#111 - How To Recruit Graduate Students Using Storytelling
Featuring Kogod School of Business, University of Michigan Flint, and Gatton College of Business & Economics
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SHOW NOTES
Grad school enrollment is hard right now. International pipelines are drying up, domestic demand is soft in a lot of markets, and prospective students have more options — and more skepticism — than ever. So how do you cut through?
This compilation episode features three marketers from three very different graduate programs who are each doing something smart with storytelling and content creation to ultimately impact enrollment. Katya Popova at American University's Kogod School of Business went all-in on a bold AI identity and turned it into a PR machine. Chris Lewis at University of Michigan Flint built a podcast from scratch — solo — and is using it to meet prospective grad students exactly where they are. And Laura Beth O'Brien at Gatton College of Business and Economics at University of Kentucky figured out that "this degree opens doors" isn't enough — you have to show people how it actually fits into their real, busy, complicated lives.
In this episode:
Why Kogod claiming to be "the first AI-first business school" wasn't just a positioning move — it became their entire enrollment engine
How AI search engines have become their own audience segment, and why earned media is the way to feed them
The podcast strategy that's building a grad enrollment pipeline at UM Flint — and why even a small audience is worth the effort
Why Gatton stopped leading with aspirational alumni outcomes and started leading with "this will actually fit in your life"
How to track storytelling content through the enrollment funnel (including a QR code attribution trick)
The content ecosystem argument: why no single piece of content closes the deal — and what "the whirlpool" actually looks like
Key Takeaways:
Staking a bold, specific institutional claim ("AI-first") gives your PR, content, and enrollment teams something to rally around — and gives media something worth covering.
AI search engines are an audience. Treat them like one. Run monthly reports on what ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity say about your school and adjust accordingly.
Earned media feeds AI findability. Third-party validation (not your own website copy) is what LLMs trust. Put money behind your earned media hits, not just original content.
Podcast transcripts are an underrated SEO and GEO asset — they're long, keyword-rich, and naturally repetitive in a way written content can't be.
A LinkedIn newsletter for your podcast is a low-lift distribution channel that self-selects a genuinely interested audience. A thousand subscribers who opted in beats ten thousand passive email recipients.
Grad school decision cycles are long (18+ months). Your storytelling has to be present at multiple touchpoints — not optimized for the last click.
"This degree will open doors" is table stakes. The story that actually converts is: "You can do this without blowing up your life."
Every story you collect about student or alumni success is also a coaching resource for your own admissions team — Chris Lewis uses podcast episodes to help staff better articulate program value.
Connect with the Guests:
Katya Popova, CMO, Kogod School of Business at American University — LinkedIn
Chris Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs, University of Michigan Flint — LinkedIn | drcleis@umich.edu | Victors in Grad School podcast
Laura Beth O'Brien, Director of Marketing Communications, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky — Linkedin
Resources Mentioned:
Kogod School of Business at American University: https://www.american.edu/kogod/
Victors in Grad School podcast (University of Michigan Flint): (search on your podcast platform)
Gatton College of Business and Economics alumni video series: https://www.youtube.com/@UKGattonCollege
HubSpot Inbound Conference: https://www.hubspot.com/inbound
Poets & Quants (named Kogod "most consequential AI transformation in business education"): https://poetsandquants.com
Axios (featured Kogod student AI research): https://www.axios.com
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00;00;00;08 - 00;00;23;02
John Azoni
Well, today's a little different. This is a compilation episode comprised of three separate conversations I had with grad school Markham leaders and content creators. So we're just going to take a little different route today. We're going to talk about how these three individuals are using storytelling in content creation to move prospective grad students down the enrollment funnel. So let me introduce you to our guests and then we'll get into it.
00;00;23;02 - 00;00;47;01
John Azoni
So Laura Beth O'Brian is the marketing and communications director at the Gatton College of Business and Economics, which is one of University of Kentucky's largest colleges. And she oversees digital marketing content strategy, executive comms, media relations and institutional messaging. Laura and I talk about how Gatton has seen success shifting the narrative from Here's where this particular album ended up to.
00;00;47;10 - 00;01;11;10
John Azoni
Here's how this album fit grad school into their life. Next, we have Katie Popova. Katie is the CMO at American University's Kogut School of Business. We talk about how claiming a bold, specific identity such as for them, the first I first business school became the engine behind two record breaking undergraduate classes and measurable grad enrollment growth. And then last but not least, we have Chris Lewis.
00;01;11;11 - 00;01;32;20
John Azoni
He is the director of Graduate programs at University of Michigan, Flint. Chris hosts five podcasts. Pretty remarkable guy in that manner. One of those podcasts is Viktor's in grad school where he talks to current students, alumni and others connected to U-M Flint about the impact of going to graduate school, what the journeys like and what comes out of it, and what it takes to succeed.
00;01;33;00 - 00;01;56;23
John Azoni
So I hope you enjoy these conversations as much as I did. Let's jump in. Okay. We're here with Laura Beth O'Brien, director of marketing communications at Gatton College of Business and Economics at University of Kentucky. So, Laura, you guys have done a whole storytelling campaign that you're going to tell us about. What is one story or stories series you told recently that produced measurable results?
00;01;57;13 - 00;02;27;16
Laura Beth O'brein
Yeah, Thanks, John. So yeah, we launched a comprehensive digital marketing campaign to drive awareness of and enrollment in our graduate programs. We have some really great graduate programs here at the gotten college. So one of the key storytelling pieces that we focused on was our alumni outcomes. So we really wanted to highlight the national reach of a certain degree and gotten graduates and show that UK degree can take you anywhere, whether that's building a career here in the Commonwealth or working in industries like tech on the West Coast.
00;02;28;01 - 00;02;45;17
Laura Beth O'brein
But alongside that, we developed a video series for our part time MBA that emphasized flexibility for working professionals. So it's the MBA that fits your life. So the campaign has generated a really nice big increase in program inquiries and has helped sort of expand our reach beyond our traditional markets.
00;02;46;04 - 00;02;59;11
John Azoni
Awesome. Love it. And so I went on your YouTube and. Is it the one where it's like. There's a few of them that I saw and it was like different alumni and it said like where they work and stuff like that. Is that, is that what it is? Yeah.
00;03;00;05 - 00;03;29;26
Laura Beth O'brein
That's what it is. So we promoted that through performance Max campaigns and connected TV advertising to reach working professionals in our target markets. And then we also launched some videos, like I said, around the flexibility of our part time MBAs so that it feels more attainable and sort of connecting, like bridging the aspirational goals with sort of realistic goals and what you can actually fit into your life.
00;03;30;11 - 00;03;51;22
Laura Beth O'brein
And then from those digital ads, we've also repurposed the content across our website newsletter social channels, so that if you're a prospective student, you're not just getting hit with it on your YouTube TV, you're also getting hit with it on our social platform if you follow us and also our website and wherever we can sort of push that narrative.
00;03;52;04 - 00;03;52;12
Laura Beth O'brein
Yeah.
00;03;53;05 - 00;04;10;24
John Azoni
That's great. And I really kind of fell in love with the format that you guys had for at least the ones that I watched were the alumni ones, and I loved how it was like different alumni, just a simple portrait shot of them and then their name and what they do. So you had like Champ Kelly is executive for Miami Dolphins.
