My Ink Stained Fingers Episode 10: Tod Maffin Radio to Marketing to Radio and Back

This week my guest is Tod Maffin (LinkedIn) who I met while he was at the CBC, which came after doing a stint in Marketing, which was preceded by radio journalism … 

Music by Derek K. Miller

BTW…Tod tried the audio editor Hindenburg on the advice of our mutual friend Steve Dotto. From Tod’s suggestion I tried it too. Well, GarageBand might be fine for podcasts, but Hindenburg is better. I put this all together in GarageBand, exported to MP3 and wasn’t 100% happy with the sound. A lot of hiss and stuff in it. So I imported the MP3 into Hindenburg and, wow, even with an MP3 that I had already applied an EQ on and compressor…it sounded so much better. I also followed Tod’s suggestions for how to use the more manual I-really-should-take-a-class-on-this audio effects and … yeah this app is a big improvement.Hope you can tell the difference.

Hmm, maybe they’d sponsor the show so I can get a license to Journalist Pro.

Transcript

Tod Maffin on radio and podcasting

Tris Hussey:[00:00:24] Tod Maffin. Welcome to my ink stained fingers. And, uh, we’ve known each other.  

[00:00:47] How long?

[00:00:47] Tod Maffin:  Oh my gosh. Well more than 10 years, he’s more than 10 

[00:00:51] Tris Hussey: [00:00:51] years easily. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:00:52] Tod Maffin: [00:00:52] W what year we are, you know, you get old when you’re kind of figure out the year. So I would probably say 15 years, I would guess I would guess 2006 is 

[00:01:01] Tris Hussey: [00:01:01] probably, yeah, that sounds about right.

[00:01:03] And that’s, and it’s when you were at the CBC, um, doing technology reporting. Um, and I think the last time I heard you talk was a Northern voice. Oh yeah. Okay. Probably in 2000. Nine. Yeah, maybe 2010. And you were giving a talk on podcasting. Yes. And I, and you were talking about how to do the Ira Glass sound, and if you want to get really close 

[00:01:28] Tod Maffin: [00:01:28] to the mic in lieu of original ideas, I just train people on this stuff I’ve been copying.

[00:01:34] Exactly. 

[00:01:35] Tris Hussey: [00:01:35] And I’ve always copied your I’ve. I shamelessly copy your style for, for top, for talking about tech and I love your new, your new podcast. It’s it? It is a, it is a, a quarter of a Milo walk. It is what it is. So it’s nice. I can know. I can be getting, I can listen beginning to end and, and I don’t have to go like, Oh, crud, I gotta, I gotta stop this.

[00:01:58] I’m not gonna be able to finish. So I thought we would talk today about this kind of, I feel like podcast. I mean, I’ve always loved podcasting because I’ve always loved radio. Not, not that I’ve ever been on the radio. I’ve always aspired to be on the radio. But you’ve, you’ve actually been like a radio journalist and had radio shows and, and now you’re doing, you know, digital media and podcasting.

[00:02:22] What did, what and why, what do you think happened with, like, why is this even now just sort of podcasting is like, everyone’s podcasting. Why do you see those interests? Yeah, I, uh, 

[00:02:33] Tod Maffin: [00:02:33] bear with me here, moving my, moving my stuff around. Um, You know, I think audio is, is a great medium. And, and one of the things that’s, I think in line with where we are as a people or a society for better, or for worse, is that we are continuing this trend of, of needing to multitask, you know, as time gets shorter.

[00:02:52] And I mean, this has been something that people have been talking about since the sixties is we always need to multitask, but you know, every, every couple of years it seems to get a little bit more multitasking in our work, especially now that we’ve been working from home and so on. So. You know, audio in that respect is kind of the ultimate medium, because even as you said, you know, you can be walking your dog at the same time as, as going for, as listening to a podcast.

[00:03:15] So, you know, I think that that’s, that’s really helpful for people is to be able to, to unlike YouTube or television, where you’ve got to kind of devote another, uh, another sensory organ, your eyes, um, to that it’s a little bit easier to absorb. And I think also the quality of podcasts. Um, is getting more refined.

[00:03:35] I never liked to say better because back in the early days, you know , when you were early in podcasting and so on, you know, there were really good podcasts and part of what made them good was that they were raw and unpolished. Yes, 

[00:03:50] Tris Hussey: [00:03:50] that’s a good, that’s a nice way of what called my podcast.

[00:03:53] Definitely raw and unpolished, 

[00:03:56] Tod Maffin: [00:03:56] but those are, I, you know, I think those are the best ones. I, there was a, um, there was a podcast of, uh, of a brother and sister in Toronto and they were quite young at the time. I think the brother was 11 and the sister was like 15 or something, but they had a great podcast.

[00:04:09] Um, and it was just kind of their life. And it was compelling as hell. Like, I mean, it was just, it was the kind of stuff. And, you know, we, we’ve gotten to a place in the past casting space now where podcasts are more polished and there’s narrative structures that have been developed through from screenwriting and so on.

[00:04:25] And so there’s, there are ways to make it compelling, but I feel like we’re, we’re missing some of those early days of people just. Throwing a microphone on, you know, you know, Mark, brevis our mutual friend who is in Ottawa and a phenomenal podcaster and writer in his own. Right. Um, he has kind of a private podcast, which I won’t share the name.

[00:04:45] Cause I don’t think, I think it’s just a private feed that the first family and friends where he just like every other day or so, he just turns on the mic and starts talking about like what he did that day and, and what his thoughts are generally. And. You know, sometimes it’s boring, but sometimes it’s like deeply profound.

[00:04:59] And so I liked that being in this space of sort of, I like those podcasts. 

[00:05:04] Tris Hussey: [00:05:04] Yeah. And I think that’s how I started. Um, it would be a little before we met, when I lived on salt spring Island. For those of you who do not know Canadian and British Columbia geography, salt spring Island is the center of these Gulf islands.

[00:05:18] That between the mainland in Vancouver Island, um, salt spring Island is famous as the, the last natural refuge of the North American hippie. And I would walk to town with a, I bought a cheap, cheap MP3 recorder, and I would walk to town. I called it my walkabout podcast, and you could hear all the traffic going by and the gravel crunching under my feet.

[00:05:41] And I loved doing it. And then I got to a point where I had so many episodes in the can that I wanted to master that by the time it was like, Oh, now it doesn’t matter. And I probably should’ve just fired them off and I probably would still be podcasting. Have the walkabout podcast may have named it have changed, but I probably would have been still doing it if I had just not worried about it as much.

[00:06:04] Yeah. So you, when, when did you. Seems like when you worked at the CBC and you, you were into radio and TV, when did podcasting start appealing to you? 

[00:06:20] Tod Maffin: [00:06:20] As a, as a really good medium day, one  day, one day one, literally the first time, literally the first time that I heard about podcasting, I thought this is, this is going to be huge.

[00:06:27] Um, because it did, as you sort of referenced, you know, I was in radio at the time I started my career in radio and then kind of went into marketing and then went back to CBC and am now back in marketing. I kind of, every, every decade I seem to alternate. Um, but my two loves have always been radio and technology and radio had not been a very technology heavy, uh, um, uh, medium at that point.

[00:06:51] You know, this was 2004, really when, when podcasting first sort of was developed or when the enclosure tag was added to the RSS feed spec, which enabled podcasting. And it was done by these two guys, uh, Dave Wiener and Adam Curry. And they, they threw the, those that tag in and. They called it podcasting. I think I’ve heard, I remember Adam saying once that he wished he hadn’t called it podcasting, it was named podcasting because at the time there was no iPhone, but there were iPods and you would listen mostly on an iPod.

[00:07:18] So that’s why it was called podcasting. But yeah, you know, I mean, I think that that part of it appealed to me because I could see that this would change the way we listen to radio and it would enable us to, to listen, you know, in a different slice, um, I used to call it vertical listening where traditional radio and television is horizontal.

[00:07:37] You think about the way that, uh, you know, an old school TV guide used to be, there were channels down the left and there was a time across the right. And if you wanted to listen or watch, you would basically listen or watch horizontally, you would stay on one channel and you would just kind of let that television station, if you were committed to a particular station brand and that television station would just drop stuffing at particular times.

[00:08:00] And it would be different content. You know, one, one show, one might be a newscast about fishing, and then they might do a show about, uh, for families and there might be a comedy show. And then there might be a late night newscast, you know, so lots of different topics, but all kind of in this one horizontal line.

[00:08:13] And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could use this technology to, instead of listening horizontally to listen vertically by subject matter so that I could say, I am like really into alpaca breathing or whatever. And so find me. A collection of alpaca breathing content, and I don’t care what line it’s on.

[00:08:34] I don’t care what station it’s from. Just hop down those station lists until you can find enough material to package up a little newscast about alpaca breeding for me that I don’t think that technology has yet to come to fruition. I think we’ve sort of adapted podcasting to the traditional radio model, largely public radio model, which is fine.

