Tina Dietz (00:00):

What if you're using an internal podcasting platform and you have an employee who leaves, is your information secure? What if you're not a large business, but a small enterprise that wants to get information out to your field team? Can you use internal podcasting for that? And how? And what are the options for accessibility? Is it web-based only, or can you use a mobile device? Moreover, should you? These are the questions we get answered today on Podcast Inc.

Tina Dietz (00:40):

Welcome back to the Podcast Inc podcast. I'm your host, Tina Dietz, the CEO and founder of Twin Flames Studios, where we're amplifying the voices of leaders, companies, and entrepreneurs around the world with audiobooks, podcasting, and vocal leadership. I'm here in conjunction today with our collaborators for the Podcast Inc podcast as we lead up to the conference in fall of 2020. This podcast would not be possible without the concerted efforts and collaboration of the Pioneering Collective and Heartcast Media.

Tina Dietz (01:11):

Today, we welcome onto the show, Todd Cochrane, and Jeff Levine, who both join us from Blubrry, who are also great supporters of the Podcast Inc conference. Todd Cochrane is the CEO of Blubrry, a podcast media company that represents 75,000 audio and video podcasters. Blubrry provides advertising opportunities, media distribution, and hosting podcast media statistics, and other services, including their brand new services for private internal podcasting. Todd is also the founder of the Tech Podcast Network, The People's Choice Podcast Awards, and the author of Podcasting: The Do-It-Yourself Guide as well as the host of Geek News Central, which has been produced twice weekly for 16 years and counting.

Tina Dietz (01:57):

Jeff Levine is the marketing manager at Blubrry and he brings his many years of experience with large organizations and corporations such as State Farm, Breath Assure, and Rembrandt to the podcasting world to ensure the right solutions are available for companies worldwide. Today, we take a bit more of a technical dive into the world of private internal podcasting and some of the concerns around security as well as use cases for internal podcasting that we haven't discussed necessarily previously. So enjoy this interview with Todd Cochrane and Jeff Levine. Todd and Jeff, thank you for joining me here today.

Todd Cochrane (02:32):

Hey, we're excited to be on.

Tina Dietz (02:34):

Yeah, absolutely. Now I have to say, Blubrry has been around for quite some time. And Todd, I don't want to age you here by any means, but you have been around since podcasting... We weren't even sure, or as you said, you weren't even sure it was going to be a word. Why don't you give us a sense of the origin story of how Blubrry came about because you've got over 75,000 audio and video podcasters on your platform and you're one of the most established names in the business.

Todd Cochrane (03:07):

When I started my own show in 2004, it was really designed from the very get-go to be monetized. I was given marching orders from my wife that I had to figure out how to pay for this thing in the first couple of years. I was very fortunate when I started my show on October 2004, and really kind of being on the ground and getting up and running and building an audience. In November of 2004, I was approached by a lightly publishing, a relatively small book publishing company to publish the first book on podcasting, which came out in May of 05. From that, really what happened was is my show could continue to grow. In June of 2005, I was approached by GoDaddy to sponsor my podcast. I do a tech show called central. It's a new show. We still do it today.

Todd Cochrane (03:59):

From that sponsorship, really led to a conversation that was really the Genesis of RawVoice and Blubrry podcasting in that we... I was getting off the phone with a gal named Kris Redlener, who is my rep. And she says, by the way, do you know other podcasters who'd like to earn money from advertising on GoDaddy? And I'd already formed a small tech network at the time and back in January, and I said, "I do," but then I got to thinking about it after I got off the call and said, "I need some partners." And I did a call out on my own podcast and said, "I need a lawyer, biz dev, graphics guy, and a programmer," and really from my own audience was born the board of directors that largely make up the company today, and we launched a company over a phone call and from there it's been an interesting ride since about July of 05. Very early days, we were involved strictly in advertising and moved into providing a plugin, which everyone knows is PowerPress, which is used by most folks that are using a WordPress site out there with podcasting.