00;04;11;07 - 00;04;38;23
John Azoni
They had like a board member for the Grammys, like HIV researcher, retired head of investor relations at Apple. So it's like cool stuff. And I feel like for an ad campaign, you know, if I'm sitting in watching some show on Netflix or whatever and that commercial comes on or if I'm like scrolling, I'm like, that's a good format where you don't have to like, pay attention to the whole thing, but you can glance up and go like, Oh, that guy's doing something cool.
00;04;38;28 - 00;04;39;05
John Azoni
He's a.
00;04;39;05 - 00;05;02;03
Laura Beth O'brein
Big deal. Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. That's I didn't want to hit people over the head too hard. Especially attention spans being what they are these days. And it is. It's a brief commercial when you're watching Parks and Rec on Peacock. So we wanted it to be very, as you said, John, just like quick. And you get the point without having to overthink it and name recognition.
00;05;02;03 - 00;05;04;04
Laura Beth O'brein
You know, these big brands and. Yeah.
00;05;04;21 - 00;05;23;25
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. And I like that you feature different industries too, because it's kind of like, oh, like I didn't know you could do like you could be a sports executive, like college could be a path to be in sports executive or something like that. So. That's right. And I like that repurposing part too, because in my life I keep getting retargeted with these ads for electric skateboards.
00;05;23;26 - 00;05;33;02
John Azoni
Like I oh, that's like, that's my thing lately. Every once in a while I'm like, Oh, should I spend $2,000 on this like thing that goes 30 miles an hour?
00;05;33;02 - 00;05;38;10
Laura Beth O'brein
And the Internet is like, Yes, yes, yes, you should. Yes, you should. Here's another ad about it.
00;05;38;19 - 00;05;57;28
John Azoni
So every time I get an ad from a different company, I'm like, Ooh, that's a cool. And I go research that one. So it really is. It's like it's a whole connected ecosystem that you have to build. It's not just someone's not just going to see your commercial and then apply and then enroll. It's like you really have to have this wrap around.
00;05;58;10 - 00;06;00;03
John Azoni
You just keep hitting them with different.
00;06;00;03 - 00;06;23;06
Laura Beth O'brein
That's right. That's right. So, yes. And our alumni features, I don't know if you saw those on our YouTube channel, but we have some alumni who are featured in sort of the flexibility ads, for lack of a better word. But the how this can work with your life. And to your point, we really wanted to drive that home to like, it's not just that you'll get this great job or that it'll open doors.
00;06;23;06 - 00;06;46;01
Laura Beth O'brein
It also, you know, we're going to work with you. We're going to make it fit into your life so that you don't have to implode your life to get a graduate degree. Like, you can do this from anywhere. And so we have people speak on that in these ads. We have people speak on how coming going back to school was sort of intimidating, but then got in college, really worked with them and made it less daunting and that it's it's worth it.
00;06;46;25 - 00;07;07;17
John Azoni
That's awesome. Yeah, super important because that's the thing. We do a lot of graduate storytelling. We have one client that's a business school here locally in Michigan, and that's like the main thrust of like everyone's story is like they made it easy for me to do this. They have a program that's like business school specifically for first responders.
00;07;07;17 - 00;07;15;21
John Azoni
So like, it's a program designed for people whose phones are going to go off at any time and they have to drop everything and go fight a fire or something like that. So that's.
00;07;16;05 - 00;07;17;08
Laura Beth O'brein
Incredible. Wow.
00;07;17;09 - 00;07;29;12
John Azoni
So, yeah, so I've heard a lot of stories about like, I didn't think I could do it, was able to do it and like, that's the main decision blocker I think, for a lot of anyone. I mean, is anyone in grad school, anyone? First Responder.
00;07;29;12 - 00;07;36;19
Laura Beth O'brein
Yeah, and I think it's where we are sort of as a society is meeting people where they are and providing that flexibility to make it work.
00;07;37;09 - 00;07;45;26
John Azoni
Yeah. Do you guys have any way of measuring who saw a video versus like what they did applied or something like that?
00;07;46;12 - 00;08;09;20
Laura Beth O'brein
Yes, it is tagged so that if they watch a P max video and they scan the QR code and the p max video, we will see them come in and then they're taken to our RFI form. It's tagged that they came from the P max video. So yes. Yeah. Okay, cool. Which is cool to know. Yeah. So that was something we've really been working hard on as our data and analytics and trying to build that out.
00;08;09;21 - 00;08;12;07
Laura Beth O'brein
So it's more meaningful and can help us with decision making.
00;08;13;00 - 00;08;18;09
John Azoni
Absolutely. So what is something that you guys learned from that success that changed how you approach storytelling now?
00;08;18;28 - 00;08;45;00
Laura Beth O'brein
I think it's just really important to you can't just sell the story that this opens doors. I think there's a how component to it. So again, it's it's bridging that sort of like aspirational piece to the practicality piece and understanding that we're talking to real people of real lives and a lot going on. And so how does this actually land for them and how can they actually make it work?
00;08;45;03 - 00;09;02;12
Laura Beth O'brein
So again, you know, showing you don't have to implode your life, it's actually okay. You can still get this graduate degree and keep working and have young children and etc., etc.. So I think the story is just more well-rounded and more human oriented when you can connect it in that way.
00;09;03;03 - 00;09;18;20
John Azoni
Yeah, and as I was on your YouTube page this afternoon, I saw that there's like you had some Alumni Hall of Fame videos and that they thought were pretty cool, like longform storytelling. There's one of a woman that works at Citibank and you guys had like her boss gave a.
00;09;18;20 - 00;09;19;05
Laura Beth O'brein
Little.
00;09;19;18 - 00;09;38;04
John Azoni
Blurb you had like her husband was like, yeah, on a Zoom video, like encouraging her other people in her life that were just sending her encouraging messages. I thought that was really cool and may or may not be connected to this campaign, but you guys just seem to be like, you're doing it. You're like, You know what to do with storytelling and you're doing the right things.
00;09;38;18 - 00;09;57;26
Laura Beth O'brein
Thank you. I appreciate that. There's always more room to build, but I appreciate hearing that. So we're we're working on it. And something we've also been working really hard on is just tell me more student stories. You know, what are students doing? What impact has it gotten degree had on their lives? And so I think we've done a lot of really good work in the alumni space.
00;09;57;26 - 00;10;04;03
Laura Beth O'brein
And I think something the team has been focused on is trying to talk to the students more and tell their stories.
00;10;04;20 - 00;10;13;22
John Azoni
Love it. All right. Here with Katia Popova, chief marketing officer at American University's Kogut School of Business. Katia, welcome.
00;10;14;11 - 00;10;15;12
Katya Popova
Nice to be here. John.
00;10;15;25 - 00;10;21;09
John Azoni
All right, Katie, what's one story or story series that you told recently that produced measurable results?
00;10;21;24 - 00;10;47;05
Katya Popova
Oh, gosh, I'm so excited to talk about this. This is part of the strategy too. So the big thing about the Colorado School of Business is we have now claimed a pretty exciting spot in the business school world of being the first air, first business school. And that is a story arc that we have been working on tirelessly for about two and a half years now.
