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You're listening to the Jack and Chill Podcast.
All right. So, Sochal, tell me about your travel page, your social media travel page.
Jack, the struggle is so real with trying to grow social media.
And, you know, you and I have experienced this before because we're trying to grow A to Z English podcast and the competition is really cutthroat, especially for like niches like language learning podcasts or travel pages or whatever, because there's a lot of quality content and bizarre content and like
attention grabbing content that's competing with your content.
and everyone's attention span has become so short because i'm guilty of this too like i'll see a reel or like a video or a post on my instagram and i'll like it but i won't finish watching it i'll just like give it a like or save it for later which i never go back to and then just keep like i won't
sit there and watch a five second video first three seconds and that's how they measure it to promote your video is how many people how many three -second views did you get at least in instagram and facebook that's how they promote your content is based on the amount of three -second views that you're
getting because if you're able to capture someone's attention for three seconds that means that your real is classified as interesting enough to keep showing it to more people that's the metric now is three seconds of our time seconds goodness that's good grief um i know exactly what you're talking
about it's like um it almost takes like you almost have to be delusional like crazy to to even think that that you can be successful in this space do you know what i mean it's it it takes yeah it takes like a level of like self -delusion where you just kind of trick yourself into thinking you're going
to be successful um because it's so saturated with like like you said quality content and bad quality content you know like it's it's a mix of everything and when you jump in there you're just like um you're one tiny little star in the galaxy like there's no there's you know and then you just from there
you have to just start building some sort of uh fan base you know and the only way to do that is by participating in social media because if you go into these groups and you just spam them you'll be that's worse than not promoting your podcast at all you know right you'll be like banned yeah i'll get
banned right from the group right away and everyone will look at me like oh that person is just uh they're just a spammer you know um so what you have to do is you have to get involved in these groups and you have to become like a member and that it takes a lot of time right to like answer reply to
emails reply to social media posts and facebook posts and stuff like that and then after you do that for like a month if somebody asks you like hey by the way do you know a good podcast to learn english and then you can say oh yeah i know a good podcast it's called the a to z english podcast and you
could finally drop it but you have to do it in that very subtle kind of way but all that work and all those hours of like time i spent you know chatting with with people in the groups just to become a member and accept it into the group so that i could you know and it's it's really like that's the stuff
that's the hard part making the podcast is easy you know just get together record an episode it's fun editing is great adding the music and that sort of stuff.
It seems like that would be the hard part, but that is the absolute easiest part of the process.
The hardest part is building a community.
So I like, well, how did you build your community in, in your, for your Facebook travel, travel blog?
I just see, like, I haven't really done any of the stuff you've done, like go in local chats or anything like that, or post about it i think honestly i think one of the things where we fall short both in the a to z english podcast you do a lot of work um yourself like marketing the page but i just think
we're not shameless enough jack like we don't have that totally shameless promotional attitude that a lot of people a lot of social media influencers have like we're kind of we're not shy about our work per se but we definitely have like a certain level of decorum that just does not exist in this new
level competitive marketing age like people do just spam the chat and hope that someone clicks on their content and hopes that someone notices their content and they have no decorum about it no shame no humility they're just like yeah they don't care how they come off at all they just want the clicks
want the views and they kind of follow that old saying like um what is it no there's no such thing as bad publicity right a lot of people really live by those words um and and I struggle yeah and so for me I have been sharing my you know my Facebook page I did share it on one chat I'm part of a group
called so I guess I lied I do do it a little bit I'm part of a group called viajeros in Oaxaca which is like a travel group for Oaxaca and I was part of this community for a long time and one day the administrator gave people a chance to share their social media so that was one way that I got a few
views on my Instagram and my Facebook and another way is through my networking opportunities like I worked in the tourism industry so of course when we exchange social media information I've gotten some followers through there.
And then I do share like with my Facebook friends.
I've started to because I used to not it's like I used to feel embarrassed about sharing my content to my Facebook friends.
But now it's like, that's a big chunk of people that could watch and share and support your content, you know.
And I do notice that the people who are the most shameless or have the least shame do the most to have the most success right yeah i have the most success there's another guy on the viajero some oaxaca group and he just he used to spam basically spam the chat and he would like literally hold information hostage
like people would ask a general question and if he knew the answer he said i'll tell you the answer if you can prove that you're following my facebook page you send me your email yeah yeah yeah like send me a screen capture the fact that you're following my Facebook page and I think he gained like 10
,000 followers this year alone um yeah but he was completely shameless about it but he really didn't I would never do something like that I'd never be like I'm not giving you information unless you send me a screenshot of you following my Facebook page like it just seems like so like for us we would say
like in poor taste you know yeah no you and I would never do that we would never hold anyone any information hostage if someone if one of our listeners came to us you know because we're just like uh i mean i don't think we do we don't do this for the fame or or the the fortune or whatever i think we
just do it because we enjoy the process and you know that's that's not i but i would love to to see the the podcast grow to the level of like those other major english language learning podcasts like i I want to, I want to achieve that.
I just want to do it in like an honest way where, and I, and I'm not saying that those, those podcasts weren't, you know, honest.
Um, I guess what I'm saying is like, they, I think they were there early.
They were early adapters.
Um, they kind of figured it out early.