Todd Cochrane (05:05):

Then into the service business and our stats and our hosting, it's pretty well known in the space, so we've continued to expand the product offering and grow the team. Today we run about 19 employees plus or minus two or three, depending on how many interns we have on, and Jeff was on the call today. Joined our marketing team, or joined our team as the marketing manager in January.

Tina Dietz (05:30):

The history of all of this is kind of fascinating. Being this from kind of the beginning on the origins of podcasting, what then made you decide that you wanted to develop a platform for private internal podcasting?

Todd Cochrane (05:45):

Well, we continue to get inquiries about it and I'm tracking the number of tickets that are coming in from customers that are asking if we have that service and the volume got to a point where I said, "Hey, this a thing. There's a market for it." We looked out at the actual marketplace of existing companies that were doing things like this in this space and we said, "We don't want to appear to be tech heavy, but we have a tech heavy team," and I said, "We can do this better and more secure and make it a great product offering," so we approached this new product offering. It's going to be called Blubrry, a private, internal podcasting, as a way to provide really multiple layers of private podcasting for companies from really the smallest individual podcast or to a small company to midsize companies all the way up to enterprise.

Todd Cochrane (06:39):

From what we talked about, we formed a product here that is a... It's very exciting.

Tina Dietz (06:46):

Well, let's break this down a little further then because I'm very curious... I know that Blubrry is known for being very tech heavy on their team and always the challenge with podcasting along with any technical services that are offered to a nontechnical so to speak audience, there's always that translation issue. I'd love to get some more into how this platform can be used. We've talked a lot on this series about corporate. We've talked a lot about internal communications and that's certainly an area, but I know there's some other use cases. And Jeff, I was wondering if you might jump in here and talk about some of the different levels or ways that you're seeing this platform and it's flexibility for use.

Jeff (07:30):

Well, really the use cases are almost endless. If you think about all of the different topics that companies want to communicate internally to their employees about, it goes all the way from a new product announcements to updates on progress for a new product launch, to earnings reports and announcements. If you think of any executive update or any executive announcement that might be made within a corporation. If you think about any communication that HR may send out about new benefits, that is definitely a use case. And then if you think about all of the training opportunities are almost endless, so if you have ever worked for a big company, you've probably used an intranet website that was dedicated to all of the employees that worked for the company and contractors that worked for the company and the intranet is the source for all company information, so if I wanted to take training of some sort from the learning and development department, I would go into my intranet and look at the different offerings and on demand, pull down some sort of training video about the topic that I needed to be up-skilled on and those training videos on demand were not podcasts, technically, technologically at my company or at most big companies, but they could be.

Tina Dietz (09:33):

Yeah, definitely could be.

Jeff (09:34):

And if they were, they'd have better security.

Todd Cochrane (09:39):

One thing that we have really realized in the world we're living in now is people are working from home and they still need access to some of the stuff that's on the intranet maybe that is not available for a small business. Maybe they don't have a VPN system. Maybe people are just working off their laptops. So I think what we've really found here and what some of our recent calls have been is companies saying, "Hey, I need to be able to train. I need to put out updates. I need to put out sales training to my people in the field or contractors or brokers or any... In some cases, even teachers. So this gives them the ability to access the same exact content that may or may not be available on the intranet on a company, on a mobile device, via a app that they can still securely log into and access, or in some cases be able to authenticate and be able to listen in to watch the content on the web in the same way as if they were at the office and still remain secure.

Todd Cochrane (10:48):

I do want to go back to one point you made earlier is that one thing we've been doing at Blubrry is doing a... Jeff has been a big part of this. Is we want to make sure that as someone is coming in to use our products or services, whether it be the business owner and user, and then for the listener that it's easy to use for everyone, so we spent a lot of time on UIX work to make sure that this doesn't really cause someone's brain to explode when they come in. It's simple to set up. We've worked really, really a lot on that throughout our entire platform. We're seeing it pay off dividends and people coming in saying, "Yes, this is... Because the barrier to entry to podcasting is so low now, we want to make sure that it's accessible and usable to all users.