00;10;47;05 - 00;11;14;03
Katya Popova
And it's been the most exciting thing that I've ever had a chance to work on. It starts from the school and everything that's happening within the school, but absolute these top at how we talk about it. So when it comes to my job, my job is perception, my job is managing the reputation and that transformation can happen in a very operational and a very academic level was something that gave us so much richness to talk about publicly.
00;11;14;12 - 00;11;42;08
Katya Popova
So we've been talking about a I as something that's a very much of a key differentiator for us on top of some things that we've already claimed and we've already been successful at sustainability and entrepreneurship. These deeply human skills that are even more important now than ever before in an age of AI. So all of that has been always true, but the A.I. component to it just gave us this lightning speed of success in public relations, in marketing, especially in enrollment marketing.
00;11;42;08 - 00;12;03;01
Katya Popova
So I'm very excited to talk about this. But yeah, A.I. has been our golden ticket into kind of winning the PR and enrollment race in business schools right now. It is a moment is definitely having a moment. I so very much in everything that we read, I'm sure it's in everything that you watch. It permeates my entire social media feed 100%.
00;12;03;01 - 00;12;26;04
Katya Popova
We definitely captured a moment but the thing and we got very fortunate that we have wonderful speakers come to campus and the impetus behind the change for us happened after two speakers came to campus two and a half years ago, three years ago. That was before Chad. It was a thing, right? But they were talking about what A.I. does and has the capability of doing.
00;12;26;11 - 00;12;36;14
Katya Popova
Somebody asked one of the speakers, and by the way, these two speakers, one of the venture capital investment firms, the other one was president of Microsoft, and both of them were Microsoft.
00;12;36;14 - 00;12;37;07
John Azoni
So heard of them.
00;12;38;04 - 00;12;40;18
Katya Popova
Maybe maybe.
00;12;40;18 - 00;12;59;06
Katya Popova
And both of them were so absolutely invested in this idea that air is going to change the world. And one of the students that was talking to the speakers as is I going to take my job, and the response was, I think eye opening, which we now hear all the time. But three years ago it was so eye opening.
00;12;59;17 - 00;13;19;05
Katya Popova
It was, no, I'm not going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use A.I. Well, and that was the impetus behind our Dean, who's a non academic dean. He comes from Carlisle, so he is very much a business guy. He heard that. He heard it twice. And by the way, that was also reaffirmed by one of the presence of Google.
00;13;19;05 - 00;13;41;15
Katya Popova
Also, Speaker Kogut. He heard that so many times that he said this needs to change. So it started by us completely redesigning the curriculum. We infused air into everything that we do. That means not just in the air class here and not air class there. Every major, every core class, every grad degree has air infusing almost every single class.
00;13;41;15 - 00;14;03;12
Katya Popova
90% of our faculty is air in the classroom. It is one of those moments that I think is shifting the economy in major ways. It's like what happened when computers were introduced into our world, right? It is completely shifting. The way we do work, the way we think about work. And I think that we were very fortunate to kind of capture that moment.
00;14;03;24 - 00;14;27;27
Katya Popova
And then as marketing people, we were very fortunate to work with something very rich. Like that's something that we can actually claim to be first at and very, very good at. So you get some luck 100%, but it's also the ability to see something before it materializes as a trend. And I think and that's where we were able to kind of utilize our business skills that we teach to apply it to how we operate.
00;14;28;13 - 00;14;53;01
John Azoni
That's amazing. And, you know, we hear so often that higher ed is so slow to adopt new things and, you know, move with culture. And it sounds like you guys were right at the edge, like you saw that coming. And like even, you know, years ago back when it was just like a new thing. I remember the first time I heard about Chad, CBT was probably three years ago, and now we use it all the time for for.
00;14;53;14 - 00;14;56;03
Katya Popova
Sure, everything about that. God.
00;14;56;12 - 00;15;15;12
Katya Popova
I wouldn't. Codependent with AI. Absolutely not. It's still probably somewhat negative in our operations, but my gosh, the ability for it to unlock resources that you never had access to before, right. It democratized access to resources in many ways, which is the very positive and optimistic side of A.I., which we obviously have chosen to believe.
00;15;15;12 - 00;15;31;18
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah. Well, kudos to you guys for really jumping in headfirst right at the beginning. I think that's a marker of a really forward thinking business school, a lot of schools will claim that they're on the cutting edge and still be decades behind still.
00;15;31;18 - 00;15;33;16
Katya Popova
And Windows 2005, right?
00;15;33;19 - 00;15;35;20
Katya Popova
Yeah.
00;15;35;20 - 00;15;42;05
John Azoni
Yeah. And so you guys had some results from that. So tell me about the results of that whole narrative that you put together.
00;15;42;26 - 00;16;00;15
Katya Popova
Well, I'll start with the punch line, because I think and this is what's so exciting, we have had now two record breaking undergraduate classes coming into the business school in our university for two years in a row, and we're talking some staggering numbers. We are looking at about 40% above our average numbers over the past ten, 15 years.
00;16;00;22 - 00;16;20;22
Katya Popova
So our undergraduate class is just really responding to this message. And we're seeing that even earlier in the enrollment funnel, we tend to offer a lot of content around A for free to anybody who's interested to listen. So within our enrollment funnel for undergraduate, that is very much a topic that really kind of sticks and stick the landing.
00;16;21;12 - 00;16;37;03
Katya Popova
So we put together at at a class, it's called a High for All and it is a 2 to 3 credit clause that you can take for free if you are an admitted student for undergraduate. And we are one of four classes that are offered. We did not think that this was going to be that big of a head.
00;16;37;03 - 00;16;49;14
Katya Popova
We were just like, you know, this is some good content that we want to put out there. And in fact, I have a module that I don't teach, but I have a module on it on air and media, and we just thought it was going to be something that we do that's nice for students to get ahead of their classes.
00;16;49;26 - 00;17;14;29
Katya Popova
That class got waitlisted practically as soon as we opened it. It was so popular. So this is just telling us even earlier in the enrollment funnel, it's really resonating. Now on the grad side, you probably are very well aware there's a lot of headwinds on the grass side in business schools, our international student market is practically gone, which is what means that we need to kind of shift a lot more of our efforts and focus on the domestic market.
00;17;14;29 - 00;17;46;08
Katya Popova
And there we've had a great success story that is a shrinking market. There's not a lot of demand in the domestic student market for graduate business education right now, yet we've had a growth of pretty significant growth in applications from the domestic side two years in a row as well. So we are seeing that the numbers are confirming that this is working mostly because people are seeing that this is a business school that is invested in what's important right now from a career standpoint, the job entry market is shifting so quickly.
00;17;46;08 - 00;18;05;18
Katya Popova
Right now. Every business school is worried about that. And I just saw some numbers we actually published a story and actually published a story. We got interviewed by Axios this morning. One of our students, she's running a survey around how people use air in colleges, and she's been doing that for a couple of years now. And the increase in which employees do not.
00;18;05;18 - 00;18;24;25
Katya Popova
Asking about your air skills last year compared to this year is almost twofold. So we know that employers are asking for you know, they want it. And I'm proud to say that we're on the leading edge of teaching our students what to do with it. And I think that's that's a great story to tell that you feel good about.
