how you cangrow your business better. Be
sure to pick up your copy of mybook, that golden toilet add,
surprise that golden toilet.comI'm Steve Brown, and we'll see
you next week on another funepisode of the ROI online.
podcast
So many people want to ingest content while
they're working. But they can'twatch something. You know, they
they need to be on theircomputer. So podcasts and audio
is perfect for those nine tofivers that they keep
themselves, you know, occupiedwhile they're doing busy work
with audio. So yeah, I agreewith you, I think they are
leaving audience on the table.
And I mean, look, I love RuPaul.
(00:24):
Because RuPaul is like, he's gota TV show, he could, you know,
he could retire a million timesover already, but I think he did
his podcast a because he hadcontrol over it. But also, he
understood the power that youneed that audio to, and it
allows you to do so much more,you know, you can really explore
inside of the audio in wayswhere TV and video are there
certain rules or expectations oryou know, structure around what
(00:48):
is expected or how it should go.
Whereas an audio like there's somuch more room to play.
Steve Brown (00:54):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:17):
learn together. Malian Hale,welcome to the ROI online
podcast.
Molly Ann Hale (01:27):
Hi, Steve.
Thanks for having me.
Steve Brown (01:30):
So what do you get when you put together a stand up
comedian that does off the cuffstuff? And then you mash in a
little social media expert? Whatdo you get when you do that?
Molly Ann Hale (01:50):
Somebody who wears a lot of hats easily?
Steve Brown (01:52):
Yeah. Mother, you you've got some funny stuff on
YouTube. But we're talking aboutverbal today we're gonna I'm
gonna get to that. But we'retalking about verbal, you are
the creator, Ambassador, forverbal, it's a brand new
platform for audio creators.
When you think about how hard itis for podcasters to get their
(02:14):
podcast discovered.
Molly Ann Hale (02:20):
It's a challenge. It can be very
difficult, yes. But verbal, bythe way, have a podcast. So I
know. Who doesn't these days,though, right?
Steve Brown (02:30):
Right. But when when you start a podcast, you're
wanting to connect with youraudience. And it's like, Where
do I post my stuff. And thenwhen you go and you do a search
for that, it's hard to findthings. And yet, there happens
to be this brand new platform.
That is for audio, what YouTubeis for video, and it's called
(02:50):
verbal v URBL. That's, in youryou're that person that
connecting all the creators totheir audience, right?
Molly Ann Hale (03:04):
That's right. So I'm spearheading the ambassador
program preverbal. And we arereaching out to anybody who has
an expertise in some kind offield that they want to share
via our platform by creatingplaylists, or curating thought
leaders in their category. Andas we're in exchange, we are
giving these creators lots offree promotion for their
(03:26):
content, their audio, theirplaylists, their station, across
our social, our homepage, ouremail newsletters and marketing
that we do. So we think it's agreat way for people to get
discovered in their audio to getdiscovered.
Steve Brown (03:39):
Yeah, so when you say a creator, it's not just
podcasters.
Molly Ann Hale (03:44):
That's right.
We've got all kinds of audiofrom musicians to podcasters, to
interviewers to people who justhave, you know, there's so much
audio in the world that I thinka lot of people don't even know
what to do with. And we havelots of people that say, Oh, we
really love verbal because Ihave all this audio. Now I can
put it in one place, I cancatalogue it, I can actually
share it on social, which wassomething that was very hard to
(04:04):
do, and make playlists thatcombines their audio with lots
of other kinds of audio to makethese more interesting listening
experiences.
Steve Brown (04:14):
So not only can creators go plop their content
there.
Molly Ann Hale (04:20):
Yes, we say upload, but pop is funny.
Steve Brown (04:25):
And then connect with your audience. But people
that love to listen to freeaudio, they can go there and
find almost anything.
Molly Ann Hale (04:35):
We have almost all of the audio in the universe
and how they started was byingesting all the public domain.
Audio so that that was that wasthe beginning. And then we have
pretty much every podcast youcan think of plus a lot of old
concerts, historical speeches.
It's just a really fascinatingworld of audio that you it's
(04:58):
very hard to find in otherplaces like old time radio,
these are things that, you know,the websites that used to house
this audio aren't evenfunctioning anymore because the
people either let the websitesgo or they're just you know,
they get old and they move on.
So we're happy to be a placewhere we're gathering up all
those orphans and serving themup to you guys for free.