Tina Dietz (11:35):

Well, and that goes back to some of the fundamental reputation that Blubrry has. I mean, the PowerPress plugin, which I've been a user of in the past is very intuitive and that UIX, or user interface that you're known for making things simpler, so I'm not surprised, but also happy to hear that this is now, of course, in this as well. Going back to a couple of the points that Jeff had made about and you had made about utility. This is a platform that's available for access through mobile devices, but still having security, but also web based at the same time, so obviously everything here is lighter, so to speak, then a lot of intranet systems, which I think is, is important to know, particularly as we have more and more data that we're putting out, more and more content that we're putting out and things can get really heavy and sluggish on the back end, if we're not careful. Using podcasting and the way that podcasting works technically, I think, has some real benefits over some traditional methods of uploading video or uploading audio files directly, and then having to download them back again, or even stream them with the amount of caching that that particular takes. Am I right on that? Or am I just making that up?

Todd Cochrane (12:53):

No, I think you're right, and if you think about it too, from a company standpoint, the needs of a bank or a medical facility as compared to a business owner that is just trying to communicate with 50 employees, the needs are often very different. And what we've tried to do with this is make the use case for the customer to be able to give them, obviously, the security that they need for that content to be able to be consumed in as many places as possible to maintain the security that they require. Whereas some instances, the security may be much higher and there's actually limitations. Maybe they can't have the content available via the web. Maybe it's only available via the web app.

Todd Cochrane (13:48):

But the beauty about it is we've made this so simple that it can be either managed through a list that the customer provides and with the permission set, or it's authenticated through SSO, in which they're basically going to log into our system as if they were logging into their network at work to authenticate them to get access to the content. So we've tried to make it the barrier to entry, again... I shouldn't say barrier. The availability of the content as many places as possible dependent upon the security level requirements of the company, and I think we've got a really, really good insight on that.

Todd Cochrane (14:33):

Very strictly saying, "This is what we will deliver." There is no implied security. We basically say, "This is what we're going to do and what we can't do." So we're very, very clear on that in our product offering.

Tina Dietz (14:47):

That's really interesting. And I do want to dig in deeper to the security issues. Before we get to that, though, I've been having some thoughts as we've been going on in this series about internal podcasting and some of the use cases for it. One of the things we really haven't explored is the utility for this type of private internal podcasting platforms for companies that are maybe not medium to large size, not enterprise, though we certainly could see all of endless applications there, but smaller entrepreneurial networks. Being in that category myself, I couldn't help, but think about how some of these could be used in a way to get content out to say, an audience internal to a community, but not necessarily internal to a company. Do you see utility for that?

Todd Cochrane (15:40):

Yeah, and I think this is... We've made the base system of this offering so that if someone has a... Let's say they built up a mailing list of customers that you want to share a special message or a deal or whatever it may be, information on a product or something new that you're doing, but you don't really want that to go outside. Maybe it's a part of a consulting package that you're doing. That's perfectly suited for this. We'll be able to take really as simple as an email list and be able to set up the authentication so that only those folks that you want to have access to a specific show... You can have multiple shows and then subdivide them by, "Right. I want them to listen to the consulting package," or "I want them to listen to the advanced series." You can really subdivide that list as well, so that's fully part of this functional offering.

Tina Dietz (16:41):

Yeah. Because it's audio and video, this feasibly could be used as a course platform. For example, just like an intranet, so someone who's a consultant or a coach or something of that nature, or they have a team out in the field they're training, they're a real estate agent and they have a whole series that they want to get out to the rest of the people on their team, this could feasibly be on people's mobile phones or on their mobile devices and accessible from anywhere because they don't have quite as much security as say an enterprise level intranet secure information. Let's go back to the security levels and kind of what's appropriate for what use case scenario.