00;18;25;02 - 00;18;50;09
Katya Popova
So the bottom line is the enrollment numbers are responding. And I think that, as any marketer will tell you, that's the only keep you care about. Everything else is a bit of a vanity. It's a bit of a vanity like, oh, I've got reach and I've got hit rates. These are important. But I think that the KPI truly is enrollment and then the upper funnel in terms of our KPIs, our media hits have been doing incredibly well and our social media is popping.
00;18;50;09 - 00;18;57;20
Katya Popova
It's good, it's a good story. It's been very successful. And I think that we've found a recipe of how to really do the heavy lifting of enrollment.
00;18;58;07 - 00;19;04;23
John Azoni
Wonderful. That's awesome. So taking that story, how did you actually get distributed to reach prospective students?
00;19;05;07 - 00;19;37;06
Katya Popova
So we Okay, let me tell you a bit of another story. So about two years ago I was at an inbound HubSpot conference. HubSpot is our automation and CRM, so we tend to spend a lot of time learning about the system. That was the first time it was more than two years ago. It was December of 2024. I like to think that was the first conference where I came back from it and I told my dean, We got to change everything we're doing because that was the first conference that was truly a marketing conference about a It was no longer HubSpot conference.
00;19;37;06 - 00;19;57;20
Katya Popova
It was an A&R conference. So we came back and a completely shifted the entire strategy of what we do and we flipped the script. So typically the typical school waits for an opportunity for me to come up the pitch to media. The pitch happens, it doesn't happen. Faculty get quarterly media, maybe it gets flagged internally, maybe it doesn't.
00;19;57;20 - 00;20;18;12
Katya Popova
And that's about it, right? So we have completely flipped the script because now we understand it as an audience in itself. A lot of people are shifting their behavior away from the typical Google search and relying a lot more on answer engine. So what about such a beauty? What? It's perplexity. What? It's Google Gemini. That is just how people are starting to consume content.
00;20;18;23 - 00;20;47;22
Katya Popova
We understand that we put air as a specific audience. That is probably one of the most important audiences. In addition to our lovely human audiences. That meant that we flipped the script. So the way we do now is we set the agenda with our editorial, so we will publish something that claims that we are the first air first business school like, obviously based on data and observations, but we stake a claim with editorial, but then we spend a lot of time on media.
00;20;48;04 - 00;21;22;05
Katya Popova
PR has never been more important, I think, in our lifetime, because engines trust media, they trust a third party validation and we have invested a huge amount of time and money into our third party validation. So we staked the claim. We invest a lot in getting that claim verified by third parties. To give you another example, poets and quants and that was completely earned, had nothing to do with us actually even pushing in poets and quants named as the most consequential transformation in business education.
00;21;22;24 - 00;21;48;15
Katya Popova
That alone became probably the most important asset I had in my marketing tool bag to propagate through every single channel that I had. So stay the claim with editorial and own media that earn media and in full that earned media back into your owned and paid media. So we have now flipped the entire book of I don't put any money behind it unless it's a third party statement, not my statement.
00;21;49;01 - 00;22;12;27
Katya Popova
It's a third party statement because that is so much more important for people and for API. So we've kind of flipped the book a little bit and we've got that folks and quant statement. It was everywhere. He was in everything. An email that we sent out, he was in every single web page that we had. We wrote many, many stories every time we had a chance to talk about, yeah, we say it.
00;22;13;13 - 00;22;33;03
Katya Popova
And of course there's also a paid component. We actually took the quote and put it in a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, just to quote nothing else. And that or it caught us more than 5 million impressions in the audience that we care about. And it wasn't a very expensive approach either. So it is about like that.
00;22;33;05 - 00;22;47;04
Katya Popova
How do you started what happens for a second, third that really makes a difference in how effective it is once you start distributing, But it is a 360 approach. Every single thing got that asset blessed on it and that's how people notice.
00;22;47;18 - 00;23;05;02
John Azoni
That's great. And one of the things that you said that like maybe perk up was I as an audience like profile all and I hadn't I think I've thought of that in the back of my head like at some point, but never really like put that into where like people should put that in their marketing strategy like that.
00;23;05;17 - 00;23;09;26
John Azoni
When you do audience pillars, like I and I should be like, that's really smart.
00;23;10;05 - 00;23;27;24
Katya Popova
Yeah, yeah. There are several tools out there that will give you an understanding of how I think about you and what they say about you. We do that on a monthly basis. Run the reports that are we can affect our scores on it. And I will tell you that Chad, you buddy loves us. Gemini is lukewarm on us still.
00;23;27;24 - 00;23;51;17
Katya Popova
And then Perplexity also loves us because perplexity tends to be biased towards academic institutions because they're the right answer. Kind of in search engine. So it's been fascinating to see that. First of all, I agree. Secondly, I tailor a lot of their answers to your context that you've provided them. So being able to think through how to break through on this has been kind of a big deal for us.
00;23;52;01 - 00;23;56;29
Katya Popova
And I'll tell you, podcast is one of those major pillars for us to break through on a I as an audience.
00;23;57;15 - 00;24;02;15
John Azoni
Yeah, So tell me about that, because you mentioned before we started recording that you guys have a podcast strategy that's that's working.
00;24;02;28 - 00;24;26;13
Katya Popova
I mean, we think that it's working. So it's been interesting because obviously podcast is such a very important medium. This is one of the very few forms of longform content that people just love to consume still. And our goal has been to break through on that. Obviously there's podcasts and then there's podcasts and there's podcasts. We never tried aiming for the top dogs outright.
00;24;26;25 - 00;24;29;07
Katya Popova
That was just never our goal because we know that we are.
00;24;29;09 - 00;24;34;10
John Azoni
That's why you're here on the higher note.
00;24;34;24 - 00;24;35;19
Katya Popova
Well, I'm going to talk.
00;24;35;19 - 00;24;37;00
Katya Popova
About the top dog.
00;24;39;05 - 00;24;59;13
Katya Popova
So we were hoping to just get on any podcast. Honestly, like any podcast will take us. We did. And interestingly enough, some of those lower tier podcast that we started out with now have gained thousands and thousands and thousands of followers in the meantime, because again, air is such a hot topic in a lot of the podcasts that we were targeting where I focused.
00;24;59;28 - 00;25;18;23
Katya Popova
So we started out with a smaller podcast. But what that gave us is a transcript and a third party validation, even though you might not have a huge audience, is still third party validation. So we will get that transcript. We will put on our website, which helps with answer engine optimization. Dan feeds the next pitching like layer, right?
00;25;18;23 - 00;25;46;12
Katya Popova
So, so and so has been on these and these in these podcasts, even if nobody's ever heard of them. Doesn't matter. Like you have the ability to say yeah, they've been on these podcasts. It's kind of does so much like double triple duty. First off, you get the transcript. You are hitting every single keyword that you want to head because in a natural conversation you can be repetitive, You can say the same thing like five times and nobody's going to penalize you for it because it's natural in a natural language conversation.
00;25;46;25 - 00;26;08;10
Katya Popova
When it comes to written word, you have to be like a lot more tightly. You have to be a lot more like concise in a podcast world that's not expected. And therefore that script has that keyword mentioned. Just like, I mean, how many times have I said so far? Right, right. It has so much potential to be so rich in all the content you want to know about.
