Do you ever sit down to create something? And you get kind of antsy? Because you're so excited to do you remember that like term? Did your parents or like teachers ever say to you like, do you have ants in your pants? Cuz you're like squirmy and moving around like, that's a little legitimately I was, do you hear? I can't even talk I was gonna say literally, and
legitimately. I'm so excited about today's episode, because we are bringing back Well, I guess it never fully went away, because we do these from time to time. But we have a spin on it. So we are doing a question from the community. And I'm so excited because the podcaster we're featuring featuring today used our PodInbox page. We're going to talk about what that is. But I have a clip today that I'm going to share with you about what Jean's question is and how we can help her and this
is going to be so much fun. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the profit podcast where we teach you how to start launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?
Okay, so let me set the scene for how this whole thing came together in transpired. Okay, so I did a well, let me go back. I'm like trying to decide on the timeline where we should start. In August of 2021. I went to Podcast Movement in Nashville. And my friend Jordan was like, hey, there is a vendor here that I think that you should meet. They would be someone that would be fantastic for your community of podcasters and creators. I was like, Yeah, sure, let's meet.
And she introduced me to Pat, who is the creator and founder of PodInbox. In patent, I got to talking and he was like, Hey, let's set up a call sometime. I want to show you my product. I was like, Yeah, sure. And so he gave me a tutorial, a walkthrough and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is really cool. And so I set up the entire thing, and I did a YouTube video about it. And I talked about how
it works. And today I am sharing with you Jean's audio clip she submitted a question and I'm gonna let her introduce herself, which is so fun. But I'm going to link in the show notes for how you could do this for your own podcast, right. This is why I get so excited because it was an experiment that I wanted to try. And now we are seeing that it worked like it worked so beautifully. And this is going to be so much fun. And I want you to be able to use this same concept, same idea for your
show. So now without further ado, let's hear Jean's question.
Hey there, Krystal, thanks so much for all your videos and episodes on tools and techniques for podcasting. so helpful. And this new Podinbox tool looks really great. I'm going to give it a try for my "Art of Homeschooling" Podcast. I'm wondering if you have any other ideas for listener engagement. Sometimes it just feels like I record a podcast episode put it out there and it feels kind of like a one way exchange. I do have show notes over on my
website. But I just know that people don't leave comments on blog posts anymore. So any ideas, any engagement ideas, aside from a Facebook group? I would love to hear. Thanks for sharing all of your wisdom with us, podcasters.
Well, first of all, Jean, thank you so much for your question. She is a longtime member of this podcast community and I am just so excited for the awesome things that she's doing. So you're actually going to see her in an upcoming episode where we're doing a coaching call. So that's really fun. Make sure you go check out The Art of homeschooling podcast. But Jean, let's get to your question. So you want to know about podcast engagement or just engaging with
your community in general. And there's a few different things that come to mind that you can try. I heard your hesitation to like, it sounded like you were wanting to run away from a Facebook group what I feel you I see you and you are not the only
one that feels that way. I feel like you know, our feet But group for the pot profit podcast online community is, I mean, it kind of feels very rare and that we don't have a ton of spammers and people that are just, you know, saying buy my product do this do that like, so it is one of the only Facebook groups that I enjoy hanging out with online, the rest of them are, I just, I should have unfollowed them or
left them a long time ago. So I feel you when it comes to creating a community online, and it feels like it can be really hard. What I have done, and this would be my recommendation to Jean, is what about live streaming? I know that that can feel a little bit like oh, man, I maybe you know, it's a comfortability on camera for a lot of people. I'm no longer just coaching Jean, at this point, I'm talking to everybody
that's listening. A lot of people, whenever we talk about live streaming immediately are like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to go live. I don't want to have the camera on me. What am I going to say? I'm gonna sound stupid, what if nobody shows up like, these were all of my fears. When I first started live
streaming. And now that I've been doing it for five years, at this point, I can tell you, I still do live streams where nobody shows up, or I'm like, I don't really know what I'm going to talk about, but we're just gonna wing it. And we're gonna go with the flow. Because what this does is it opens up the doors to your community, to engage with you, because you're right, like your recording, basically, in a vacuum, if it's just you and a solo episode, or
it's you and your guest. And there's not a lot of engagement back and forth between you and your listener. So you have to figure out a place to cultivate that community.
And what I have found is whenever I am live streaming, even if I just start it and say, Hey, here's the topic we're gonna cover today, if you have any questions, put them in the chat. It opens the door for conversation. And my friend Melanie, who I'm gonna link to she is my live streaming go to guru. So Melanie, Diane Howe, shout out you've heard her on the podcast here before you've seen her in my live streams. I've been in hers.
Like, we definitely do a lot of cross promotions, because we're both creators in different ways. But she, I was listening to her. She was on the Social Media Examiner podcast, I'm gonna link to that in the show notes like, which was a huge win, like major congrats to you, Mel. She's
doing incredible things. But whenever I was listening to her guest appearance there, she was talking about what makes live streaming easier, is if you go in with a topic in mind, not just turning on the camera and say ask me all your questions like your audience, you kind of have to lead them to water. I'm thinking about what is that? Like? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink? I don't Is that a Texas thing? I don't even know if I
just made that up. Or if that's something that y'all know, I should stop it with the metaphors and the stories but they come to me I say them. And then I question everything of whether it's accurate or correct or even said at the right way.
