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Creating Content That Matters: Community Engagement and Social Impact
Episode 6 •
10th March 2025 • Change the Reel • Monique & Piper
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00:32:47
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1 6 Creating Content That Matters: Community Engagement and Social Impact
In this episode of Change the Reel, Monique and Piper explore the essential relationship between content creation, community engagement, and making a meaningful social impact. From their new office space, they share insights on how businesses, nonprofits, and government entities can create content that truly connects with their communities.
Why This Matters Now
In a digital landscape flooded with content, simply posting videos or podcasts isn't enough. The real power comes from creating two-way communication that engages your community authentically and measures tangible impact. As Monique emphasizes, "It is not a video or a podcast alone. It has to be packaged with other things. It has to become two-way communication."
Understanding Your Community
Defining Your Community
Who is your audience? What are their needs? Where do they gather? The answers vary dramatically depending on your location, industry, and mission. Monique and Piper share examples from their experience working with different municipalities where what works in one community completely fails in another just miles away.
The Digital Divide
Some communities are highly tech-savvy, making digital messaging effective. Others are more rural with significant "digital divides" that require physical signage, flyers, and in-person meetings. Understanding these dynamics is crucial before creating content for community engagement.
Community Beyond Geography
For businesses and nonprofits, your community isn't defined by geographic boundaries but by who you serve. As Piper explains, "That becomes what your community is." Whether you're helping "brown dogs" (as in their nonprofit example) or specific business clients, clearly defining your community focus helps create more effective content.
Creating Content With Impact
Authenticity Matters
Being your authentic self on camera creates powerful connections. When viewers see someone expressing thoughts they've been having privately, they suddenly feel less alone - creating community through shared experience and validation.
Accuracy and Consistency
Content that drives real community engagement must be:
- Truthful and accurate
- Consistent in delivery and messaging
- Aligned with your mission
- Informative and useful
Two-Way Communication
The most powerful content invites response and creates dialogue. This means designing content with mechanisms for feedback, whether through comments, surveys, direct calls to action, or measurable outcomes like program sign-ups.
Measuring Real Impact
Beyond View Counts
True community engagement can't be measured by likes and views alone. What real-world actions resulted from your content? As Monique points out, you need "a mechanism on the backside of the communication, or along with the comments in the communication, to measure that or to drive that."
Learning From Feedback
Being open to community feedback can transform your approach. This requires a mindset shift for many business owners who are accustomed to making all decisions independently. Listening to your community often reveals blind spots in your strategy and creates opportunities for deeper connection.
Consistency Creates Trust
Building community takes time. One-off content rarely makes an impact - consistency in both publishing and messaging builds the trust needed for meaningful engagement. As Piper notes, "You have to put things out on a schedule over and over."
Bottom Line
No matter what sector you're in – business, nonprofit, or government – you're part of a community. Creating content that genuinely engages that community requires understanding their unique needs, being authentic in your communication, and creating opportunities for two-way dialogue that drives measurable impact.
#CommunityEngagement #ContentStrategy #SocialImpact #RepresentationMatters
- 4 Communication Strategies to Expand Community Engagement - Consistent, Accurate, & Informative Engagement
- Ten Useful Video Stats Every Marketer Should Know - Simply using the word “video” in your email subject line increases open rates by 19%.
- Video marketing statistics for your 2025 campaigns - Short-form vs long-form video You’ve probably heard that short-form videos (those which last for less than 60 seconds) are better for engagement. Whilst it’s true in a lot of cases, it often depends on the channel and the topic.
- Stats on video marketing - For 85% of marketers, video marketing effectively boosts brand engagement. 87% of marketers say video marketing increases brand awareness. 86% of marketers say video is an effective marketing tool for educating audiences about a product or brand. 93% of organizational representatives say conversion rates for video marketing match or surpass other content formats. 70% of sales teams say sales videos outperform all other content in driving conversions.
CHANGE THE REEL with Piper and Monique
Executive Producers: Monique Velasquez and Piper Kessler
Producer: Arielle Morten
Director/Editor: Simon Beery
Copyright 2025 Monique & Piper
Transcripts
Speaker:
No matter how you want to look at it as a nonprofit, as a government entity, or as a business,
Speaker:you're part of a community.
Speaker:You have to engage your community.
Speaker:And you can look at it different ways.
Speaker:I think that you need to make a social impact.
Speaker:Those realms is more about what their outcomes really are.
Speaker:Is it phone calls?
Speaker:Is it questions?
Speaker:Is it sign-ups in programs?
Speaker:And there needs to be a mechanism on the backside of the communication, or along with the comments
Speaker:in the communication, to measure that or to drive that.
Speaker:It is not a video or a podcast alone.
Speaker:It has to be packaged with other things.
Speaker:It has to become two-way communication.
Speaker:It really does.
Speaker:Change of the Real, a podcast with Monique Velasquez and Piper Kessler.
Speaker:For over 20 years, we've run a video production business that has achieved what only 3% of women entrepreneurs have done.
Speaker:Exceed $250,000 in revenue.
Speaker:We want to see business owners that look like us succeed.
Speaker:That's why we've started this podcast.
Speaker:Change the Real will drop twice a month.
Speaker:We'll release two types of episodes.
Speaker:One is with Piper and I kicking it and talking about using video and business.
Speaker:The second features conversations with business owners using media to drive diverse perspectives.
Speaker:This is Change the Real.
Speaker:Representation starts here.
Speaker:Hey, y'all.
Speaker:I'm Monique and I'm Piper.
Speaker:And this is Change the Real.
Speaker:This is a different episode.
Speaker:We're in a different space.
Speaker:We are in the process of...
Speaker:And we don't mean headspace.
Speaker:Well, we are in a little different headspace.
Speaker:It is a little different.
Speaker:We're in a different space.
Speaker:We are in transition mode.
Speaker:We are moving an office from one physical place to another.
Speaker:And this space is a temporary space.
Speaker:So we'll do a couple episodes probably here looking like this.
Speaker:And it may change, but it's been exciting because we are now in an office proper versus in our basement.
Speaker:And having the equipment set up, not in our living room is kind of big.
Speaker:A wee bit.
Speaker:Yeah, and so I love the fact that we have things that are set up.
Speaker:And this was a race to get all of this over here and ready for this particular recording.
Speaker:Simon, who is our guy back here, pushing the buttons, has stepped in pretty quickly.
Speaker:You have any reviews so far?
Speaker:Ten out of ten.
Speaker:Ten out of ten.
Speaker:Ten out of ten.
Speaker:He's liking it.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And so this picture right here doesn't have the best color rendition.
Speaker:So, you know, I'm looking a little redder here.
Speaker:So we'll probably change that image out eventually.
Speaker:But today we thought we'd try it.
Speaker:And here it is, the version.
Speaker:Give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
Speaker:Comment about the picture in the back.
Speaker:So today, change the...
Speaker:What are we talking about today?
Speaker:I know what we're talking about.
Speaker:I think I know what we're talking about.
Speaker:So we're going to talk about producing content for community engagement and social impact.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:We had a long conversation last night about this.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:It is a...
Speaker:What I love about having these conversations with you is because they go in places that I don't think about.
Speaker:You would think we work together all day and work together.
Speaker:And you would think we would have these conversations, but we don't.
Speaker:We don't.
Speaker:And so when you started going, "I want to go biblical on it," I was like, "Wow, okay."
Speaker:I didn't think that community engagement and impact would necessarily need that sort of support,
Speaker:but it made sense when we were talking last night.
Speaker:And I'm hoping I can remember what...
Speaker:Because I went off on a tangent last night, but just preparing for today.
Speaker:In talking about producing content for community engagement and social impact,
Speaker:it's like we got into a discussion, or maybe I did, about what is community, that whole philosophy, right?
Speaker:Okay, so let's start with what is community in the focus in the realm of humans.
Speaker:And we want to extrapolate this to organizations' businesses, right?
Speaker:But we really do need to start with what is community.
Speaker:And because we do so much work with government, it's like we see community in that way,
Speaker:which I think might be the traditional way of seeing community, right?
Speaker:Community outreach, community engagement.
Speaker:Because government, they're not trying to sell you a dress.
Speaker:They're not a retail organization.
Speaker:They need engagement for anybody that lives in the community, right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So the idea that government is part of the community, and its real job is to engage
Speaker:and figure out how to impact positively and respond to what community is looking for.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You know, a lot of our clients are in the government space.
Speaker:But we get to bring that, without thinking about it,
Speaker:we get to bring that to a different kind of client, a non-profit,
Speaker:or doing business to business.
Speaker:It's not something people necessarily notice, and it's like,
Speaker:well, we get to see what is successful or not successful.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We see a lot of how government engages in different ways.
Speaker:Different governments have different communities.
Speaker:Different communities have different personalities.
Speaker:Definitely.
Speaker:So the person in one community is not going to work in another community.
Speaker:I mean, and these are the municipalities we deal with are very close to each other,
Speaker:but yet they are very different.
Speaker:So very different.
Speaker:What works at one is definitively not going to work in another.
Speaker:Yeah, so we talked about, you had mentioned San Francisco being highly connected
Speaker:and very digital, and so digital messaging is very likely to be successful.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And engagement and outreach.
Speaker:We have a community that is very tech-savvy, a municipality,
Speaker:where we also have another government entity that is very rural.
Speaker:Very rural.
Speaker:And there is a digital, what we call, divide or a gap.
Speaker:Digital divide, yeah.
Speaker:So what happens is there's a more visceral, like, signs and flyers
Speaker:and physical meetings where you go into a space and have these offline engagements.
Speaker:Which, to me, means you really need to know who your audience is.
Speaker:As a business owner, who is it that you're trying to get to?
Speaker:And that becomes what your community is.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So defining what that community is, like, in a sense, for government,
Speaker:it is within a specific boundary, right?
Speaker:And nonprofits don't have that sort of a boundary.
Speaker:But what they do have is our services, and the conversation I had with Selena Gomez-Bellis
Speaker:about nonprofits, her example was, "We help brown dogs."
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So that is a very specific community.
Speaker:Not white dogs, not patchy dogs, brown dogs.
Speaker:It becomes a community that is defined.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And for businesses, I help government and nonprofit and small businesses that are looking
Speaker:to message and communicate through media.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Increase their outreach, increase their audience, increase engagement.
Speaker:That's what we do.
Speaker:So our community would be those folks.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that we can't necessarily help other communities, but that is our niche.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:When we have conversations, we can usually draw from those other people in the community
Speaker:ideas, what worked for them, things that somebody may not have thought of.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so, like, brown dogs is an example, just because your brown dogs doesn't mean you
Speaker:don't know how dogs in general, small dogs, large dogs, those sorts of things.
Speaker:So there's an overlap there.
Speaker:But your community is pretty specific.
Speaker:And so, when we define the community, it's how you define it as your target constituency
Speaker:or client.
Speaker:And we were talking about, too, in our discussion of nonprofits, going back to the conversation
Speaker:that Selena had.
Speaker:It's like you see something out there that you can't take advantage of.
Speaker:Your nonprofit can't.
Speaker:But if you are engaged with another nonprofit as a community, it's going to come to your
Speaker:mind of, well, we can't use this, but you know what?
Speaker:We do know who could use this, and we can let them be aware of the fact that this is out
Speaker:there.
Speaker:And that helps.
Speaker:It happens with businesses.
Speaker:We talked about the discussion of anybody.
Speaker:Do you feel like you're in competition?
Speaker:It becomes the, I don't know if I want to say the opposite of community, but it's like,
Speaker:if you have people in your community, you don't necessarily feel in competition with them
Speaker:because you're both working to help each other.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So community as we define it, and what is the reason for community?
Speaker:And I think ultimately what we're talking about is that it's the best way to survive
Speaker:adversity and to propel our own missions for the betterment and the improvement and create
Speaker:bigger impacts.
Speaker:And so how does video affect those things?
Speaker:If you're trying to create community engagement to make an impact, social impact, how does
Speaker:video help you?
Speaker:And we were looking up the stats on video being on your webpage, in an email.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it was so high up of video over text.
Speaker:People would just leave text.
Speaker:And if there was a video, it was 70% more likely to succeed or something.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I wish I had written down the stats and where those statistics came from.
Speaker:I know one was public input.
Speaker:They had done a 2024 survey of 1,000 people across the country.
Speaker:And I know we did pull some stats from that.
Speaker:I think the organization's called public input.
Speaker:I will look that up while you're about to go into the next thing.
Speaker:Take a look at that.
Speaker:So all of this idea of community, you have to define that.
Speaker:And then we talk about how we can create content that engages them and makes a social impact.
Speaker:So say your audience is blind or is deaf, the way you're going to communicate and create
Speaker:media is going to be very different.
Speaker:Those types of things need to be--
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You know, somebody like me where I need my glasses to see up close.
Speaker:And so these are the types of things that once you figure out who your community, who
Speaker:your audience is, there are aspects of it that will tell you what your content should
Speaker:be shaped and formatted to help your specific audience improve and survive any adversity
Speaker:or improve their lives, right?
Speaker:Make a bigger impact.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And it may change what your impact is.
Speaker:It may change what your community is.
Speaker:I know when we did a web series, I didn't even think about the fact that outside of the
Speaker:community that we thought we were serving, all of a sudden we had a lot of international.
Speaker:And it became--
Speaker:I mean, this was 12 years ago, 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago.
Speaker:All of a sudden, I was like, oh, you know, it may be a terrible translation, but I could
Speaker:go in and try to do some translation in other languages.
Speaker:And all of a sudden, that did make a huge difference because that was before the closed
Speaker:caption was doing so well on YouTube.
Speaker:Yeah, on YouTube.
Speaker:And now it's like, those are things to keep in mind.
Speaker:Now it has become closed captioning has a wider audience than just people hard of hearing.
Speaker:There are other implications.
Speaker:There's data that shows that in content on social media that the closed captioning or
Speaker:the text on screen along with the video, because sound is often not turned on in social media.
Speaker:So those are the types of things that when you're creating content for making an impact,
Speaker:you have to start thinking about.
Speaker:And we see this trend in Instagram and TikTok, all the words on screen and that sort of thing.
Speaker:It's becoming-- yeah, in a very short time, it's become necessary.
Speaker:It's become more impactful.
Speaker:So it engages your audience.
Speaker:Also, it's when you are doing a video, are you going to do a video that is just one way
Speaker:of communication?
Speaker:And we talked about this.
Speaker:There's the idea of a radio, right?
Speaker:You turn on the radio and you tune in a station and maybe you like the song, maybe you don't.
Speaker:Maybe you like the personality of the MC, disc jackie, whatever you want to call them, talking.
Speaker:You could call in and say, "Hey, I'll play the song."
Speaker:And then you got to wait it out, see where you are on the queue.
Speaker:But really is one way of communication.
Speaker:Television, one way.
Speaker:Movies, one way.
Speaker:Magazines, one way.
Speaker:And if you're doing on YouTube, do you leave your comments open?
Speaker:Do you check them?
Speaker:Do you go back and do you engage people if they had a question or even if they had an
Speaker:opinion?
Speaker:Do you choose to engage them?
Speaker:These are things that you have to think of before you even put the video up on YouTube.
Speaker:How are you going to respond to comments?
Speaker:Down in the era of social media, you know, likes, it's a little bit more feedback.
Speaker:It's a little bit what we call engagement.
Speaker:Comments, engagement.
Speaker:But again, are we really engaged?
Speaker:It's one way.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And those likes, do they really translate into real people?
Speaker:Are they bots?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Good question.
Speaker:You know, are you truly engaging your audience in the way that is impactful, the way that
Speaker:you need to?
Speaker:Do you need them to come and buy some clothes at 20% off during this one week?
Speaker:It's like, did that translate?
Speaker:I mean, a lot of times when we go in to create a video, we ask, well, what is your plan?
Speaker:What is it that you, what on the other end of this do you want to see happen?
Speaker:And so ultimately, you know, we've been called in, they're big lists.
Speaker:They've moved the outcomes of health in one specific area.
Speaker:They wanted to see a move, a needle, needle move on either understanding the information
Speaker:about diabetes and how to treat it and how to live, manage it.
Speaker:But ultimately, it was hard because I don't know that they had a measurement followed
Speaker:through with a way to measure.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Like if there was a, you know, hey, take the quiz and get something.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, did what we, the material that we put out there, did it impact the community?
Speaker:And if so, how can we measure it?
Speaker:Right, because it was one way.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You posted on your YouTube page and maybe you got a hundred views, but ultimately, we
Speaker:have no measure on the backside, which is the impact, right?
Speaker:And so, there is a campaign needed and a strategy needed to couple with video either in the comments,
Speaker:having active engagement back and forth with the video, a survey, a quiz or anything like
Speaker:that, or like show up and show us your coupon.
Speaker:Show up and, you know, give us the, you know, I got the code.
Speaker:I'm going to get my discount.
Speaker:You know, those sorts of things measure the impact of what you're doing.
Speaker:But ultimately, it might not be what the video was doing.
Speaker:It's the impact and the message that you're sending out.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And I've said this before, it's like, is the goal to get more phone calls, right?
Speaker:And so, they could be phone calls with questions and not ready to buy.
Speaker:And that might be your goal.
Speaker:So you are doing a campaign for education and they see your content and they have a phone
Speaker:call and say, if you have questions, give us a call.
Speaker:Here's the number.
Speaker:Somebody will help you.
Speaker:And so, you get a lot of questions, which means they're engaging in your content.
Speaker:That might be your goal.
Speaker:If your goal is to get people to sign up for a program to get those questions answered,
Speaker:that is a different way of looking at it.
Speaker:We've had a friend who is a realtor and she has said, I sponsor things, not because I'm
Speaker:expecting necessarily to get 10 people walking in the door in the next month, but to show
Speaker:that I am in this community.
Speaker:I am reaching out to you.
Speaker:I am a face.
Speaker:I am legitimate.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so, what happens there is the content and the messaging is not so much the impact.
Speaker:The content there is to show I support your activity.
Speaker:I support my community in this way.
Speaker:And making that impact of also, we talked about this is with Chef Queen Precious Jewel.
Speaker:We were talking about the fact of being yourself in front of the camera.
Speaker:Being yourself, that impact, that has a social impact.
Speaker:That has a community impact.
Speaker:If you are feeling alone and you're like, well, my opinion is my opinion and I don't
Speaker:know that anybody else feels the way I do.
Speaker:You're sitting at your home alone feeling like am I crazy?
Speaker:And all of a sudden you see another person in front of a camera in a video on TV, wherever,
Speaker:and they're speaking back to you.
Speaker:The same thing, the conversation that you're having in your head is happening in the screen
Speaker:in front of you.
Speaker:And you now feel community because you're not alone.
Speaker:You don't feel so crazy.
Speaker:There are other people going through what you're going through.
Speaker:That becomes a community.
Speaker:That becomes a social impact.