[00:08:54] It’s compelling listening. Public radio produces some amazing stuff. Um, but I’m hoping that further down the line we’ll get into that kind of vertical listening, vertical style of listening, where we can say, you know, I have a very specific niche interest in, you know, like for instance, one of my interests is the JFK assassination.

[00:09:10] I have one of the largest collections of artifacts in the country around that. Yeah. 

[00:09:16] Tris Hussey: [00:09:16] We have to talk about that later, but 

[00:09:17] Tod Maffin: [00:09:17] okay. Fair enough. And, um, So I, you know, I, I, and I listened to podcast is a great one called black op radio. This guy has been doing it for literally 20 years out of his basement in new Westminster.

[00:09:27] He does this hour and a half show every single week about it. And, but I would love to be able to sort of listen to other stuff from, from various providers. So, you know, maybe we’ll get there. Maybe the technology will, will get us there. I don’t know. 

[00:09:37] Tris Hussey: [00:09:37] Yeah. I mean, the, the whole idea of verdict when you first said vertical listening or vertical watching, I thought, well, we have that.

[00:09:43] We have Netflix and we have other, we, we, you, you don’t have to. You don’t have to watch at a time. I mean, you, you and I are old enough to remember the times when, you know, we, the world would re rotate around when a show was on. Yeah. Right. Um, I think you, you probably remember. I remember the summer when the summer, when the big question was who shot Jr.

[00:10:11] Right in Dallas and it was the cliffhanger and their t-shirts and everyone, and the F and we, when we knew that knew that it was going to come on, I was too young to stay up that late. So I actually never got to see either the episode where Jr was shot or that what happened at when it came up. But I remember that was a thing.

[00:10:27] And like the last episode of MASH, uh, and all of those things that we, the world stopped. And now the world just listens when we feel like it. But then clubhouse came along and. I’m I’ve I’m still in. I’m like I’m ambivalent on clubhouse. I think it’s I love the idea. And it was like, you were talking about yesterday.

[00:10:49] How many co clubhouse clones are there? Did you say everyone has one?

[00:10:53] Tod Maffin: [00:10:53] Facebook’s working on one, Twitter is about to roll one out. Discord is rebranding. It’s sort of adaptive voice channels. LinkedIn has got one. Now every Spotify and Spotify bought an audio app to put themselves there.

[00:11:05] Tris Hussey: [00:11:05] Yeah. And I, the thing that, the thing that I don’t enjoy about clubhouse and I turned off almost on the notifications was unlike radio. It is a little too unstructured. And the, the it’s like for me, going into clubhouse and looking for something to listen to is like when you’re on a long drive in the middle of nowhere, and there is absolutely no good radio stations.

[00:11:32] And you finally just give up and listen to the sound of the sound of the road, grinding under your tires, because you just there’s nothing. Yeah. That’s what I feel. Clubhouse is 

[00:11:43] Tod Maffin: [00:11:43] podcast equivalent as well to that. And I don’t know if there’s a formal name, but I call them ramble casts, right? Where they are like three hour long podcasts that don’t actually have a point.

[00:11:52] You know, one of, one of my wife’s favorite podcasts is called crime writers on. Um, and it is, it’s about, uh, it’s these three or four, literally they, they write crime fiction crime, but they review these true crime, all the true crime podcasts. And when they’re actually reviewing it for the five or 10 minutes that they’re reviewing it, it’s really good.

[00:12:09] I’m really interested. But honest to God, they take it 20 minutes to even start the show. Like it’s, they’re talking about their cats and what they did that weekend and I couldn’t care less. And so I think clubhouse is kind of partially that, you know, because you could say it’s not structured. People are not.

[00:12:25] Professional hosts, not nor need they be, but you know, stick to a point. And then the other thing that sort of happened, unfortunately with clubhouse is that within a very short amount of time, um, sort of the self promoters of LinkedIn showed up. So all the realtors that want to promote stuff, or they’ve got a, uh, someone’s got an information product they’re selling a webinar and then training course.

[00:12:43] And so, you know, now, I mean, I haven’t opened clubhouse in two or three weeks, but the last time I looked at it, It was full of like how to 10 X, your Instagram following. And it’s like, the world doesn’t need it. 

[00:12:53] Tris Hussey: [00:12:53] We don’t need that. I, I, when you talked about some of these clubhouse clones, and I think about LinkedIn, I think especially about Spotify, because I, when I decided to relaunch this podcast, I, I didn’t, I’m going baby steps.

[00:13:08] So I’m, I’m hosting it on anchor.fm, which is free, but Spotify owns it. Yeah, and I would, I think it would be great to have a live podcast and everyone knows it’s live. And so like, there’s going to be like little to no post production, but you could it have that radio show feel and then be able to save it and listen to it later because one of the things I’ve.

[00:13:32] As annoyed me the most about podcast about clubhouse is when you know, there’s a really good session, but you just can’t make it for whatever reason or you hear about it too late, you pop in and you just don’t understand, like it’s, it’s like you’re being dropped into the middle of, uh, a radio play and you have no idea who the characters are or what’s going on.

[00:13:52] And it makes no sense al all

[00:13:53] Tod Maffin: [00:13:53] You know, this exists though, right? I mean, everyone sort of, there’s a lot of attention paid to clubhouse because it’s largely funded. And, and the first people who moved in were a tech investors. And so it got a lot of attention that way, but there’s been, there’s this website called blog talk radio that has been around.

[00:14:09] Oh yes. For a decade. 

[00:14:11] Tris Hussey: [00:14:11] Yeah. Yeah. I used to have a show on that. Remember Jim Turner and I used to have the professional bloggers podcasting thing on Bloodstock radio. Yeah, 

[00:14:19] Tod Maffin: [00:14:19] that’s literally clubhouse. It’s not as good. It’s just a little bit the technical, jeez, a little bit differently, right? It’s through the it’s through a web browser and then your guests can phone in.

[00:14:27] So not actually using their I-phones microphone for good, all that equal they’re phoning a phone line, but it was the same thing it was live. And then it would automatically package it up into an MP3 file and create a little podcast out of it. So, you know, the only thing that’s different about clubhouse is it’s cooler.

[00:14:40] You know, it’s an app now instead of a website. Um, and that’s about it. 

[00:14:46] Tris Hussey: [00:14:46] Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Um, but I, I see, I mean, I see great potential, not for clubhouse specifically, but just as. Um, maybe it, maybe it is like we share this affection for, I used to listen to public radio all the time when I was in grad school.

[00:15:06] And I was reminded yesterday, listening to your show. And you were, you put in, you had an ad cause you’ve got sponsors, which is wonderful. Yeah. And I don’t mind listening to the ads by the way, because what I was, I was reminded of the way you did the ad. When, um, the, the last year my dad was alive and I was in grad school, I would drive.

[00:15:25] Two hours from our, our summer place on the Lake. Um, from, from there up to we’re at the university of Maine where I was going to grad school and I would, I would go, I would like leave school about Friday afternoon and spend the weekend with my parents and then drive back on Sunday. And I would listen to the red Sox games on am radio.

[00:15:45] And those announcers were great and how they worked in ads because the, like the, the example I always give, and this is totally made up. It was like, you know, it’s a beautiful day at Fenway, you know, evening settling in, you know, it’s, it’s. Quiet. It’s the wind is blowing and it’s cool, but it’s not, but it’s a night like this, that you really need a Budweiser Budweiser, the King of beers.

[00:16:07] And this is into this app and I felt that your ads had that. It was nostalgic for me the way you’re acting. Yeah. That that’s cool. And I enjoy it. I, I don’t know. That’s and are you still there?

[00:16:25] Tod Maffin: [00:16:25] Sorry. I muted myself immediate. I’m an idiot. That was not your end. Um, I caused it, so I hit the mute button on my mic.

[00:16:31] And then I forgot to turn it back on again. I think that, that, uh, yeah, sorry. I, I was going on rambling incoherently while I was muted. Now I’ve completely forgot what else? 

[00:16:43] Tris Hussey: [00:16:43] Well, the, this, okay. This is funny because every podcast I’ve recorded, something has gone wrong and I’m doing this at the end of every show.

[00:16:52] After we say goodbye, a little like MCU homage. So, this is what went sideways in this episode, it’s going to be like, so Tom had some really great points, but we’ll never know because he was muted. 

[00:17:04] Tod Maffin: [00:17:04] Yes, exactly. Story of my life. 

[00:17:07] Tris Hussey: [00:17:07] Um, so, um, maybe, maybe if we change topics, you’ll remember the other one and we’ll do this, or the add podcast rule, switch back.

[00:17:16] Um, you said like you and I have a passion for shared passion for technology and, um, have bounced around between, you know, I was, uh, I, I, I say it was a tech journalist, but I wasn’t really a journalist in the truest sense. I wrote about stuff for money. Um, and then you went to, you know, journalism marketing back to journalism.

[00:17:38] Now you’re back to marketing. What is, what, what has that journey been like for you? What is fuel that journey? Was, it was, it does passion for the, for marketing or just purely, Hey, I need, I need to earn a living. What is, what has been the thing? I, 

[00:17:52] Tod Maffin: [00:17:52] yeah, I don’t know that I, that I had any kind of strategy. I mean, my, my career path, my life has largely just sort of bumbled along, following my interests and hoping for the best, um, and probably missed out on some opportunities.