00;26;08;13 - 00;26;26;27
Katya Popova
And this is mostly for our audience, not so much about our human audience. So we grab that script, we put on a website that helps, and then we use that to earn more media, earn more media, earn more media is the same cycle. We put it on the website, we pitch more and we've over time climbed in the ladder of the podcast.
00;26;26;27 - 00;26;48;08
Katya Popova
And I think that that's that's been really interesting to see how it works because typically if you don't leverage that earned media, it just dies. The moment it got just published and within 24 hours it's just gone. So we are trying to capitalize on the moment of, Hey, it's out there, Fantastic. Let's make sure that the alums know this in and out.
00;26;48;12 - 00;27;09;03
Katya Popova
So that's been really, really helpful. And we are seeing that one of our most popular what are our most popular articles on the website is something of a media win with one of our tax professors. And we even actually just got like the snippet, the overview of what was said in that interview. That is our most read article in the last 12 months because it's also in tax.
00;27;09;03 - 00;27;15;14
Katya Popova
So it's fascinating to see that these are the glimpses of things that work and we've kind of latched on to the ones that we've seen work.
00;27;15;28 - 00;27;24;04
John Azoni
That's great, amazing insights. I love to see a good cycle that's just kind of like just keeps feeding itself and you just keep running the playbook, you know?
00;27;24;15 - 00;27;31;04
Katya Popova
Yeah, yeah. It's like the, you know, there is a downward spiral and an upward spiral. I'd like to think that we're on the upward one at this point.
00;27;31;22 - 00;27;51;18
John Azoni
Yeah. So what did you guys learn that changed the work that you do going forward? You mentioned a few things. One of the things that you mentioned that stuck out to me was you are prioritizing putting money behind earned media. And I think that's really important for people to hear, especially in that conversation about I really trusting earned media.
00;27;51;18 - 00;28;05;16
John Azoni
And I think there's not enough talk about at least in my circles, there's not enough talk about earned media and I conversation. But anyway, I just wanted to point out that I was really interested when you said that, and that's one thing I imagine you learned. But what are there other things.
00;28;05;28 - 00;28;25;10
Katya Popova
That you cannot be everything to everyone? You really cannot. You have to focus your narrative for us as for things, and we like to own those four things in and out. And anytime we have a chance to talk about it, we talk about it. It all now tends to fold around this theme, mostly because we just know that air is going to change the work economy.
00;28;25;17 - 00;28;50;22
Katya Popova
And as a business school, our job is to prepare students for that and it kind of packages things a lot very neatly. So again, in small example, but entrepreneurship is kind of one of the pillars that we are very, very strong at, But it's even more important through the lens of and because the entrepreneurial mindset that we teach our students is going to be the kinds of skills that people need, you know, the economy, because A is going to be able to do 95% of the work that we do.
00;28;51;06 - 00;29;15;05
Katya Popova
But what it cannot do is have communication skills, oral communication skills. It doesn't have collaborative skills, doesn't have creativity, doesn't have critical thinking, it doesn't have taste, doesn't have judgment. These are things that we teach as an entrepreneurial mindset. So I has been able to kind of supercharge everything else that we do. But the main takeaway is you cannot be everything like, are we a strong finance business, school?
00;29;15;05 - 00;29;34;10
Katya Popova
Of course. But are we? Wharton No, no. And that's okay. It's perfectly okay for you not to be everything to everyone. So that's one number one rule that we definitely confirmed and affirmed in this. The second thing is, yes, the playbook of what do you put money behind and what do you let do your work for you for?
00;29;34;10 - 00;30;06;10
Katya Popova
Answer engines. And then the third thing is, I is very much one of our target audiences, I think, and that is an acceptance that we've had for the last two years and it's paying off. We actually have attributed enrollments to I as a first touch in our system, which is mind boggling to me. Again, like our consideration cycle for business schools, 18 months for grad degrees, 18 months plus the fact that we have an eye for such attribution for enrollments at this point blows my mind because it started 18, 24 months ago.
00;30;06;19 - 00;30;09;18
Katya Popova
So that's that's pretty cool and I'm pretty excited about that.
00;30;10;01 - 00;30;22;14
John Azoni
That's amazing. Awesome. Very impressive. And so there's some ranking news coming out. Well, by the time that this episode comes out, it will be out. And so do you want to tell us about this Fabulous.
00;30;22;28 - 00;30;23;27
Katya Popova
Do I want to tell you.
00;30;24;29 - 00;30;43;16
Katya Popova
I might get in trouble? I will say that this is going to be the highest ranking on record for the business school. And I will note that when we were talking about our rankings ambitions three years ago, when the new dean came in, he said, I want to be a top 50 school in the U.S. and I want to be top ten for entrepreneurship.
00;30;43;27 - 00;30;57;14
Katya Popova
And I, I would say we've hit all the marks at this point, and all of them are very, very exciting. It's very, very exciting to see that what we've been doing as an operations, the marketing operation is checking all the boxes. It's fantastic.
00;30;57;24 - 00;31;07;22
John Azoni
That's amazing. Well, you know, once in a while there comes an interview that I do where it makes me want to go to that school.
00;31;07;22 - 00;31;09;09
Katya Popova
But my job is done, too.
00;31;10;23 - 00;31;29;07
John Azoni
I mean, I've I was terrible at, like, math in high school. And I work with some data science institutes and sometimes doing those interviews, I'm like, Man, maybe I'll go to be a data scientist now, hang up my video hat. But now I'm now I'm going to go be a I, you know, business. You know, whatever. This is really interesting.
00;31;29;07 - 00;31;33;12
John Azoni
It does make me go like, man, like there's people teaching cool stuff out there that I want to learn.
00;31;33;12 - 00;31;56;20
Katya Popova
Oh, it's fascinating. Let me tell you about this one class. One of our professors who's been teaching for many years, entrepreneurship. He's the director of our operations center. He just launched a class. It's for the undergraduates, not a single textbook. John. The entire class is prompting. The entire class is prompting I not a single book. And I think he's teaching entrepreneurship.
00;31;56;20 - 00;32;21;19
Katya Popova
So by the end of the class, people walk away with a business plan, with a presentation and a pitch deck, like they're ready to talk about what business they're going to start. I think this is fascinating. I missed about you like I was in school 20 years ago, like this. This I'm learning by osmosis at this point, but I think it's exciting of the possibilities and it's about what you do with those possibilities that a thing that makes it or break it for business schools now.
00;32;22;00 - 00;32;45;08
John Azoni
Yeah, it really is. And I think it's having this conversation with my wife because my daughter, you know, she's at the age she's ten, she's doing like projects like learn how to research and stuff like that. And they have a policy at their school that they can't use A.I. And I'm just like, I'm like, Why? Like, literally they have her going to the library to check out books to find the information.
00;32;45;09 - 00;32;46;15
John Azoni
I'm like, I did that.
00;32;46;27 - 00;32;47;14
Katya Popova
You know.
00;32;48;25 - 00;32;49;10
John Azoni
I'm like.
00;32;49;18 - 00;32;51;13
Katya Popova
You can't look like.
00;32;51;25 - 00;33;09;24
John Azoni
Yeah, I'm like, just type it into chatty bits here. Perplexity or something and find out what I mean. Obviously there's there's hallucinations and stuff, but it's like, this is where we're going. Like the idea that we're looking in books only we're only allowed to look in books for for research.
00;33;09;25 - 00;33;30;01
Katya Popova
Some of the books are questionable, too. I don't know if you care to hear about this or if it's too much information, but I will say, like for our undergrads, we do take the first year that they're here to teach them about the biases of AI for them to be critical of AI as they use it. Because you do need to understand there are limitations, there are some gaps, just like you mentioned.
00;33;30;15 - 00;34;04;05
Katya Popova
Then you start like, Oh, okay, so now I know how I can misbehave, now how I turn to it to actually do the work that I want it to do. But I will tell you, I have an almost eight year old son, and whenever I'm thinking about what are the skills that I want him to know growing up, knowing that the world will look very different for him than it did for me, I am honing in on communications, being able to present in front of a crowd, be puts his be on stage, be able to speak in a microphone, being able to articulate a problem because I think that that next level of who's going
00;34;04;05 - 00;34;30;08
Katya Popova
to succeed or won't succeed is a I can solve any problem. But the problem has that he cannot define the problems. And I think it's going to be up to us, the humans, to be very articulate about the problem we're trying to solve because I will solve them. But you need to know what problem you're solving for. And I think that's a skill that we should be drilling into every single kid out there from as early as my two year old to my eight year old and ten year old.
00;34;30;23 - 00;34;42;29
John Azoni
Wonderful. Well, that's a great place to stop. Thank you so much, Katie. This is a great conversation and I'm excited for all your success at Kogut. And I encourage our listeners to go check out what they're doing. And yeah.
00;34;43;08 - 00;34;45;18
Katya Popova
Thank you, John. It was a pleasure and so good to see you.
00;34;47;15 - 00;34;53;24
John Azoni
All right. We're here with Chris Lewis from University of Michigan, Flint. Chris, welcome to our series here.
00;34;53;24 - 00;34;57;13
Chris Lewis
Great to be here. Thanks so much for the invite. Excited about the conversation today.
00;34;57;28 - 00;35;18;19
John Azoni
Yeah, I heard you on Alison Herschel's podcast. I feel like Alison gets a number of plugs on my show because I am a personal listener of her. So when I'm out mowing my lawn, I usually have Alison's podcasts on because they're like 20 minutes long and that's about how long takes me to mow my lawn. So. So anyway, shout out to our friend Alison.
00;35;18;19 - 00;35;24;05
John Azoni
But Chris, what's one story or content series that you created that has produced some results for you in Flint?
00;35;24;20 - 00;35;48;07
Chris Lewis
So for the University of Michigan, Flint I came to the University of Michigan, Flint, after many years at the actually law school and actually law school. I started a podcast called that The Law School Insider. When I came to the University of Michigan, Flint, I noticed that they were marketing in a ton of different ways. But the problem that they did was that the one issue that we had was that they were not utilizing podcasting at all.
00;35;48;23 - 00;36;16;22
Chris Lewis
There was no one at the institution using that medium as a way to be able to provide stories and to use voice to be able to amplify not only the voices of the university, but amplify way beyond that, to be able to allow for people to get to know the university in a different way. So that being said, when I started as the director of graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint, I went to the powers that be and said, This is something that I want to do.
00;36;17;04 - 00;36;46;09
Chris Lewis
Luckily, nobody really knew a lot about podcasting at the institution, so I became the expert because I had been doing podcasting for quite a few years and they're like, go forth and produce. And that was very nice because at my previous institution, when I was at Cooley, it took probably, I'm going to say eight months for me to convince the powers that be that what I was going to do was of quality, was going to be on brand, it was going to be the message that they wanted out there.
00;36;46;21 - 00;37;14;23
Chris Lewis
But, but here they said, Nope, we want you to do it. And we moved forward. So started Victor's in grad school back in 2022. Been running the podcast ever since, has a weekly podcast, and one of the things that I loved about the podcast was that it allowed for me the opportunity to be able to not only connect with people affiliated with the university, because one of the things that we wanted to do was bring forth voices of individuals that were connected to the institution in some way.
00;37;15;08 - 00;37;41;13
Chris Lewis
So I'd say about 90 to 95% of all of the guests on the show have some connection to the university. It's never a hit you over the head type of a recruiting message. It is more it is all about talking about graduate school successfully, what you have to do to prepare yourself for graduate school. But the underlying message is every person or the majority of every person on the show has a connection to the university.
00;37;41;18 - 00;38;18;20
Chris Lewis
So what they're talking about still talks about the quality and the experience and what the university is like because of what they experienced. And that has been really powerful because we can then utilize those messages to talk to prospective students, share those messages with prospective students in specific programs to let them get a better feel for what is our program really like and use that authenticity of someone's personal experience to be able to talk to them in a different way, a lot different way than me as director of graduate programs talking to them.
00;38;18;27 - 00;38;33;27
Chris Lewis
I can bring the proof from, let's say, the graduate of our physical therapy program and share with them and say, here's a message. Here is a student's experience. If you want to consider our program, listen to what they have to say.
00;38;34;12 - 00;38;41;20
John Azoni
That's great. So you mentioned physical therapy. Is there any other examples of an episode that you've had someone on that was really, you know, interesting?
00;38;42;09 - 00;39;04;11
Chris Lewis
You know, one of the things I don't know that it's easy for me to pick one. I think there's been so many. One that stood out to me is a recent episode that we had with one of our current doctorate in business administration students. She is is passionate about the program. She's passionate about what she's learning. And this is a program that is fully online.
00;39;04;11 - 00;39;34;19
Chris Lewis
So she actually is based in L.A. She works for Netflix and is a she's higher up in administration at Netflix and is using this as a way to be able to not only leverage what she's doing right now, but really her goal is she wants to teach eventually, she wants to get that terminal degree and she wants to be able to delve even deeper into the some strategic leadership issues within the industry that she's in.
00;39;35;02 - 00;40;12;02
Chris Lewis
And she was able to really well articulate how that program has been able to help her to be able to rethink some of the things that she's doing and the people that she's working with in her own industry. So things like that I think are really interesting. Not only does it allow for us to be able to connect with that perspective since, but for me as someone that is working with with staff on campus to help them to better be able to talk to prospective students, it allows for me to look at our programs in different ways too, because I know a little bit of everything because I have to know I have a little
00;40;12;02 - 00;40;37;01
Chris Lewis
bit of everything about all of our programs. But you don't always see under the hood and you don't always hear the stories under the hood. So by hearing the stories, by being able to experience the stories in a new way, you're able to then articulate what you're hearing to other people as you're talking to them. And you're better able to find new ways to be able to tell the story to prospective students in the future.
00;40;37;16 - 00;41;01;09
John Azoni
That's great, and I love the idea that not only are you hearing from real students and hearing about the program, but I think it's also an opportunity to for people in general who might want to go back to school to just hear what someone else experience was like going back to school, maybe in that specific program or just in general, how they manage a doctorate degree, you know, with a full time job at Netflix.