Steve Brown (05:19):
I was amazed when I was doing the research for this,
how many people search for sleepsounds? Oh, yes, that
Molly Ann Hale (05:26):
is a big one.
That is a big one. And we've gotsome great sleep sounds craters
on our platform. Dream sounds isone of them. We've got
yellowbrick cinema. reallyfascinating genre. And I think
because people like to listen toit all throughout the night,
it's like just hours and hoursof this really interesting
soothing music.
Steve Brown (05:48):
So you can not only just put your long form content,
but you can chop it up intolittle short bite sized pieces,
and then put it in a playlisteven.
Molly Ann Hale (05:58):
That's right. So one of the functions of our site
that is unique to verbal is oursnippet tool. And what this
allows you to do is take a chunkof any piece of audio that we
have on the platform and shareit. So you know, before you
would listen to a 45 minutepodcast episode, and you would
say, Hey, friends, I reallyliked this podcast episode and
you, you know, tell them aboutit. And they maybe would or
(06:20):
wouldn't get to it. But now withverbal, you can take the best
five minutes of that podcastepisode, share it on social and
then if people like it, they cancome back and listen to the
whole episode. So it's really acool function and allows
podcasters to make promos rightinside of the platform. So they
don't have to, you know, buy allthis other software. It just
makes sharing and going viralwith audio. Easy, which has not
(06:44):
been available to creators upuntil now.
Steve Brown (06:47):
Yeah, I think all the times that I've sent, I
forwarded a video, or even apodcast and asked someone Hey,
listen to this, there's thispoint in it, it's really good.
And they get it and they look atus 45 minutes long. I'll do it
later. And they ask them later,did you listen to it? And they
always say no, no.
Unknown (07:07):
Yeah.
Molly Ann Hale (07:09):
And to that point, you know, in the past, as
a podcast creator, you werestuck with this old model of the
RSS feed where people would haveto download your podcast to
their computer, and maybe theywould or maybe they wouldn't
listen to it. At some point,maybe they would. Or maybe they
wouldn't get through the wholething. You know, but now they
can stream your podcast anywhereanytime they have Wi Fi. So,
Steve Brown (07:31):
you know, the thing that's really exciting about
this is like, if you go intoYouTube, and you start posting
videos up there, over time, youcan get monetized after videos
are good. That's the model thatverbal is creating here.
Molly Ann Hale (07:47):
Absolutely, it is exactly the same model. So
what I love about this companyand what Audra has done is
really made available to audiocontent creators a way to
monetize your podcast. And yes,you could say, you know, we had
a way to monetize our podcastbefore we had ads. But you know,
the thing about those ads isthat you're usually betting on
(08:09):
what you have already done. Andyou're not allowing for
something to go viral for you tohave many more listeners this
month. Also, you know, in thepast, if you were buying ads on
podcasts, you could not get themetrics on how many people was
listening to those, you know howlong they were listening for
now, with verbal advertisers aregoing to be able to see people
are listening for five seconds,and then they're cutting off or,
(08:31):
you know, they're listening allthe way to the end. And it's
gonna, I think, reallyrevolutionize the way ads are
put against audio just likeYouTube revolutionized the way
you know, commercials were madefor video. Because YouTube
video, advertisers can see, oh,people are not watching past
eight seconds. And so now whenyou watch a YouTube video, they
come at you hard and fast, rightup top, you know, they get you
(08:52):
in those first three seconds. SoI think this is gonna change for
audio as well. You know, the,
Steve Brown (08:57):
I have a podcast, obviously. And I upload it to
buzzsprout. And I watch mydownloads from there. But since
I went in, claimed my station atvariable, I'm getting way more
exposure way more listeners thanjust expecting buzzsprout to do
the work for me.
Molly Ann Hale (09:16):
Excellent. We love to hear that. Well, we also
know that verbal is great forpodcasters SEO. And our snippet
tool transcribes every snippetthat you make. So if you're, you
know, putting audio up andmaking snippets of your audio or
other people are making snippetsof your audio, you're just
getting exponential SEO and thathelps everybody.
Steve Brown (09:36):
You know, you put up one, when you're talking
about snippets, you just put upyour one episode, the full
episode. That's one URL, okay.
But when you cut out, maybe youhad four or five little Mic drop
moments in long conversation. Ifyou snip those out, you can even
do an intro to that playlist andnow you have four or five more
URLs.