[00:18:05] I started my career in radio, um, in the Kootneys for a, uh, radio network called KBS, where you had to answer the phone by saying it’s great to be in the Kootneys. And it usually wasn’t. Yeah. So I was like 19 or 20 or something like that. And I worked in Creston, which is a tiny little town. I worked Monday to Friday there, uh, as the news reporter and then Saturday and Sunday, Saturday and Saturday and Sunday morning, I would drive to trail, which was about a two hour drive over ice.

[00:18:33] And do the weekend newscasts, um, from starting at four 30 in the morning until about noon. Then I’d go to the travel lodge, have a one-hour nap, and then I’d jump in the KBS Coca-Cola Kooteny cruiser. I’m sorry, and go cover like the bonds know, like I’m sure it broke every labor law, it was seven days a week, 14 hours a day, but it was great training for, you know, live radio and so on.

[00:18:56] And then, but technology has always been fascinating to me. Um, marketing has been fascinating to me and sort of the intersection between the two. So I’ve mostly just sort of followed. Follow my interests. I mean, I was very fortunate at CBC. Um, I was giving a lot of speeches at the time around sort of technology and where this new thing called the web was going to take organizations.

[00:19:19] And one of the companies that had hired me to, to present to them, um, cause I had started this pirate radio station on my computer at three. I was, I think it was through when amp somehow, but it was like a streaming radio station, you know, long before. Anyone cared about copyright and stuff. And I had three of them streaming and one was like, and it was called Todd radio, one Tod radio, two toddler do three.

[00:19:40] And one was like all Canadian music. One was all Canadian comedy and I forgot what the third one was. And CBC radio found out about it and asked me to present to them about what all this technology was and what the future of radio might look like. And so I did, I gave them, you know, a little bit of a presentation and at the end there was this Q and a session.

[00:19:59] And one of the producers there said, if you could have. Any job at a CBC, what would you do? And normally I would just blow that off as a joke, but I thought, well, maybe they’re serious. And I said, you know, I would love to host a national live radio show where it’s really live right, not live to the East coast.

[00:20:18] And then time delayed across the country. I mean, live to every time zone and interactive so that people could control how the show played out through chat room, webcams, whatever. And, uh, two weeks later, a national producer called and said, I’ve been assigned to your pilot. And that was the sort of how I got into CBC.

[00:20:38] And so that, that show, which they actually called Tod radio brand for two or three seasons. And then my career went in backwards at the CPCU. I started as a national host and I was a national producer. Then I was a columnist. Then I was a freelancer. Then I was out, you know, most people you’d go kind of go, would love to have you start at the beginning.

[00:20:53] Then 20 years later, you’re hosting a national show. I kind of did it backwards. But it’s, you know, it’s and, and public radio, I think yeah. Is, is such an interesting model for podcasting because it has the, the same, you know, largely the same kind of storytelling mechanisms, um, to capture people’s attention.

[00:21:09] You’ve got some time to kind of play stuff out, you know, unlike private radio, where I started, where everything is talking to a 62nd clock in am radio, when did sign for traffic, was Sarah. You know, that kind of stuff is you’ve got time to breathe. And that’s also what I like about podcasts. 

[00:21:22] Tris Hussey: [00:21:22] Yeah. Yeah, it is.

[00:21:24] That’s that storytelling aspect. Um, at some point I’m going to have a guest where we, we talk about purely podcasting as the new storytelling. There’s I I’ve, um, I, I, you know, used to listen to like, wait, will be gone days occasionally. And, and my, and my, my brain is completely. Blanked out on the F on the amazing Garrison Keillor.

[00:21:49] Nope, no note Stuart McLean. That’s who I was thinking of, of his, his Canadian weight. Cause you know, I’m an immigrant in Canada. The vinyl cafe was, was wonderful. And his stories. I still remember the defrosting, the Turkey in the drier. 

[00:22:00] Tod Maffin: [00:22:00] Yeah. That’s the one everyone remembers that one. 

[00:22:01] Tris Hussey: [00:22:01] Um, I remember a bunch of his other, his other work and I love those and I think, yeah, it’s podcasting gives, gives us this chance to delve in and give a story.

[00:22:14] I mean, I had originally. As I described this in the pre-show notes, I shared with people as I’m trying to make this a one Milo walk long podcast, which is a roughly 20 minutes, because that’s how long it takes me to walk my lo from the house round the long way around to go pick up my daughter from school.

