It is with great trepidation that I find myself all planned out, ready to do the first test-record this weekend and get myself started. Podcasting.
Living in Thailand these last 20 years, much has changed. In my Thai business, perhaps the greatest change has been technology, and the legal-tax-immigration framework within which we conduct our business.
Big step back. Firstly, what do I do? I run a fair trade, sustainable & natural company here in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, producing wellness, body care & lifestyle products which we ship all over the world. Pure Thai Naturals.
We are a social enterprise, Thai family business working with displaced ethnic Karen people to create opportunity and social profit.
It's quite the challenge having people relying on you so they can EAT - and these are largely stateless people who have no employment benefits or income, no right to work, per se, and no citizenship in any country. They're surviving high in the mountain regions with a lot of Christian NGOs (shudder) and few prospects. They're not looking for charity, but opportunity. And they happen to be camped out in some of the most pristine, organic land that is (thankfully) not hospitable to big business or mass tourism.
We teach them to grow what we need, buy it all back, and use the raw organic materials to make niche products.
I've been steadily blogging on Hive for 4 years now, and have a nucleus of core supporters who are really into what we do. But, fundamentally, they're not really CUSTOMERS buying product in any sort of volume. And volume is what's needed to enable this growing refugee community to survive after more than 70 years of civil war. When I share my Hive posts to my facebook pages, I get comments of some frustration from my followers who would like to comment on the blogs, but can't without opening a Hive account.
If there's one thing I've learned from 16 years on facebook etc, it's that I utterly dislike it. And it's also increasingly less profitable. Short form content creation is also a HUGE time sucker! You spend half a day creating some snappy bit of IG content that literally has a shelf life of not even 2 days. Blogs and long form content? They're not winners in terms of SEO in a world where video and other formats are automatically outranking them.
Unlike many podcasters, I have a HUGE and unique story to tell. And I've been working HARD to set my podcasting program up for success.
Each week I will interview one guest. My Thai sound/video guy will edit the raw files to create x1 audio podcast of about 25 mins (for RSS & spotify) and a 5 mins video highlights version for youtube. All of those obviously will be shared via my mainstream social media to help build SEO and drive traffic to build audience and, ultimately, sales. During that week I will publish some long-form blog versions of the content and am thinking to create a separate account here in Hive specifically for that - publish that original blog content simultaneously to my own website and to the Hive account. Thoughts?
Which brings me to the reason for this post: how best to engage with the decentralized Hive world with this content?
I'm 100000% open to dialogue and suggestions, but NEED people who respond to this post to understand that only using Hive right now is not an option - it simply doesn't lead to sales right now and we need mainstream appeal to drive enough sales to enable us to do the work we do with the refugee communities.
Hive gurus - I'm ready. Hit me. 
I have the first 2 months of guests agreed and confirmed, great microphone, the questions developed and my editor guy on standby.
Come check out my Pure Thai Naturals online store