Molly Ann Hale (09:59):
You That's a great way to put it, Steve. And
it's a great way to think aboutyour content as a creator that
you can, you know, get those hotflash moments to get people
excited about the rest of thehour or the rest of the half
hour and lead with thosesnippets. So just a great way to
promote yourself on social.
Steve Brown (10:17):
So let's talk about you You are a producer, you
produce some movies, one calledunlovable, I went and watched
the promo for it. And it seemslike it's really cute.
Molly Ann Hale (10:32):
It's a darling film. And it didn't win some
awards it you know, it did thefestival circuit, it was
produced by the duplassbrothers. And those guys,
obviously, you know, they knowwhat they're doing. But it's a
very darling film. And thedirector says Yoon se did a
really good job with thematerial. She's very sweet.
Steve Brown (10:50):
So that makes sense, why you would be the
ambassador for the all thecurators because you have a
heart of helping something goodget produced and put out
Molly Ann Hale (11:01):
there. I honestly love people who create
I love creators, I love theprocess of creating, I love
being on a team. And I lovebeing able to create something
with others and see it allfinished, and you know, have
that feeling of we made thistogether. So I'm I'm very pro,
you know, creator, I'm very pro,anybody who's who's following
(11:25):
their heart and making art oryou know, making content. I
appreciate them. And I want topromote them in all ways.
Steve Brown (11:32):
So we're one of your ambassadors for one of the
categories on the verbalplatform for podcasting tips and
tricks and stuff. But what arewhat are you looking for?
Obviously, you still have spotsto fill?
Molly Ann Hale (11:49):
Absolutely,
Steve Brown (11:50):
what are you looking for to create, or that
would be perfect for what you'relooking for, as a verbal
ambassador.
Molly Ann Hale (11:57):
We're looking for First of all, somebody who
creates audio and who is activein creating audio ongoing, and
we're looking for somebody whohas a an expertise in some kind
of thought leadership. So youknow, if you've been, you know,
studying comedy for 20 years anddoing comedy, or if you've if
you're a scientist, and you knowa lot about undersea fishes, or,
(12:19):
you know, you are very deep intomusic for mental health. And you
know, that we have lots ofcategories that are open. So
there's, there's no real, youknow, this or that there's
there's plenty of space toexplore. But we're just looking
for people who have some pointof view about their topic and
can bring some kind of thoughtleadership in a way that the
(12:40):
normal average man just doesn'thave words, you know, thought
leadership is the way I like tosay it, because I think that
that is clear, you know, youhave some kind of expertise.
Steve Brown (12:51):
Yeah, what what I think I really am attracted to
your platform, you know, whenyou think, oh, should I start a
podcast? Well, there's thisdefault way that you need to
approach it, you think, but withverbal, what you're saying is
any topic, you can startproducing content for your way
(13:13):
that couldn't get discovered inyou just be your, your freaky
self on there. No,
Molly Ann Hale (13:19):
absolutely. And I think that's what YouTube
proved for audio, you know,anybody can be a creator. And
that's what we want. We havetools on the platform, the app
is coming out either like in thenext two weeks, and that is
going to allow even morefunctionality for you to be able
to directly just talk into yourphone, and upload to the
platform. So we're not sayingyou have to have a podcast,
(13:40):
we're just saying you have to bea audio creator. And I think
we're at a time now before time,where we're gonna see audio
influencers, that we don't evenunderstand what that sounds like
yet, because we're juststarting, we're just at the
beginning of this idea of audio,as you know, a world of
creation. So, beyond podcast,there is something that is going
to happen, but we don't knowwhat that is yet. And it's not
(14:02):
until people really start usingthe platform and snipping things
and you know, just get lettingtheir freak flag fly. And you
know, podcasts do have theseformats. And I think there's
something even beyond that, youknow, that we haven't discovered
yet. So we're open to who thosepeople are. And we're excited to
be here to watch it unfold.
Well, I
Steve Brown (14:19):
can imagine that someone would take your app on
their phone, and they just wouldlike in the moment, then you
record their thought, whateverthat is, they get hit. And in
that moment, they just stop andthey record it and then they
post it. It can be one minute.
It can be 30 minutes, it doesn'tmatter.