[00:22:31] And yeah, I have, yeah, I think the only time I’ve ever done one Milo walk length is when I’ve been alone because everyone is too interesting. I cannot. I do not do not want to go like, yeah. Well, you know, Todd, we’re at 28 minutes. Uh, yeah. So shut up. No, that’s not how this works. That’s not how this works.

[00:22:49] Yeah. And, um, so tell me about your, your podcast reminds me of when I did a long time ago, I had to the WordPress one minute podcast, right? It was a tip I could explain to do in one minute that you could do in one minute in WordPress, how did you decide on the time format for your new. 

[00:23:08] Tod Maffin: [00:23:08] I stole it. I ripped it off from someone else.

[00:23:11] That’s that’s the truth. There’s this great, great podcast out there called the tech meme ride home. And it is about a 15 minute newscast, basically summarizing everything that day in the world of tech. So it’s very broad, you know, it’s all sorts of tech from smart cars to internet of things, to wifi technology, to microchips.

[00:23:32] It’s, it’s everything. But I love the format. It was like punchy, short 32nd news clips. It was like everything that you needed to know about in the world of tech that day. And I thought, well, I’ve got to find the digital marketing, social media equivalent of this. And I searched and I searched and it was clear that some people had started and tried, they’d made like three or four episodes and then fallen off the wagon and hadn’t updated it in ages.

[00:23:52] And I thought, well, why don’t I try it for a couple of weeks and see if it gets an audience. And it did. And it’s been going, we’ve been doing it for a year and a half now, every single Workday, every single weekday. So I think we are at episode 359. 

[00:24:06] Tris Hussey: [00:24:06] Now I’ll have to share. Yeah. This sounds about right. 

[00:24:10] Tod Maffin: [00:24:10] It’s in thethree fifties.

[00:24:10] Yeah. It’s in the three fifties for sure. Um, And it’s, you know, it’s certainly evolved. Um, you know, now we have good theme music that again, Mark Levis composed, actually. It’s great music. It’s really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we have a music license so we can use other pieces of music. Um, someone on my, at my agency largely writes the big chunk of the script and does the sort of the first run of the edit.

[00:24:34] So, you know, it’s become a bit of a team effort now and, you know, to be honest, the goal, the long-term goal, because I still run, engage Q, which is a digital agency with five people in it. Lots of really great clients. Um, so a lot of my time is taken up with that, but my goal has been just like it was with the speaking circuit where about three or four years ago.

[00:24:51] I decided, you know, it’s time I’ve been doing speaking professional, speaking for money for 20 years now, you know, it was signed to wrap it up. I’m tired of traveling. Yeah. So about three or four years ago, I started to kind of scale back and do more on the, on the engaged queue agency side. So similarly with the podcast, that’s kind of the Seesaw I’m trying now is to, is to hopefully maybe in three or four years, Scale back the, uh, the agency, maybe sell it off somewhere, um, and just do this podcasting and, uh, and do Tik Tok.

[00:25:20] Tris, are you on tick-tock?

[00:25:22] Tris Hussey: [00:25:22]  No, I never even launched it. I don’t even have it installed. 

[00:25:27] Tod Maffin: [00:25:27] It took me 20 years to get 10,000 followers on Twitter. Yeah. Okay. And that’s what the benefit of giving keynote speeches to tens of thousands of people to being on national radio. It took me. It took me that long to get 10,000 followers.

[00:25:42] I’ve been on Tik TOK for a month and a half. I just crossed 20,000 followers. 

That’s 

[00:25:48] Tris Hussey: [00:25:48] that’s crazy. 

[00:25:49] Tod Maffin: [00:25:49] That is crazy. So, anyway, we’re doing so it, it, the, the podcast is about a eight to 10 minute long summary of everything in the world of digital marketing from social media to SEO, to online ads, to Facebook, everything that we can.

[00:26:02] Um, and then, so that gets put out on the feed. And then I go over to tech talk and I do a one minute version of the podcast. Cause that’s the max that you can do right now. So it’s a one minute newscast of the, it’s a one minute summary of the 10 minute summary. 

[00:26:17] Tris Hussey: [00:26:17] Do you like, do you like record it and then, you know, speed it up in garage band. So like you can hamster voice or 

[00:26:23] Tod Maffin: [00:26:23] scripted to be, it’s just basically one line per story, maybe two lines per story. And. Yeah. 

[00:26:29] Tris Hussey: [00:26:29] I don’t know. I don’t know if I could get into tech talk. I just, I have you downloaded 

[00:26:34] Tod Maffin: [00:26:34] the app and be very carefully tryst. Let’s be very careful because what you’re going to do, you’re going to go download the app.