Speaker:Ultimately too, we talked about the fact that once you have this community and you are out
Speaker:there putting content up, there's an expectation, at least ethically for me, accountability
Speaker:and follow through on what it is that you're talking about.
Speaker:We talked about this that lying on social media is, we can say it may be morally not
Speaker:okay, but do you have a responsibility to your community?
Speaker:It may be fun.
Speaker:You may enjoy doing some exaggerated thing.
Speaker:Like Pizza Gate, that was a lie.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's like, how does that affect your community?
Speaker:And what do you want to do?
Speaker:Who is your community?
Speaker:And do you want to affect them for the better or not such good intentions?
Speaker:And are you being truthful?
Speaker:You may feel this way, you may have seen an incident or you may have read an incident,
Speaker:but is it the truth?
Speaker:And what is your obligation to make sure that that is the truth and that it is accurate?
Speaker:And we also talked about making sure that you do it consistently.
Speaker:The thing about creating an impact and creating content, we've been in the business for 20
Speaker:years.
Speaker:Maybe you threw a website up and people would come because there weren't that many websites
Speaker:out there.
Speaker:Or you did a search, musicians in my area or mechanics in my area.
Speaker:And so ultimately what you have to do is be consistent about.
Speaker:You have to put things out on a schedule over and over.
Speaker:It can't be, A, I tried that, it didn't work.
Speaker:I went to the gym once, I did some sit ups and some push ups and I just didn't get fit.
Speaker:It wasn't for me.
Speaker:It doesn't work that way.
Speaker:You have to go consistently.
Speaker:And part of this is as a business, it's a hard thing.
Speaker:And you have to be committed to the commitment of being consistent.
Speaker:We struggled over the years of having exactly that.
Speaker:And we're doing the podcast and we're being as consistent as we can with our second and
Speaker:fourth Mondays and dropping content in that way.
Speaker:And we're hoping that that consistency will bring our audience the expectation that we're
Speaker:going to be there.
Speaker:And the next thing is that we're giving you accurate information.
Speaker:To the best of our experience, all we can do is share what we've experienced and the
Speaker:outcomes and the things that we've seen happen over the years.
Speaker:And let you know that we're not looking to do another pizza gate or to throw anybody
Speaker:under the bus or to call people names and do things that are shady or not exactly ethical.
Speaker:I mean, and we see the repercussions of that.
Speaker:If you, no matter what business or if you're a nonprofit or if you're a government, a person
Speaker:working just as staff, it's like the moment that comes out of some inconsistency in your
Speaker:behavior, an inconsistency in you go to messaging, you go to one place and it says this, but
Speaker:then somewhere else it says something totally different.
Speaker:Which happens a lot on these insurance websites.
Speaker:You see, this is, we take this, we support this, and then over here you're like, how
Speaker:do I engage with this?
Speaker:And they're like, no, we don't support this for you.
Speaker:And so it becomes very frustrating to do business in that way.
Speaker:And the content they're putting out, you know, isn't cohesive.
Speaker:And I think the bigger organizations suffer more from that.
Speaker:And the small organizations who have the staff where you can get together and comb through
Speaker:what it is that you're doing and be consistent.
Speaker:And the one thing that I do know is after 20 years of being in business, you have a good
Speaker:bit of messaging that is living, right?
Speaker:You have this mission.
Speaker:The mission, that's exactly what I was thinking, the mission.
Speaker:For mission, you get older and you get wiser.
Speaker:And so you start refining the mission.
Speaker:And so things that don't serve us as a business, we haven't left them behind, but they're not
Speaker:as our focus.
Speaker:Well, we revisit the mission.
Speaker:Like, you know, and it's nice to have anything written down.
Speaker:It's like, every once in a while, are we being consistent about that?
Speaker:Is that truthfully?
Speaker:Is it accurate?
Speaker:What we're doing?
Speaker:Is it accurate?