Molly Ann Hale (14:35):
Absolutely. And there's so many ways you can use
the platform that if peoplereally thought about it, like
talking about your recipes, orI'm making a playlist right now
all my grandfather used to do alot of limericks, he just wrote
tons and tons of limericks I'mhaving my family you know just
record his limericks into theirphone and then we're making a
playlist of my grandfather'slimericks as you know said by
the family, and I just think youknow, you can really if you just
(14:59):
let your mind go There's so manyways you can use it because you
can catalog and you can makeplaylists. And you can make
snip. I mean, it's just infinitepossibilities.
Steve Brown (15:08):
When you think about the business model of
shorts, like YouTube shorts or,or the Instagram stories, this
is a platform where you can doAudio Stories like that.
Molly Ann Hale (15:20):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And
everything on our platform isshareable. You know, down to the
snippet. So yes, I love thatidea. You can set up your
stories.
Steve Brown (15:30):
Yeah, you can set up your own station. It can be
malines. Limerick station. Yeah.
And just when you feel like itrecorded Limerick and made him
push it there.
Unknown (15:41):
Absolutely.
Steve Brown (15:43):
You have to pay for hosting. You don't have to pay
for all the things that
Molly Ann Hale (15:46):
are free, totally free. This is not going
to be a subscription model. Thisis free, free to you free to me
free to the players free to theplays.
Steve Brown (15:57):
So I was on your YouTube station the other day
and I was giggling you. You didthis skit where the couple's
breaking up? Yeah. And they do aused furniture sale.
Unknown (16:12):
That's a good one.
Steve Brown (16:13):
Is that from a real story? Is that a real
experience?
Molly Ann Hale (16:16):
No, no, I've been writing comedy for many
years. And that that thatgentleman in that video is
actually one of my writingpartners, Philip Morris, who I
think is very, very funny. Weactually have a podcast
together, cheap plug for. It'scalled Ramones of the day, where
we break down every Ramon songalphabetically from 53rd, and
third to the word zero. So ifyou want to see more of him, you
(16:38):
can check that out. It's onverbal Of course.
Steve Brown (16:41):
Awesome. All right.
So we're listening to Molly andHale. She's the Creator,
Ambassador for verbal verbal isthe new platform. It's in a beta
stage right now you need to geton that stage that platform.
While while it's early. Butwe're going to ask Molly, a
couple of questions here. So Iwas doing my research, you know,
(17:03):
and I'm surprised at how manytimes people search for what
audio book should I listen to?
Yeah. And yet, this is where youcan go and listen to all these
free audio books.
Molly Ann Hale (17:18):
Yes, we have tons and tons of free audio
books. You know, especially Ithink, a lot of people like
audio books and podcasts before.
But COVID really opened up thisworld of audio to people who
didn't want to be trapped ontheir screens all day, because I
think we were all on zoom allday long for work and family and
all this stuff. And then theidea of consuming content on the
(17:38):
screen. It just it became veryburdensome. So everybody wanted
to get off their screens, butstill want to consume content.
And this really opened up thefloodgates for audiobooks in
podcasting. And now, everybody'sgoing to be traveling and taking
road trips. And these things areperfect for on the go, you know,
because you can listeneverywhere in anywhere.
Steve Brown (17:58):
I remember as a kid laying in bed listening to my
little portable radio, and itwas like, mystery theater radio.
Yeah. And then on Saturday, itwas this comedy it was it was
called chicken man. He was apart time superhero on the
weekend.
Unknown (18:15):
We might have both of those things.
Molly Ann Hale (18:19):
I'm not sure.
But we should check afterwards.
Steve Brown (18:22):
That I love that one. So when you're thinking
about you have a podcast, youhave a book you're wanting to
get discovered. And you'rethinking about how to market
your podcast. How would you goabout it on a verbal platform?
Molly Ann Hale (18:37):
Well, like I said, verbal is extremely
shareable. Right, so the snippettool number one, the more you
snip and share your snippets,the more you're going to get
people interest in your contentthrough those small pieces of
your content. So number one, Iwould say use the snipping tool
(18:58):
as much as possible share onsocial tag out whoever is
relevant to your piece of audiobecause sharing on social will
get you more organic views willget you more likes. So if you
have a guest check them out. Ifthat guest you know is a famous
comedian, they they work a lotat the Comedy Store, maybe the
Comedy Store would would shareif you just tag them and let
them know that this content isthere. So number one snippets
(19:20):
and share on social. Number two,I want to say we are really
rolling out the red carpet forearly adopters and for
ambassadors. So that means youknow, we build a lot of our own
playlists in house. And we'realways looking for content to
put on these playlists that arevery long tail discoverability.