00;41;01;18 - 00;41;30;02
John Azoni
And I think we don't give enough credit to podcasting as a long form content platform because especially for graduate school, because millennials and I know I can speak for myself, but I also know a lot of my friends all listen to podcasts. And one of the ways that we go deeper into like is something worth doing or How do I do it is just like I said earlier, just getting on a lawnmower, putting something in your headphones or washing the dishes, just listening and just deeper on on a topic.
00;41;30;08 - 00;41;38;04
John Azoni
That's not something that you'd get with this little like a 62nd kind of little snappy, you know, Facebook ad or something.
00;41;38;04 - 00;41;59;05
Chris Lewis
I think that you're completely odd in the sense that, you know, all of us want to be at least of my generation of millennial generation. I think a lot of people are looking for new ways to be able to consume content, consume information. I think even Gen Z, you know, more and more people are turning to YouTube or they're turning to Tik Tok and they're looking for a short form.
00;41;59;18 - 00;42;24;17
Chris Lewis
I think there's a lot of power to longform media. Yeah, and I think that that voice, that story is so important. If you look back at the history of our existence as humans, it's a story that has brought on the lore, brought on and, you know, has continued us to be able to learn and to be able to grow from what we've done in the past.
00;42;24;24 - 00;42;50;01
Chris Lewis
And so the long form is definitely something I don't think is ever going to go away. We may have to tweak some of the stories and do more shorter form chunks and find new ways to be able to take what we're trying to teach and put it into shorter form type of medium, especially for different generations. Because, you know, as I said, some of the Gen Z, Gen Alpha is, you know, those individuals, they don't want to sit for 30 minutes.
00;42;50;01 - 00;43;25;19
Chris Lewis
They don't want to sit for an hour as much as like myself or maybe you want to, but we're going to have to think in some different ways as podcasters to be able to think about, okay, how can we reconceptualize what a podcast is or how can we take what we're trying to put out there And whether it's putting it out a 30 minute episode into ten minute chunks and say, okay, we've got three segments, here's 10 minutes, here's 10 minutes, here's 10 minutes, or here's 15 and 15, you know, so that you're not throwing everything at them at once because they want to be able to take it.
00;43;25;19 - 00;43;29;27
Chris Lewis
And use it in the short periods of bursts that they have.
00;43;30;04 - 00;43;39;04
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. I like that idea. It's an episodic approach to podcasting. So how do you guys distribute these stories or these episodes?
00;43;39;21 - 00;44;00;23
Chris Lewis
So you use it in a couple of different ways. So we definitely have our social media platforms. We try to post those out on social media platforms and put that that information out there. We utilize our content management system to be able to try and target specific episodes with specific different groups. So I mentioned earlier the physical therapy student.
00;44;00;24 - 00;44;22;18
Chris Lewis
We have students that are interested in physical therapy. They've told us that they're interested in physical therapy. So we have a core group. It's kind of a mailing list per se. Well, we'll use that as the wording that we can then work with and be able to share and say, Hey, you're interested in this, Here's a value added for us to be able to share that with you.
00;44;23;01 - 00;44;48;07
Chris Lewis
And I might not share the interview about the doctorate in business administration with the physical therapist or the potential physical therapy student, but sending a pity episode makes a lot of sense. So, you know, we're trying different ways to be able to get the content out in front of people. It's definitely grassroots and we continue to try to get people to share.
00;44;48;17 - 00;45;14;26
Chris Lewis
Then utilizing LinkedIn a lot to be able to try to target specific people that are interested in specific areas as well. We have a newsletter on LinkedIn that we use specifically for the podcast that has almost a thousand people that have subscribed, which is it huge? But I mean, for a university, it's not bad. And every week those thousand people are getting that newsletter and they've signed up for it.
00;45;15;09 - 00;45;37;01
Chris Lewis
So it's more than I get to talk to you in a webinar, that's for sure. So, you know, the way I look at it is even if I had ten, 20, 30 people that are listening on a weekly basis, well, I would love 100,000. I mean, even ten, 20 or 30 is more than a lot of times we get in a regular webinar or in another information series.
00;45;37;01 - 00;45;53;24
Chris Lewis
So if people are actively listening and watching the content, reading the content that we send out in the newsletter, it's whole new platform that allows for us to be able to share that story, share the story of the university and be able to engage them in different ways.
00;45;53;24 - 00;46;17;16
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. I love the idea of the newsletter on LinkedIn. It it making it platform specific because, you know, I don't see enough grad programs really taking LinkedIn seriously beyond just doing ads, but really thinking about it as like, what are people on here to do and how can we talk to them organically? So I love that you have, you know, remixed the podcast like in a platform specific way.
00;46;17;28 - 00;46;37;27
John Azoni
I want to ask, you know, I know with podcasting as with like all of content marketing, I feel like it's really difficult to pinpoint any specific enrollment outcomes or anything like that. But I find often like because I could point to, you know, some clients that we've worked with that I wouldn't have met without the podcast. That's about as specific as I can get with this show.
00;46;38;09 - 00;46;47;28
John Azoni
But do you have anything like that where, you know, there's been opportunities that have come up or someone has enrolled that wouldn't have off if it weren't for the podcast?
00;46;48;18 - 00;47;11;23
Chris Lewis
There's been a number of different messages that I've received over the time since we started this. We have people saying, I listen on a regular basis. This has been great. I really appreciate the content on our application. We do have one question that we ask about How did you hear from us? And we are starting to see a little bit of an uptick of individuals that are saying, I heard about you from the podcast and I'm like, yay!
00;47;12;00 - 00;47;47;16
Chris Lewis
Because that to me is a way to be able to say, okay, because we can look at the analytics, but there's the end of it. Again, like you said, it's not always easy to tie the analytics of, you know, this episode. I listened to this episode and this made me apply. So for me, it's a grassroots effort of individuals starting to learn about our university in a new way, which ultimately, when I do have links in the notes that will link people back to our programs, our website and and are trying to kind of see what we can do to track those as well and clicks.
00;47;48;00 - 00;48;14;08
Chris Lewis
We're trying to see if there's other ways to be able to as someone clicks in, you know, if they ask for more information on our RFI form, we do have something in there that says again, how did you hear about us? Now it's not a required field, so somebody could skip it, but podcast is on there. It's one of the things that they can say and we and I've started to see a few more people that are starting to say that as well.
00;48;14;24 - 00;48;39;13
Chris Lewis
So all of those pieces make me think that this is working. I'm seeing the number of of people that are listening going up incrementally, of course, but you know, typically higher ed podcasts are not the ones that are getting the the million downloads and such. But for me, like I said, even if I get a smaller number, that's okay because that's more than I typically would.
00;48;39;13 - 00;48;42;03
Chris Lewis
And that incremental growth that I'm looking for.
00;48;42;15 - 00;49;01;24
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. You're not competing with SEO Vines of the World and, and stuff like that. I just posted in my newsletter last week this exact same thing of like if someone were to come and look at the analytics of my podcast, like Under the Hood, it's actually pretty for a podcast that's been around for five years.
00;49;01;24 - 00;49;17;05
John Azoni
But I can point to a lot of conversations that I've had and people that have reached out to me on LinkedIn that have like, I love your podcast, so I'm getting value out of this, this and this and those. And like I said, you know, I can point to actual dollar amounts that have come that wouldn't have come without the podcast.