Todd Cochrane (17:22):

Yeah, and we can dig into that, but I think the thing we also have to think about those people that are there providing these online training courses, I often hear people say someone has stole my content and they repurposed it and they're using it somewhere else. We basically have got this set up so that if a person has created a training platform and they do not want this content to get out, we can even set it up so that it's never stored on the device. It's accessible via device, but it's not even stored.

Tina Dietz (17:56):

That's interesting.

Todd Cochrane (17:58):

Yeah. It's basically an on demand type of thing through an authentication, but then we've got... You go one level, I guess, lower in security, and we can encrypt that content on the device so that it's actually encrypted at rest. That's a big deal in internal podcasting all the way back up again to where they just have to authenticate through a web browser and get access to the content through a web browser, so if you're not so worried about those security levels, maybe Jeff can talk a little bit more about maybe some of those use cases.

Jeff (18:37):

Yes. I'd like to, and my mind really begins to spin when I think about all of the use cases, and we can use a lot of examples of live events that are happening today, everywhere. It might not be attended by everyone who needs the information, and yet, the information may not be intended for everyone. Let me give you an example.

Jeff (19:10):

All public companies usually have quarterly and annual earnings calls, earnings announcements, and they have prepared remarks, and then they do some Q and As, so the analysts have called in and are listening live to the earnings announcement, and at the end, the analysts can pose questions to some of the executives on the panel. That was a live event and can be recorded and of course, a lot of those public companies do record those earnings calls and make them available publicly. Well, what happens if you're a private company? You still have announcements. You still have earnings announcements, quarterly annually. However, they're not available to anyone who wants to hear them. They're intended for a limited audience that is employees, shareholders, et cetera, but not anyone from the community at large, so that live event is available to all the appropriate people after the live event because they weren't able to call in for the live event. That same use case that I just described, not necessarily for an earnings call or an earnings announcement, but for information that's periodically shared via a live event, but it might not be intended for the public rather for a limited audience, that's an internal podcast. That's an opportunity for an internal podcast.

Tina Dietz (20:56):

It really does seem endless the number of use cases we can come up with for this scenario. Now let's take a look at the security levels, and which security levels really ought to match up with which use case scenarios because I know there's multiple options here.

Todd Cochrane (21:12):

Sure. Let's say that you've created an HR document for onboarding. Maybe a HR video or audio program for onboarding with basically a welcome to the company. That's not something that's going to require a significant amount of security. It's not like that information gets out that a company's going to have a financial impact.

Todd Cochrane (21:35):

In that case, we would recommend the web browser access would be enabled. They would be able to subscribe and have that available via any podcast app. All they would have to do as authentication the feed on a per user basis. Then there's another level. There's a private feed with a private... So there's private feed. Give them a link per user or private feed with user authentication, and those are two very different things. In other words, with a private link that links really... If they share that somewhere, that will definitely be a lower security because someone would be able to access that. But if they had a private feed with user authentication, that's really where we get to the point where that person authenticates. "Yes, I am who I say I am and I have authority to get access to the feed and get access to that content." Then really you step in another level.

Todd Cochrane (22:35):

And then you go to not only the feed, but let's look at user access to media authenticated. We actually take it a step further where we say this media is actually authorized for this particular user class. And it can be authenticated then, even to the point where media, as I said, is not saveable. It can't be saved on a device. Really there's this whole different layer. Then there is a little bit dependent upon the type of device you use, so we have to look at the device that is being... If you're on an Android or a Apple, the security's handled a little bit differently between device. We're going to have both an iOS and an Apple podcast app available. It's going to be pretty cool where they'll be able to authenticate, login, they'll have some branding to show their company or their business...

Todd Cochrane (23:31):

Then the contents kind of display just like a standard podcatcher would. In other instances, you don't need our private app or not actually, it's going to be a public app that you can privately log into, but you'll... Some of these security levels, you'll just be able to use Apple Podcast or Overcast or whatever you may be using, but again, it depends on those layers and it gets kind of complicated because we've even got a matrix of different levels and what is... But you can turn on and turn off. Oftentimes we're definitely going to want to talk to each client and say, "Okay, what's your use case? What are... It's a bank maybe, or a hospital. Maybe it's going to be in the high end. If it's just a business owner trying to share HR material, something that's not going to be financially impactful, you're not going to need all that extra security.