Right. So for our ambassadors,if you come on board, we know
who you are, we know yourcontent. We're always trying to
(19:42):
find ways to put you onplaylists to get you in front of
people in new ways fordiscovery. So those are two
major things Ambassador Did Isay Ambassador um, thirdly, I
would say you know, sharinggetting sharing with your
networks, right or networks arereally powerful tools and
(20:04):
getting together with otherpodcasters is a really powerful
tool because you have access totheir audience, they have access
to your audience. So I would sayif you're doing those three
things like and not even justambassadors, early adopters on
our platform, we are reallyworking to get you seen to know
we are in the back of GoogleAnalytics every single day
checking out who's sharing us onFacebook, who you know, who is
(20:24):
making snippets, who is justtalking about us, and we are
happy, happy, happy to resharethose efforts.
Steve Brown (20:31):
No, I think about people talking about being
successful on LinkedIn. And, youknow, we think, oh, my goodness,
what am I going to say, What amI going to post. But what I see
that verbal offers is a way foryou, you don't have to post
anything, you could actually goand search for theme based
content and create playlist ofreally good information that
(20:56):
wouldn't be valuable that maybethese creators don't even have
time to do themselves. But it isa way to flip that thinking and
to be extremely valuable.
Molly Ann Hale (21:07):
Absolutely. So a little SEO training goes a long
way. And thank you for bringingthis up, Steve. You know, people
might be searching for comedyinterviews. For instance, if you
make a playlist on verbal ofsnippets of different comedy
interviews, and let's say youhave a comedy interview show,
and you slip in some of youraudio. Now, when people go to
comedy interviews, and they'researching on Google, they might
(21:27):
not even know that you exist orverbal exists or your playlist
exists, but your playlist mightcome up. So just by
understanding a little bit ofSEO and key terms, you can
actually get discovered that wayas well. And verbal is an
excellent platform for SEO. Likewe were saying before, every
time you create a piece ofaudio, you upload directly, you
get SEO around the title and thedescription. Every time you make
(21:48):
a snippet, you get SEO aroundthe title, the description and
the transcription. So there's alot of boosts around SEO for
anybody who's on our platform.
Steve Brown (21:59):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledthe Golden toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you. Because I want to help
(22:21):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time
wasting time wasting moneywasting frustration, get the
book on Audible. You can get iton Kindle. You can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(22:42):
there. And let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode.
You know what the folks that I,that ROI takes care of, you
know, they're business owners,they're, they're wanting to know
what, what's this internetmarketing? What's this content
(23:03):
that we're doing? And we like,we help them understand the
value of a blog. A blog is likethis very nicely dressed
salesperson that stands quietlydoesn't annoy anyone doesn't
have bad breath doesn't havefood stuck in a tea. And when
someone has a question that'srelevant about that topic, the
blog shows up. And then what'sthe blog do? And here's some
(23:26):
more over here on their website.
And I see that these snippetsfrom all of these things can do
the exact same thing for you.
Molly Ann Hale (23:36):
Yes, that's a great point. Thank you for doing
my heavy lifting. So because thesnippets are shareable and
embeddable, they're perfect forblog posts, they're perfect for
websites to help drive trafficabsolutely 100% We highly
recommend highly recommend.
Steve Brown (23:52):
We'd like to take those verbals snippets and then
we'll do an embed on a blog justto supplement or to augment the
blogs so that it's moreeffective
Molly Ann Hale (24:02):
you know, some some AP news organizations are
using this as well because thenyou can have this audio maybe of
the interview of the person orthe doctors involved or you
know, the police officer who'stalking about you can have that
audio embedded right in the newsarticle. So a lot of people are
finding some excellent uses forit.
Steve Brown (24:23):
Yeah, imagine you can listen to the person say you
don't even have to watch a videoyou know i i put my all my stuff
on YouTube as well and people golisten to your podcast on Yeah,
you don't have to stand thereand stare at it
Molly Ann Hale (24:40):
I can listen thing if people are they
associate YouTube with having tolook at a screen so that's why
verbal is exciting because rightoff the bat we're letting people
know you know this is all offscreen you can you can be
cleaning your house you can bedriving you can be you know in
traffic and you're playing withyour kids. It's wonderful for
like bedtime stories or youknow, keeping your kids active
while They're listening, or wewere talking a little bit about,
(25:02):
you know, Sesame Street and thatexample that you're giving
about, they didn't think thekids were paying attention,
because they were playing whilethe TV show was on, but really,
the kids were listening. So um,you know, verbal, I think is
great, because they don't expectyou to be connected to your
screen. And it just frees you upfor, you know, multitasking or
(25:23):
whatever life.