Speaker:And inside of that, maybe that's not what we're doing.
Speaker:And non-profits work that way.
Speaker:Businesses, a lot of the businesses that we do business with, they know what their mission
Speaker:is.
Speaker:If you don't have your mission written down, you can't go back and go, well, is this something
Speaker:I should be doing?
Speaker:Is this something we should be doing in the business?
Speaker:Was this behavior, what do you call me, the...
Speaker:Ethics officer.
Speaker:The ethics officer.
Speaker:Is this behavior ethical within what we defined as our morals and our mission?
Speaker:When we're putting out content, you know, being consistent, having it accurate and truthful,
Speaker:but we also need to make sure that it's informative and that what we are putting out there actually
Speaker:lets you know, like our friend, the realtor, that we are supporting you and your community.
Speaker:We will be there.
Speaker:We will show up.
Speaker:We're informing you of that.
Speaker:We're informing you of what we do, what services we perform.
Speaker:And government is really good about putting this out.
Speaker:Now there's a lot of accusations for government that they are doing backroom shady deals.
Speaker:If you're not paying attention and you don't see all of the messaging that has been going
Speaker:out and not until that it's like right in front of your eyes, do you think, oh my goodness,
Speaker:they're just now doing it when actually it's been happening for a while.
Speaker:So the information that you put out should be, we've been talking about this for two
Speaker:years.
Speaker:This is the fifth meeting on this.
Speaker:That information and being informative in your communication and what you're putting
Speaker:out in your content is important.
Speaker:And I think that is some of the things that I see our clients that it's missing.
Speaker:They're not putting enough information in when they're doing their content and they're
Speaker:getting called on the backroom shady deals.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And it's like how much do you push, if you don't get a response, you don't get a response,
Speaker:you don't get a response, you don't get a response.
Speaker:And then when you do get that response, really reading it, taking it in, but how do you get
Speaker:that response?
Speaker:It's like I have a bread store and I keep putting out this information of, hey, bread
Speaker:comes out on Monday and between nine and noon, I'm just making up, and as much as I send
Speaker:out emails, as much as I do commercials, as much as I put all this social media out,
Speaker:they're not coming and I'm not hearing anything.
Speaker:You got to figure out where your customers are.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You got to figure out why aren't they, maybe everybody's at work between nine a.m. and
Speaker:noon.
Speaker:That's why they're not showing up.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it becomes an understanding of what your community is and how to communicate with
Speaker:them and respond to their needs.
Speaker:How do you engage your community?
Speaker:And so that is an interesting thing as a business owner, right?
Speaker:I mean, sometimes we put out messaging and then we get feedback and we're like, well,
Speaker:that can't be right.
Speaker:Monday's should be the day people get bread because that's when I'm doing it.
Speaker:But really what happens is all these other things are keeping the homemakers away in
Speaker:the middle of the day because there's something specific that happens on this day.
Speaker:And so it becomes up to you as the content provider and making an offer to respond to
Speaker:your community.
Speaker:It's like, okay, well, maybe those aren't my people.
Speaker:Maybe I need to concentrate on restaurants instead.
Speaker:Or how do I do a little test to see if this is even a product that anybody wants?
Speaker:What does that look like and how do I make sure that I can get that feedback?
Speaker:And that's when you need to be consistent, right?
Speaker:That idea of being consistent and putting this information out in a regular way will
Speaker:help you get that feedback.
Speaker:Because if you do it once, twice, and just say, oh, it didn't work, and then you've got
Speaker:loaves and loaves of bread sitting around.
Speaker:You have to start thinking about, did I do it right?
Speaker:Did I put out in a consistent way?
Speaker:Was it accurate?
Speaker:Was it informative?
Speaker:And here's the other thing.
Speaker:Did I learn something from the content that I put out to my community?
Speaker:What did my community say back?
Speaker:Because if you're not listening to community and the responses, it's a one-way communication.