Tina Dietz (24:23):

Right. And that of course is why it's so important to have that communication and where can folks find out more about the different levels of security and check out what's some of this interface kind of looks like because those of us who are visual learners, of course, the first thing we want to do is if go, "Can I see it?"

Todd Cochrane (24:41):

Right.

Tina Dietz (24:42):

Right, so where can we do that?

Todd Cochrane (24:45):

Private Internal Podcasting will be linked off Blubrry.com and it will be there. We'll have a product page set up for it along with screenshots of some of the interfaces. We'll actually have a demo account so that if someone wants to actually see how this works on the app, all they have to do is really reach out and contact us and say, "Hey, I'd like to get the access to the demo account." You'll actually be able to go in and we've created some content there. It's a little fun, but it'll look just like something that would be mocked up or something that a company would potentially have, so they get a look and feel to, "Wow, this is how this is really going to work." When instead of the... We call the new company that we've created, this fictitious company, Low Hanging Fruit enterprises, and you'll be on the Low Hanging Fruit enterprises private podcast page. And I think you'll be able to see the different levels and I will be able to demonstrate that.

Tina Dietz (25:46):

Well, that's really great, and we'll make sure that all of those links, that information is on the PodcastInc.co website in the show notes for this particular episode. So if you want to go ahead and see the live demo and check out all this information that Blubrry is offering, make sure you go to PodcastInc.co and get those links for you. That way you don't have to stop listening right now and take that information down. We've got that handled for you. Is there anything else that the two of you would love for our listeners to know about internal private, internal podcasting, or about this new offering, that Blubrry has?

Todd Cochrane (26:25):

Yeah. We're excited that we're going to be the first company that is offering this really kind of turnkey in that you can come in and buy the basic or the simple package right on the website. You may want to call us and talk to us, but if you know what you want, we've got that available where you just literally click and buy and get set up. Our enterprise offering obviously will... Which oftentimes will happen with someone will have questions or have a deeper need for different... A deeper consult or different levels of service will want to talk to them one on one, and I have a dedicated couple of salespeople that will be handling just this product whatsoever, and they're very familiar through and throughout of the product service, so I guess if you have any questions, you can always contact us but again, we're trying to make this as simple as possible for someone looking for a solution. Pricing will be right on the website. You can click and buy and set up the number of users you're going to have and all those things that factor in.

Tina Dietz (27:31):

Well, that's really exciting news and we are very excited to have you join us at the podcast in conference this fall whether it ends up being live or virtual and hearing more about how this platform is evolving and helping so many businesses get their information out in a more effective way to their people. Thank you both for joining me today.

Todd Cochrane (27:51):

Yeah. Thank you so much and I guess, if they have any questions, they can contact me, Todd, at Blubrry.com. Jeff, did you have anything else before we go?

Jeff (27:59):

I don't think so, but thank you, Tina, for having us on today and letting us share the news about our new product.

Tina Dietz (28:04):

Oh, absolutely. And we're so thrilled that you guys are sponsoring the Podcast Inc conference as well. It's been a delightful partnership and collaboration and yes, everyone, if you do want to reach out to Todd and with questions directly and you want to bypass our show notes, do reach out to Todd at Blubrry and Blubrry is spelled B-L-U-B-R-R-Y.com. That's B-L-U-B-R-R-Y.com so you have that information in your back pocket and you can reach out right away. Thank you listeners for joining us on this episode of the Podcast Inc. podcast as we lead up to the conference in this fall of 2020 in Washington DC, or online. We are on pins and needles as we try to make that decision in this changing climate that we're in right now. Join us next time as we continue to explore the world of private internal podcasting, it's applications across the board for businesses, and how you can make use of this evolving world of podcasting to reach more people, create more engagement and grow your business. We'll see you next time.