Steve Brown (25:25):
So when you think about internet radio, what's the
difference with verbal andinternet radio?
Molly Ann Hale (25:33):
Well, we don't have the capability at verbal
yet to live stream, thatfunctionality will be coming
down the road. So verbal forradio folks is best used for
replays or for promos, right? Ifyou want to share that you have
some some event happening or youknow, share that you have
broadcasts happening tomorrow,you might give snippets or
(25:53):
promos for what that is, butthen also just so you can have
that content catalogued, sopeople can come back to it at
any time.
Steve Brown (26:01):
Yeah, I love that.
So what's the what's the futureof verbal?
Molly Ann Hale (26:08):
I think if you ask the team, they'd say, taking
over the world, but I think it'sjust first of all the big one,
it's going to allow creators tomonetize their content. You
know, which right now a lot ofpeople, most podcasters are not
making any money for theirefforts, what so ever. So
that's, that's a big one. That'sa big one. For me, I've been
(26:28):
I've been creating content, I'vebeen a comedian, I've been a
producer for a long time. And Ihave, you know, you ask anybody,
you don't really see a lot ofreturn on that work. So now
there's a place where especiallyif you get in early and you know
to to our listeners now now's agreat time to get on because we
haven't quite turned on ads yet.
You have to you know, but itgets your station set up and get
(26:50):
get your bearings on how to useeverything. And then when as
already, you got enough listens,like bam, you're off to the
races, you know. So that's,that's number one. Number two,
like I said, I think it's goingto open up a whole new genre of
audio influencers that we don'teven understand yet. Because our
idea of an audio influencer is apodcaster. But that has a very
strict structure most of thetime. So I think there's a lot
(27:12):
of weird stuff that's going tocome out of this. I think
there's a lot of like creativestuff that's going to come out
of this that we cannot evenimagine yet. I think those are
probably the two biggest thingsthat I would say.
Steve Brown (27:26):
No, I think about authors, there's folks that
write books, and then theypublish them on the Kindle
platform or the audibleplatform. Right. And you have to
follow the rules that Amazondictates or audible does. But
let's say that you you wrotethat book for different reason,
you could actually read yourbook in the app chapter at a
(27:50):
time maybe in post it up there.
And all of a sudden, you've gotdistribution going that you
didn't have.
Molly Ann Hale (27:57):
Absolutely, that is a that is a wonderful
suggestion, Steve. And Iactually do work with some
authors that are getting theircontent up on the platform. And
yes, because also producing anaudio book a lot of times can be
some money, you know, and ifyou're using verbal, you can do
it all for free if you have agood microphone. So yeah, that
that is a wonderful way to usethe platform, and we highly
(28:18):
support authors that want to puttheir books up on verbal,
because there's thatshareability you know, you could
take a snippet of your thatcrazy climax moment or, you
know, everybody's got a greatfirst opening page. Right.
Steve Brown (28:30):
So I've noticed that it of all the books that
are printed on Amazon, I betless than a third are in an
audible version.
Molly Ann Hale (28:42):
Hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of people probably
don't think is worth their timeand money. Um, but for verbal,
because it is free. It's just afantastic way to do it.
Steve Brown (28:54):
I wouldn't say from my experience, I did the audible
version. And I bet I get tosales to audible two to three on
my audible version before I geta print sale. And it's because
people don't want to sit downand read like they used to, they
want
Molly Ann Hale (29:13):
to thing Yeah, nobody reads anymore. So if
you're selling I mean, I know alot of authors and in social
media, I have worked with many,many, many authors. It is hard
to sell books these days. Itreally, really is. And so if
you're a creator and if you justwant to reach an audience, you
know, verbal is a great way todo it because I got to tell you
video is a lot of trouble. Youknow, you got to look good, you
(29:36):
got to find the camera, you gotto edit you got to do all this
stuff. Audio, all you need is agood microphone. And now with
the app, all you need is aphone, you know, so just takes a
lot of the pressure off of therecording of it and makes it so
easy.
Steve Brown (29:50):
What wouldn't be the difference in verbal as
opposed to anchor
Molly Ann Hale (29:56):
um, I'm not sure I'm not I don't Use anchor a
lot. But I believe anchor is nota streaming platform we're
streaming and anchor believe isan RSS feed where you have to
download to your computer. Also,I don't know if anger charges,
but you know, we're free. And Ithink that that's that's the
main thing, those two thingsstreaming and free, which I
(30:18):
don't think any other platformis doing for audio.
Steve Brown (30:20):
Yeah, exactly. I think that folks that might be
familiar with Aker, they know,they can do it via their phone,
they can do these shortsnippets, and they're hoping to
get a little bit of advertisingon it. But there's so much more
freedom and discoverabilityhappening on the thermal
platform that I haven't foundanywhere else.
Molly Ann Hale (30:41):
Well, what I think is really sexy, if I can
is the option to make theseplaylists out of snippets of
other people's content alongsideyour content. So you're a
creator, you can get really, youknow, you can get juicy with
that stuff and make reallyinteresting playlists that
highlight your work, certainly,but add all this other texture
and thought leadership that alsoraise up your work, you know, to
(31:03):
put you alongside geniuses oryou know, it's very cool.
Steve Brown (31:09):
Most of the folks that do content marketing their
text First they think about it,or they may think about audio,
but I mean video, but hardlyever do they. Audio is like the
last thing that maybe Alright, Ineed to start a podcast. But
it's like, you don't realize howmany people out there prefer
audio only. And you're leaving alot of people on the table
Molly Ann Hale (31:33):
there.
Absolutely. Especially becauseso many people want to ingest
content while they're working.
But they can't watch something.
You know, they they need to beon their computer. So podcasts
and audio is perfect for thosenine to fivers that they keep
themselves, you know, occupiedwhile they're doing busy work
with audio. So, yeah, I agreewith you. I think they are
leaving audience on the table.
(31:55):
And I mean, look, I love RuPaul.
Because RuPaul is like he's gota TV show, he could, you know,
he could retire a million timesover already. But I think he did
his podcast a because he hadcontrol over it. But also he
understood the power that youneed that audio to and it allows
you to do so much more, youknow, you can really explore
inside of the audio in wayswhere TV and video are there
certain rules or expectations oryou know, structure around what
(32:18):
is expected or how it should go.
Whereas in audio if like there'sso much more room to play.
Steve Brown (32:27):
I'm interviewed this guy is actually on my very
first podcast episode, he has apodcast asking Well, why do you
think a podcast is such a bigdeal that he'd been doing it for
years, he goes, people, you'rein their ear all the time. And
you they develop a relationshipwith you because you're in their
(32:47):
ear. And then you think aboutpeople I have to admire you
before they hire you. When theythey're going to trust you if
you're in their your their earall the time.
Molly Ann Hale (32:58):
That is a great point. That is a great point.
Yeah. As somebody who's done alot of phone work, you know, at
desks and things. I think wedon't realize how intimate that
relationship is for somebody tobe in your ear. You know. And as
somebody who has listened to1000s of hours of Mark Marin, I
can tell you Yeah, I've I feellike Mark Marin is one of my
(33:21):
friends and I probably don'thave a friend in real life
because he takes up that spot.
Steve Brown (33:28):
So what's one of the your favorite stations on
verbal right now someone that'sreally doing it right that you
would point people to for alittle bit of inspiration?
Molly Ann Hale (33:38):
Well, there's a station called ROI online.
Fantastic Ambassador with agreat page. I think any of our
ambassadors are, are doing well.
You can anybody in our audiencehere can go to verbal.com
backslash ambassadors to see whowe already have signed up and
(33:59):
who's already rolling and youknow, who we're still kind of
looking for. But my personalfavorites, I would have to say
clotet Robinson is the firstlady of Motown. She was married
to Smokey Robinson and she wasan original member of the
miracles. And she has a ton ofinterview audio up there talking
about the early days of themiracles and being on tour and
(34:21):
you know, Barry Gordy gettingMotown together and all they had
was a dream and I and a coupleof talented 19 year olds, super
interesting station. There'sanother woman I really love. Her
name is Mary Birdsong. And she'san actress and she has put up a
bunch of audio characters up onthe site. And so she's just got
all these like, one to threeminute weird bits where she does
(34:43):
like funny voices and you know,music and that's another good
one to check out. But yeah, ourambassador page is a great place
to start, because we have lotsof really interesting thought
leaders to highlight a few, Iwould say Dr. Thomas Lindley is
a deep sea scientist who was onthe group of scientists that
(35:05):
discovered the smallest fishliving in the deepest part of
the ocean. So he's one of ourambassadors super interesting.
harmar toony is a billion dollarreal estate guru. He's going to
be curating some real estatestuff on our platform. So yeah,
lots of good stuff there on thatpage.