00;49;17;05 - 00;49;38;29
John Azoni
And so I think when we think about whether one platform is working or not, I really think about as kind of this content whirlpool like is the whole ecosystem working because? Someone might find you on Tik Tok and then bounce over and listen to a podcast and then get your LinkedIn newsletter and kind of like all that together mashes up to some sort of results.
00;49;38;29 - 00;49;54;15
John Azoni
So then the question really becomes, is the podcast an effective part of that whirlpool? Not so much. Is this the thing that's driving the last, you know, for them to enroll? It's just it's linearly impossible to parse it out that way.
00;49;55;05 - 00;50;20;26
Chris Lewis
I'd agree. And I think that anyone that's working at higher these days, especially on the enrollment management side and but even in this, the marketing and communication side of things, you have to have many different channels to be able to hit your perspective audiences in the way in which they're consuming content. There's not just one way we can't put all of our eggs in the basket of email.
00;50;20;28 - 00;50;39;24
Chris Lewis
We can't just say, Hey, we're going to text people. We can't just say we're going to have a newsletter. You know, you've got to have evergreen content, you've got to have blogs, you've got to have, you know, pieces that someone can download and you capture their information that way. You have, I mean, podcasting, you know, videos, you know, whatever it may be.
00;50;39;24 - 00;50;59;01
Chris Lewis
And the challenge with that is it's time, it's bandwidth, it's figuring out where do I put my time and effort and that takes a little bit of time and effort to figure out, okay, what is working, but you can't give up right away. So the way I look at it with podcasting, podcasting takes a lot of time. It does.
00;50;59;13 - 00;51;22;29
Chris Lewis
And you have to be very passionate about it, especially if you're doing it as a one person shop. Unless you have a team of people that are helping you, which would be amazing. I am a one person shop, so I, you know, I'm the host and the producer. I am the everything. So that means I have to be able to find the time to be able to do that.
00;51;22;29 - 00;51;39;20
Chris Lewis
And what I tell people, because I go out and I teach people about podcasting and when I do, I try to tell them, okay, look, it's not just that 30 minutes. Let's say you're doing a 30 minute podcast, it's not 30 minutes, it's 30 minutes plus. Then you have to think about how long is it going to take you to edit that.
00;51;39;29 - 00;51;57;15
Chris Lewis
Now if you just say, whatever I recorded is gold and I'm throwing it out there, I wouldn't recommend that. I'd say, you probably want to do a little bit of editing, but if you do light editing, I would say it's going to take you about double time. So if it's 30 minutes, you got add another hour on to it.
00;51;57;15 - 00;52;20;07
Chris Lewis
You got an hour and a half in. If you're doing heavy editing, you're probably at 2 hours in or 2 hours plus the 30 minutes at maybe two and a half hours plus. Then you have to look at what are you doing for social media, what are you doing for podcast notes, What are you doing? So, I mean, you could be looking at a 30 minute podcast, could take you three, 4 hours to be able to get all of it done?
00;52;20;17 - 00;52;47;13
Chris Lewis
I don't say that to scare people, but it's the reality. And so you have to be really passionate about it and you have to be willing to go beyond, let's say, the first five episodes or first ten episodes to be able to and see and give it enough time to see are you getting results and not give up when you're putting out a few episodes and you don't see you're getting any listens because people aren't going to find you that easily and it's not going to happen like that.
00;52;47;22 - 00;53;11;11
John Azoni
Yeah, I like to say like, don't tell me that you're going to start something. Tell me that you've been doing it for, you know, the last six months and where I can find the episodes I'd like. Got a funny email that I just laughed at from my daughter. I have two daughters there, school, and they email said, We're going to start a newsletter, you know, for parents and we're going to talk about this, this and this.
00;53;11;11 - 00;53;23;21
John Azoni
And then they're like, It'll come out quarterly in parentheses. I hope. And we're like, We're already there. Just don't bother. Don't even bother. You're already walking back your commitment. So, yeah.
00;53;23;29 - 00;53;48;04
Chris Lewis
Consistency is key. I mean, if you're going to do this, you need to be consistent because your listeners are going to expect it. So if you tell your listeners you're going to be there weekly, you better be there weekly. If you tell them you're going to be there bi weekly, be there bi weekly, whatever it is, you need to hold up your end of the bargain or you need to be honest with your listeners and say, okay, we thought we were going to be able to do this weekly.
00;53;48;10 - 00;53;52;26
Chris Lewis
We can't do it weekly or move into bi weekly, be honest about it and then move forward.
00;53;53;05 - 00;53;58;29
John Azoni
Yeah. Okay. Last question. What did you learn from this podcast that's changed the way you think about content now?
00;53;59;11 - 00;54;18;15
Chris Lewis
You know, I think that I have learned over the last what, five or six years that we've been here for years. What I've learned probably over the last four years of doing this is that every story is different, but there's a lot of commonality in regards to what people have had to do to find success in graduate school.
00;54;18;29 - 00;54;41;26
Chris Lewis
And I'm going to say that I'm not going to stop doing this because I have found that it has been very valuable. The people that have responded have said it's very valuable. And even though there are commonalities, every person's experience is a little bit different. And I think that even if I use that example, even if you're not going to be a physical therapist, you can still learn from that physical therapist.
00;54;42;05 - 00;55;06;10
Chris Lewis
You can still learn from that person going in to get their MBA. Even if you have no interest in that academic area. There are fundamental things that each person can do, and I think that we don't talk enough at the graduate level about what do you have to do to be successful. We talk about, you know, how do you get in or how do you pay for this or how do you and those are important conversations.
00;55;06;19 - 00;55;25;19
Chris Lewis
But ultimately, yes, we want you to enroll. But if you enroll, we want you to finish and we want you to complete that degree. We want you to be successful. We don't want to admit you. And then you're gone in six months because ultimately we want you to be in the lab and we want you to go out and be successful.
00;55;25;27 - 00;55;42;25
Chris Lewis
But there are things that you can do from the beginning. And so for me, that's one thing that I love, is being able to really hear from people that have gone and done it. I've done my own graduate degrees. I know what worked for me, what didn't work for me, but hearing it from other people and hearing about their experiences, I think has been really eye opening.
00;55;43;09 - 00;56;07;08
Chris Lewis
And as we've gone forward, I've also heard from people saying, Well, what about this? And this is a question that I have. So I'm starting to try to bring in some of those questions to be able to and I've even done some shorter form audio content that I've just answered, kind of like ask, you know, Dr. Lewis type of content where people can come to me and just ask questions.
00;56;07;21 - 00;56;12;24
Chris Lewis
And I've enjoyed that too, because then we're actually engaging the listener in a little bit different way.
00;56;13;04 - 00;56;21;15
John Azoni
Yeah, I love that. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for answering my questions and telling us about your podcast. Where can people in equity as they want to link up with you?
00;56;21;22 - 00;56;38;12
Chris Lewis
Your LinkedIn is a great way. Dr. Christopher Lewis out on LinkedIn under that so just LinkedIn dot com forward slash. Dr. Christopher Lewis But also my email DRC Ally Lewis at UMass studied you and would love to chat with anybody that has questions.
00;56;38;23 - 00;56;40;11
John Azoni
All right well thanks for coming on the show.