[00:26:40] Okay. You’re going to get, is it going to ask you some interests that you have? You’re going to answer, honestly, you’re going to swipe, just give it 20 minutes to swipe through. If you don’t like the video, swipe up, get rid of it in 20 minutes. I promise it will have you nailed. It will have come down, but like Sheila’s stick, talk to feed is going to look completely different.

[00:26:58] It’s going to be singers. It’s going to be performance art. Yours is going to be, you know, WordPress, it’s going to be content writing. It’s going to be a copy. It’s it is so good. And here’s the thing is tick-tock used to be, especially back in this musically days, used to be teenagers doing dances and lip-syncing, and there, there is that there too as well.

[00:27:16] But my TechTalk feed because the algorithm has nailed me down so much. It’s figured out what I like. Mine is all educational. So I follow a couple of cooking feeds in there. I follow some digital marketers. Um, I follow this, this guy that is a demolition expert and he blows stuff up, but he talks about how he does it.

[00:27:34] And I used to be like every night I would watch an hour, an hour and a half of YouTube in bed. I’d read half an hour of Reddit. I don’t think I’ve opened my Reddit app in three weeks. Four weeks, maybe. I don’t think I’ve watched any more than two or three YouTube videos. I’m not proud of this by the way.

[00:27:50] I’m not 

[00:27:52] Tris Hussey: [00:27:52] in media consumption. Okay. Because see, my vision of tech talk is still, it was definitely stuck in the tweens doing dance, routines and philosophy as I can 

[00:28:03] Tod Maffin: [00:28:03] that’s there. But, but if you don’t like those, you just swipe away really quickly and it learns, it figures out how long you spend on each, on each video in the shorter amount of time you spend on it before you swipe it away, the less you like it.

[00:28:12] And I promise you, I promise you, dude, in 20 minutes, In 20 minutes, it will start feeding you stuff that you’re like, Oh, that was really interesting. Yeah. 

[00:28:19] Tris Hussey: [00:28:19] Okay. You’re you’re on, because I’m publishing this episode, this episode will be out week after next. So, and so that’s probably when I’ll be writing rewriting the show notes and things, and I’ll have this like, okay.

[00:28:33] So in the show, Todd challenged me to try tech talk and it’s either going to be man. He like, what is he on? That is no. This is stupid or okay. Yeah, I’m hooked. And now you’ll be seeing my ink stained fingers on technique. And I’ll show you how I fill up a fountain pen. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, you mock 

[00:28:54] Tod Maffin: [00:28:54] me now. I mock you now, 

[00:28:58] Tris Hussey: [00:28:58] but Hey, this was okay as well.

[00:29:01] Weird before we wrap up. Cause we’re, we’re, we’re into an extended Milo walk now, um, Sheila is working on some, uh, some schoolwork kinds of things. And she’s reading these papers from the early parts of the century. It’s weird saying that about digital natives. And they were talking about a study that was done in the UK.

[00:29:23] And one of the, it was a 2010 paper. And I think you can relate to this. And th the, the, the researchers are asking people if they read blogs and the person’s response was no, I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in what you’re reading about what people had for breakfast that morning, which if we turn back the clock to 2010, A lot of blogs were still yep, exactly.

[00:29:50] That this is what I had for breakfast. I took the dog for a walk and blah, and now here we are another decade later and I don’t, I don’t think we really blog really anymore. I don’t think people, I mean, there are blogs clear that people do, but I think we’ve, we’ve at least from the business side of, of the world we were 

[00:30:11] Tod Maffin: [00:30:11] writing.

[00:30:11] Yeah. I mean, part, part of it is Google’s fault because, you know, I mean, blog post became a mechanism for SEO placement. So Google killed the SEO value in them for the most part. But you know, also another big sort of thing was the RSS feed RSS feed to this day remains a brilliant technology that no one uses.

[00:30:28] Then nobody uses. Exactly. And so it used to be back in the day, all every single blog, every, every single, whether it was a blog where WordPress, you know, any of the early platforms, um, they all had an RSS feed. WordPress still does today, but now, you know, you go onto like a company site, like Facebook’s blog or Squarespace’s blog or something, and they have a blog format.

[00:30:48] Reverse chronological articles, but there’s no RSS D behind it. YouTube took its RSS feed away. You killed Google reader. Like why are you people doing this? Like it, I think, I think blogging and that format would S would have had it, uh, a little Renaissance moment, like cereal was for podcasting. If we’d have just honored the technology of the RSS feed and fewer and fewer content management platforms will spit out an RSS feed, you know, I give, I give hell to this.