But she was saying you should really give them some sort of prompt, whether it's an overarching topic, or maybe a question yourself, like, hey, what do you feel about blah, blah, blah, and just have something that leads them because most people aren't going to tell you what they're afraid of their deep, dark secrets, or the things that they're struggling with the most, because that's not really something that everyone wants to throw out there and air their dirty laundry, if you will,
because it's a lot harder to process some of those. So because I know what Jean does, right, she talks about homeschooling. And she has multi, like a multi faceted approach into how she works with
people I know she does. Coaching and programs and just different ways that she could work with different individuals that I imagine would work through her funnel, if you will, if that's what you want to call it, of listening to her podcast, hopefully engaging with her somewhere in between and then becoming a client or working with Jean in whatever capacity that looks like. But you do need that middle ground of someone not just consuming your content, but that in between point of
getting to know you better. And what I have found that works really, really well is my live streams. Now, again, now that we talked about live streams. This does not mean just a Facebook group or a Facebook page. This could be YouTube, this could be LinkedIn, this could be wherever your audience is already. So I don't want you to like scramble to say oh my gosh, I don't have any YouTube channel now I have to start a YouTube channel.
Well, I do think everyone could benefit from having a YouTube channel for multiple reasons. But for you, particularly Jean, I'm thinking of if live streaming feels a little overwhelming to you.
I would just go old school with email. How can you cultivate engagement in emails that you send to your list? And by that, I mean, can you ask people to reply to you, and maybe you have, and this is something you're just like, I'm just not getting responses, I say, hey, reply to me with X, Y, and Z. Maybe start making the asks like the calls to action in your audience a little bit
smaller. I've seen this with my own audience, when I realized, you know, what I was asking them to do, you know, E, F, G, before I ever asked them to do ABCD, you know, like, I'm putting the cart before the horse. Here we go. Again, apparently horses are on the mind today. But I keep thinking of you need that middle ground of okay, I'm going to ask them to follow me on social media. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe you cultivate engagement in your Instagram,
DMS. I've had a lot of y'all commenting on my post, and then you'll send me a DM or you'll tag me in something and then we'll start a conversation that way, going back and forth. I am active on Instagram. And I think about the questions like the little question feature, where I could say, Hey, what are your questions about? And then I can put the question feature up there, and I'm getting all this input and engagement. Yes, I can
reshare those to my stories. But I can also just get in the DMS and have a conversation back to back with my audience. So those are a few. So let's recap. We have live streaming, old school email, just back and forth, actual emails back and forth to your audience, getting in the DMS on Instagram, or whatever social platform that you're on.
But I think at the end of the day, the main takeaway from all of this would be maybe reframing how you're asking your audience to engage with you, like, are you asking them to take too big of a leap? And maybe they need a smaller baby step before they're ready to get on your email list? Right? Maybe you just need them to subscribe to your podcast, or come follow you on Instagram or whatever the small baby step is. But start looking at some of
these things. And seeing where you can make some of these adjustments to have that engagement in your community. Such a great question, Jean. This was so fun. I want to do this again.
And I'm going to link in the show notes. So go to KrystalProffitt.com/episode339. And I'm going to link to how Jean did this how she submitted her question to my PodInbox page. So I'm going to have all those links, but I am going to go ahead and tell you the link. So it's PodInbox.com, forward slash the profit podcast. So PodInbox.com/theproffittpodcast. So shout out to Pat like you created this amazing tool to give me and Jean this opportunity to share this knowledge with our audience. And
it's so fun, it's so fun. I'm gonna link to a YouTube video I did as well for you to set up a PodInbox account. And, and this is a big and they recently released a feature that is for free accounts. So previously, it was all paid. Now they have free accounts for you to set up and get going and get started. And hopefully you can use today's episode as an example of what you can do in the future to engage with your community. Jean, I didn't even talk about
this. This is a fantastic example for you to engage with your community. Because if you want to have, you know, little clips of people asking you questions, or having shout outs on your show, if you want to say hey, you know we have this one person in the community they asked about this. It really drives that curiosity and engagement for people to say, Oh, they were featured on the podcast. I love listening to the art of homeschooling. I wonder how I can get on the podcast.
How can I speak to Jean How can I get in touch with her? So there you go. There's a bonus tip. You could do exactly what we did here today and feature people from your community because that just really drives up that engagement. It gets people more involved and it helps them feel like they are a deeper part of your community. So there you go bonus tip for today, but everything is going to be linked in the show notes.
If you are listening and you're like I want Krystal to answer my question, then I want you to go to pod inbox.com forward slash the profit podcast. I have all the instructions there for how you can leave me a message and be featured on the show as well. But that's all I have for you today. So shownotes one more time. KrystalProffitt.com/episode339. Thanks again, Jean for submitting your question. And as always remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere