Capitol Communicator Thought Leadership Series: Paul Vogelzang discusses social media with Mary Fletcher Jones in a Capitol Communicator TV video and podcast sponsored by RHED Pixel (www.rhedpixel.com). The Capitol Communicator TV Thought Leadership Series podcast is up in iTunes now. The transcript of that interview follows:
Paul Vogelzang: Welcome to Capitol Communicator TV. I’m Paul Vogelzang, your host, and today we have Mary Fletcher Jones, the founder and owner of Fletcher Prince PR. Mary, it’s great to talk to you. Mary and I know each other a little bit, so this is really one of those exciting conversations. I’ve just been such a fan for so long, so I get to enjoy you now in this setting, where I get to ask some of the questions. So you’ve been doing this social media thing for a while.
Mary Fletcher Jones: For a little bit. I would say since about 2005 I started getting my feet wet.
Paul Vogelzang: Yeah, and doing so in some pretty aggressive ways. I mean, not just blogging. If you think about kind of the social media spectrum, you’re doing the podcasting, you’re doing the video, you’re doing lots of stuff. How is all that going for you, just personally, on a personal level?
Mary Fletcher Jones: I think my biggest frustration is there’s only 24 hours in the day. When I go to sleep, I’m like, “I can’t wait to wake up,” because I want to work on my next project. I keep getting all these great ideas. But I’m limited by the number of hours in the day, and also my experience level. So I’m always trying to learn more, and fortunately with every project, I do learn a little bit more.
Paul Vogelzang: Right. And I think one of the things that I’ve learned about you is you’re one of those mom bloggers. I mean, you’re out there with the-- everybody it talking about the mommy bloggers. And so what’s your experience with that? Because there’s just such a wide range of them out there.
Mary Fletcher Jones: Well, I think that social media is giving moms a voice, has been so empowering for women like me. I’m 44, and we have so much that we have wanted to say. And especially raising children, and you have things that you want to share. And actually, the experience of motherhood can be kind of isolating, especially if you’re a full-time mother, as I was in the beginning. So I think that blogging has really helped us expand our world and connect with other people in a way that we couldn’t do before.
Paul Vogelzang: Giving you a great way of connecting on a personal level, but professionally too it’s opened up some doors for you.
Mary Fletcher Jones: And that’s really the beauty of it for me. I started out in social media, as it were, because I had a personal call as a mother to share what I knew. I had a son with autism and I was a single mom, and I had been through the whole gamut. When you have a child with autism, there’s no set treatment, and so you go through everything. You go through quacks, you go through traditional things; you’re always looking for some glimmer of hope. And I thought, “Why should other mothers have to reinvent the wheel? I’ve been through this, I’ve learned so much, I’d like to share this,” and I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to get that word out. So I started out with an audio podcast-- that was about 2005-- and I found that I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it professionally.
Paul Vogelzang: And I’m sure you found-- because I know this about you-- that you found an audience too. It’s a complicated subject, autism.
Mary Fletcher Jones: It is, and I was surprised to learn-- there were autism podcasts out there, but so many of them, for me personally, how I viewed them, were focused either on a cure or they were focused on almost the negative side of autism, and that really wasn’t the story that I wanted to tell. I wanted to tell a story about the positive side of being a parent with autism, and the podcast was called Living Well with Autism. So those really everyday things that you can do as a parent, not giving it to a therapist or a teacher to do, but what you can do, empowering you to live better with autism.
Paul Vogelzang: The other thing that’s so great is you’re a big part of the podcasting community here in D.C. Talk a little bit about that and what that’s meant to you, and maybe even name the name of the organization. Tell us a little bit about it.
Mary Fletcher Jones: Well, yeah, that was so instrumental for me. The DC Podcasters Alliance is a meet-up group here in D.C. They are a free organization. They meet about every six weeks. And you will never meet-- I mean, I’ve been involved a lot of groups, especially in D.C. What a supportive group. And such a gamut, from just very beginners who’ve never even listened to a podcast and were just curious, to people who are professionals, who have worked in radio for 30 years, who’ve worked in video and broadcast for decades. And all these people coming together to share their dreams, to put their stories out there, and share technical information-- get up there and talk about what their podcast is doing, ask for advice, and just socialize. It’s been a great group. So if anybody’s interested in podcasting or video production, definitely go to meetup.com and search for DC Podcasters Alliance. That’s a fabulous group to get involved with.
Paul Vogelzang: Yeah. So Mary, you have been doing this since really the inception of some of the technology five or six years ago. You’ve made the transition from the written word into the spoken word and are now doing videos. What led you to kind of make that transition, and are there certain instances that are just better done on audio, or better on video? What goes into your deciding what is the best medium for the content?
Mary Fletcher Jones: Well, there’s research to back it up, of course, but just personally speaking, it was actually a happy accident. I was recording my podcast, Living Well with Autism, as enhanced audio. So there were pictures, but it was basically all audio. And just for fun, really for kicks, I recorded a very poor video of me doing something silly that I do just to relieve stress. I had created this tiki room in my house. It was fun; it was on the side porch. And I put it on my autism podcast, and I was just basically trying to make a point that, “You need to do what helps you relax as a parent with autism, here’s a stress-buster that I’ve done.” Just silly, right? I got more hits on that than I got on anything else, like ten times the amount. And I thought, “It’s not the content here, it’s the video. People want video.” So I immediately translated all my work to video, and that was the lightbulb for me. Now, whether a person should go from written to audio or video, I think that that is really a comfort level question. I think everyone should have a blog, because blogs are so searchable. So just put that on the table, that you’re going to start there, and you can always feed your audio or video to the blog. And if you’re very intimated by the idea of going on camera, or you just feel that’s too big, then stay with audio, but add the pictures or add something that makes it lively. You can always translate it into a video. But don’t be afraid of video.
Paul Vogelzang: It’s a little more work.
Mary Fletcher Jones: Yes.
Paul Vogelzang: But it’s absolutely worth it.
Mary Fletcher Jones: Well, I think that’s what people need to realize is that it is a lot of work. So think about going forward, what is the goal that you want to achieve? And that search engine optimization is a very important part of it. So with video, you do have show notes that are searchable. You have a lot that is searchable. With audio, you can create those show notes, and blogs are infinitely searchable, so search engines love those. But invest your time wisely. For example, I see a lot of people spending a lot of time on Twitter. Twitter’s really not that search engine friendly. It can help your brand a little bit, but if you’re tweeting more than once or twice a day, take some of that time and put it into video and blogging, because that’s really where you’re going to get your audience learning more about you or your company or organization.
Paul Vogelzang: What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned, that you’ve been able to kind of translate into a more business setting now? Because this is an area of your business, really.
Mary Fletcher Jones: I think the most important lesson that I have learned, Paul, is that you have to just get out there and do it. You have to be fearless. The social media community, the online community, is very forgiving. I mean, we’re all striving for quality production value, but it’s better to have heart, and it’s better to have good content. And if you have those two elements, then you will have an audience. In fact, my little podcast, which had very low production value, got a global audience very quickly. I was very surprised by that. And anyone professionally, any client can take that power and use that for themselves. You just have to have the nerve to go ahead and do it.
Paul Vogelzang: So we’ve really benefited from showing a little bit about Mary Fletcher Jones. Mary, thanks so much for being part of Capitol Communicator TV. Thanks for joining us.