[00:31:18] So for instance, you know, as, as part of our work, we cover the social platforms and updates on them. And so all of them, I pick on sprout social, because it’s the one that we use at the agency. So we know what the best they have a page on their website. They have a blog site on their website and on this blog site is their product updates, but there’s no RSS feed.

[00:31:35] And I said to them like, do you expect people to bookmark that page? And then just daily visit it? In the hopes that maybe you’ve updated, like what, like that’s the whole point of an RSS feed? 

[00:31:48] Tris Hussey: [00:31:48] I don’t know which in the connection between what we’re doing and the early mention of the birth of podcasting and the pod father.

[00:31:56] Um, our Curry. I remember seeing him at Nomex. Or something with Dave Weiner who was one of the fathers of RSS and how it all came together. Yeah. I can’t remember. I think it’s been over a year since I fired up an RSS reader and I do a lot more newsletters now, but that is your, your maybe RSS we’ll get a Renaissance.

[00:32:16] We’ll find a better way to, to pull it together. Cause I used to be when I was pro blogging, um, have like a thousand feeds. I follow. Yeah. And I would go through those, I don’t know, three, four, five times a day. Yeah. Reading all the new stuff. And it’s like, yeah, like to your point, do you actually expect people to come back to your website daily?

[00:32:36] Just on the off chance you might have maybe published something? Yeah, no, no, that doesn’t, that doesn’t work, 

[00:32:43] Tod Maffin: [00:32:43] please. Like, give me an emails. Like if you want first party data, fine. I’ll give you my email address. If you have to do it that way, but. Even that even that they’re not. And so as a result, we don’t cover them.

[00:32:52] We don’t cover their updates. Cause I can’t tell when they’ve 

[00:32:54] Tris Hussey: [00:32:54] updated anything right. Worth your time to go spend time. If like, if you’re not taking the time to help make it, bring the information to me and our information saturated world, I don’t have time to go seek it out. At least do that part for you.

[00:33:09] Yeah. Well, Todd, this has been, this has been fabulous because, um, I feel the one great thing about this restarting. The podcast is I’m getting to talk to all the people I’ve known for. A decade and reconnecting with them and kind of catching up with what folks are doing and listening to their, all their podcasts.

[00:33:29] Uh, and, uh, this, I think reinvigorating, maybe our shared love of technology has never gone away, I think, for any of us, but maybe getting to talk about it. It’s nice. 

[00:33:39] Tod Maffin: [00:33:39] Well, it’s always a pleasure talking to you and I I’m, I feel bad that it’s taken us, you know, whatever, it’s been eight or nine years to reconnect, but it’s always such a joy to see.

[00:33:48] The stuff that you’re involved in and the commitment that you have to your space, you know, it’s always been a space that you’ve really known well, and you’ve done, I think, such a great job in helping other people understand it and bring people into that circle. Um, it’s just such a pleasure reconnecting with you.

[00:34:03] Oh, 

[00:34:04] Tris Hussey: [00:34:04] well, thank you, Todd. Okay. Well, well now I’m blushing. Oh, thank you. Fiddle ed. So, uh, this has been an FA fabulous episode and maybe I will actually do a nice, like Todd. It’s been great chatting with you. Let’s keep in touch. Sure. 

[00:34:18] Tod Maffin: [00:34:18] Absolutely. 

[00:34:19] Tris Hussey: [00:34:19] Okay, good. Okay. That’s a good hour, Joe. I can end that. So, and, uh, we will oops.

[00:34:26] Bumped the mic. Okay. And so this has been another great, my ink stained fingers. So what went wrong in this week’s episode? Okay. Few things went sideways. First was Todd was a, and I were going to try Zencaster so we could see each other and record really cool. High quality audio. It didn’t look like it was recording because there was no wave form.

[00:34:48] It was hi mic. I think it was because his mic was too quiet because when we did the test, I still couldn’t hear anything. Well, so we switched to clean feed and then stop the video. Which led to the big problem, which was Todd had to cough. So he muted his mic as one is supposed to do. I muted my mic several times during the discussion, so I could have a sip of water, but then he made some amazing pithy mind altering a world changing point, which we’ll never know because he didn’t unmute his mic.

[00:35:25] Um, because we couldn’t see each other, I couldn’t be waving at him madly going, Todd, Todd, I can’t hear you. You, so there it is. I don’t know. Maybe the other thing was Todd didn’t have headphones and you can kind of hear a little echo of me in the background. Okay. It did a little better in the post processing, but there you go.

[00:35:45] It wouldn’t be an ink stained fingers without a blooper. Here’s the outro. You’re really like.