Speaker:And I think we as content creators really need to open up the street of information and communication
Speaker:coming toward back at us after we send out content.
Speaker:I was just thinking, let's say you have a coffee shop on the corner of first and Elm,
Speaker:and you just opened and you're like, people are driving by, nobody's getting coffee.
Speaker:Do you have your hours listed?
Speaker:Do they know when you're going to be there?
Speaker:What's really maybe happened is the person's like, oh, I have my coffee from home, but
Speaker:let me make a note.
Speaker:There's a coffee shop there.
Speaker:If I forget my coffee at home.
Speaker:And oh, and they have their hours listed.
Speaker:And it's 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Speaker:And then they're like, I left my coffee at home.
Speaker:Drive by, your doors are closed because you didn't have customers.
Speaker:You made an assumption.
Speaker:You only gave it one week, but now you're going to open at 1 p.m.
Speaker:And that person who it takes a while for them to go, oh, let me make a note.
Speaker:You may get lucky and you got a customer immediately.
Speaker:There are early adopters on just about anything.
Speaker:Early adopters, right.
Speaker:And so those consistent like repetitive entries into your communication sphere.
Speaker:But it's consistency.
Speaker:Yeah, it is about consistency.
Speaker:I want to also say that it's a bit of a mindset shift for businesses to think the feedback
Speaker:from a client, from a customer can impact how you do your business.
Speaker:As business owners, we're kind of dictators.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:We like boards.
Speaker:Yeah, a lot of us are not beholding to other people's ideas of what it is that we should
Speaker:be doing.
Speaker:It's a good idea to do that because when you start getting feedback from an outside entity,
Speaker:individual or community, you start going, whoa, I guess I didn't think about the fact
Speaker:that Mondays everybody's at school or Mondays restaurants are closed.
Speaker:How much in my community to be aware of the different impacts.
Speaker:And so we really need to talk about the mindset of businesses.
Speaker:Now I think nonprofits and government have the mindset of community feedback always because
Speaker:they want to know what their impact is.
Speaker:And I think the thing for content in those realms is more about what their outcomes really
Speaker:are.
Speaker:Is it phone calls?
Speaker:Is it questions?
Speaker:Is it signups in programs?
Speaker:And there needs to be a mechanism on the backside of the communication or along with the comments
Speaker:in the communication to measure that or to drive that.
Speaker:It is not video or podcast alone.
Speaker:It has to be packaged with other things.
Speaker:It has to become two-way communication.
Speaker:It really does.
Speaker:And it was publicinput.com was where I got the survey, the 2024.
Speaker:And I didn't finish it reading everything, but it is enlightening.
Speaker:So community engagement, social impact, to me, you may look at it as that's very separate
Speaker:from business, but we are a community.
Speaker:You can't just have your business on your own and be self-sustaining.
Speaker:No matter how you want to look at it as a nonprofit, as a government entity, or as a
Speaker:business, you're part of a community.
Speaker:You have to engage your community.
Speaker:And you can look at it different ways.
Speaker:I think that you need to make a social impact.
Speaker:I need to be at my authentic self when I am speaking so that I can make an impact on maybe
Speaker:that person who's feeling shy and they don't feel like they have a voice and maybe they
Speaker:should always be quiet or just seeing someone in need.
Speaker:You have to make a social impact.
Speaker:Otherwise, you're not part of the community.
Speaker:Our mission is community-based.
Speaker:We look for places to uplift our community.
Speaker:So Laska's Media, we're here.
Speaker:And community engagement is life.
Speaker:It's living.
Speaker:It's like soccer is life.
Speaker:Football is life.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So we'll see you next time.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:Bye.
Speaker:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Change the Real.
Speaker:If you like the episode, follow us.
Speaker:Share it or hop on podchaser.com and leave us a review.
Speaker:And remember, representation starts here.
Speaker:Hasta pronto.
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