They saw something where we're late adapters, you know, we were jumping in into the lake when it's already full of, uh, people, you know, it's just like, there's not, there's nothing special, you know, we're trying to differentiate ourselves because I like to think of the A to Z is like the, we're kind
of the, uh, redheaded stepchild of the language learning space.
Cause we do things a little bit different, you know, it's like, it's not as clean and refined and, and like, um, we're not organized.
I think we have a lot of heart though like our community is sincere we actually care a lot about our listeners we know our listeners like on our personal level those that are in the whatsapp groups or the we chat groups and jack you put a lot of effort into interacting with people i was having so many
issues with whatsapp so i haven't been able to be as active as i used to be and want to be on chat um but i'm very close with a lot of our listeners in in the whatsapp group for sure and they they take some of our classes our world english uh online uh google meets classes that we teach so um you know
our i'm i know a lot of the listeners um that listen to our podcast some of them have been on our show you know they've they've come on as guests um but uh but when you're talking about like podcasting we have to scale it up to you want thousands and thousands of of listeners a day you know thousands
of thousands of people listening um each day and you know we're we're in the hundreds of people which is still i mean that's a lot of people imagine a room full of 150 200 people and they're all there for you you know like that would be amazing you know um yeah it's kind of like we're professors i mean you're
a professor at a university right it's kind of like that like being a professor at university and your class is successful and you have like 150 people your class is easy a known as an easy a well I would never I don't think I could ever get a class full of 150 people at my own university but um yeah
I mean just standing you know if I were in a room with with 300 people and they were all there to listen to me to you and me uh talk um i would be like you know honored it would be it'd be intimidating you know so it's not it's not like we're you know it's not like we're not a failing podcast we're
just i think we're stuck in like a kind of middle zone where i feel like we're ready to break through we just need some kind of push or some kind of um it's it's always i guess what you always have to do is kind of keep tweaking and you keep adjusting until you find that right frequency and then you
and and you can resonate with with an audience in and break through the noise i guess is what you know we are a little unorganized because we've kind of been seeing what sticks like it's a process when you start up a podcast or a social media page you publish a lot of different types of content and then
you see what performs the best and you kind of try to repeat that formula in a structured way to ensure your success you know um yeah and well i'm good friends with uh with robin shaw of shaw english online and he you know the advice he always gives me is testing he's always testing testing new you
know sticking with the stuff that works and then testing something new.
And because you never know when you might just hit something that's absolutely just resonates with people on such a intense level.
And that's what I think we're always doing is, you know, a couple episodes a week are kind of in our wheelhouse, they're comfortable.
And then a couple episodes are kind of outside the box.
And so, yeah, even after, we've been doing this podcast for you and i've been doing it for about a year kevin and i did it for about six months so together the podcast has been around for a year and a half that's relatively young for a podcast i mean it doesn't i i think i don't think we're i think
the success that we've had with this podcast is is above average for a podcast our age that's my my my thinking i could be wrong yeah um you know obviously like famous people you know people that are celebrities they start a podcast it's it starts off you're already on a different level you know but that that's
because they're they're leveraging their fame that they had and bringing it into the podcast space when you're two unknown people like us and we're just starting from the ground up and building something what we've accomplished is actually quite uh admirable i think like it's really something special
and to be able to you know keep growing that in a space that's already saturated with a lot of a lot of people trying to do the exact same thing that we're trying to do um that's why i try that's why i'm trying to like i always say this expression i zig when everyone else zags you know like that's the that's
kind of the theory behind this podcast is like if everybody's going to be doing this kind of one -way style why don't we do it a different way you know so that's why we kind of more free free -form conversations that weren't highly edited and we kind of speak at a normal speed and we we challenge our
listeners to you know hold on for the roller coaster ride that is our conversation and yeah because if they can sorry I didn't mean to cut you off Jack go ahead if they can do so you know that they're really applying their skills on a new level that when they come to the U .S.
or when they use their English language skills or when they use their speaking skills or their listening skills you know that they're going to be able to hold their own in a real life setting yes I think that's really important I don't do I don't really do teacher talk even in my classroom I just don't
believe in it I think my students are better served listening to me speak at the rate that normal rate that I that I normally speak at and and be prepared for what they're actually going to encounter in the United States or Canada or England than opposed to some kind of like you know sheltered baby talk that I
use in the classroom so that everybody can understand me.
But when you get into the real world, no one's going to do that, you know, baby talk thing for you, that sheltered, you know, talk.
They're going to speak at a normal speed and you're going to have to be prepared for that.
So I don't know. That's always been my theory, my philosophy.
We try to slow things down a little bit.
the problem with you and me is that we're fast talkers, you know?
And so, you know, it's probably some people might tune into our podcast and go, wow, they talk so fast.
I can't even, you know, this is way beyond my level.
So, you know, that's something that we, you and I could probably work on is like trying to slow down a little bit.
But like I said, I don't really believe in that I kind of believe in you know learning the way it really is the reality is is always going to be more more beneficial than some sort of uh sheltered you know English that we can give to them and and make them feel good in the moment but then when they when they're faced with real speaking situations, real authentic
language learning, like English speaking experiences, they're going to have, they're going to struggle.
So that's just my, my, my feeling.