Steve Brown (35:25):
So what's like a couple of topics, we if now was
like, they were listening, andthey need to hear this, what are
a couple of topics that youwould love to have a crate
ambassador for some weird, crazytopic that you have?
Molly Ann Hale (35:37):
Oh, my gosh, there's so many.
Unknown (35:41):
Um, this, this
Molly Ann Hale (35:44):
is a hard one. I know I look at this taxonomy
every day. Well, they're there,I wanted to say there's no limit
to how many ambassadors we canhave. So we're always open also
to adding categories on theplatform if you have a specialty
that we have not thought of yet,but we're looking for people in
beauty and we're looking forpeople in music, anybody who has
(36:04):
any like, you know, musicconnection or radio connection.
We're looking for journalists,film reviewers, people, authors,
anybody who you know, writesbooks or has an into science
fiction world or, you know,mystery world. We're looking for
some paranormal people, youknow, do you have a podcast
about true crime? We would lovethat. So yeah, there's lots of
(36:27):
good stuff still to be done. Butthe weirdest thing, I don't
know, probably like a court ofappeals. You know, Court of
Appeals. 32 and 33 are kind ofout there.
Steve Brown (36:41):
Yeah. All right. So you're listening to Molly
inhales she's the Creator,Ambassador for verbal. And
Somali. I like to always askthis question for my guests.
It's like, what's the onequestion that you wished? You
could answer that I haven'tasked?
Unknown (37:04):
Oh, my goodness. Um,
Molly Ann Hale (37:08):
hmm. That's so difficult. Oh, I don't know. I
wish you had asked me. What's mysign?
Steve Brown (37:15):
What's your sign?
Molly Ann Hale (37:17):
I am a Taurus.
Yes, CUSP, right on the cusp ofGemini, which I think is just
enough. But yes, I love being atourist and I celebrated daily.
Steve Brown (37:29):
Okay, awesome. So how can folks reach out to you
Molly?
Molly Ann Hale (37:35):
Well, if you'd like to connect about being an
ambassador, we'd love to haveyou can reach out at ambassadors
at verbal Comm. Or you can go tothe website, on the left hand
side on the navigation bar,there is a button down at the
bottom that says become anambassador, or you can email us
at pr evitable comm or info atverbal comm la discoverable.com.
(38:02):
So there's lots of ways to reachus. If you go to the platform,
you can find an email and theywere a small team. So if you
just say hey, this message isfrom all you don't get back to
me.
Steve Brown (38:11):
So that's variable Vu Rb l.com. They're an up and
coming scrappy, new platformthat's going to be what YouTube
is to video. They verbal is foraudio, you need to get on that
platform, you need to startproducing content, the share
(38:31):
what you love to share and meetthe folks that you wouldn't meet
otherwise, and make some money.
Yeah, I'll make some money.
Molly Ann Hale (38:40):
I mean, I've I've had videos up on YouTube
for about almost 10 years now.
I've made money on YouTube. Iwalked away from a couple videos
came back had a couple millionviews and thought all right, you
know, I mean, don't don't knockit like get your stuff up there,
guys. Come on, make some money.
Steve Brown (38:57):
That's right. And if you want to follow Molly's
YouTube channel, what's the it'sMolly's hilarious.
Molly Ann Hale (39:10):
Shorts, Molly.
Inhale, Molly inhale. Social,including verbal Amalia inhale.
Steve Brown (39:16):
All right, great.
Molly, you've been awesomeguests on the ROI online
podcast.
Unknown (39:21):
Thanks for having me, Steve.
Steve Brown (39:22):
This was fun. And that's a wrap. Thanks for
listening to another fun episodeof the ROI online podcast. For
more, be sure to check out theshow notes of this episode. And
feel free to connect with me onLinkedIn where we can chat and I
can help direct you to theresources you're searching for.
(39:43):
To learn more about how you cangrow your business better. Be
sure to pick up your copy of mybook, that golden toilet add,
surprise that golden toilet.comI'm Steve Brown, and we'll see
you next week on another funepisode of the ROI online.
podcast
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