If you’ve lived in the Cape Cod and Plymouth area for a while, you’d recognize Stephanie Viva’s distinctive voice in less than it takes to name a tune playing on the radio.
Viva, who lives in Mashpee with her husband and family, has been a familiar radio personality for 25 years, most recently as a popular morning show co-host on iHeart radio’s 106 FM before being laid off last year due to budget cuts.
The classic making lemonade out of lemons adage certainly applies to her.
This year Viva launched a business appropriately named Lemonadio, reflecting her layoff situation “and making lemonade” by starting her own company helping businesses create podcasts as a marketing tool. She is one of 14 entrepreneurs involved in eForAll’s Spring 2021 Accelerator Program, where she hopes to gain business skills and knowledge from mentors to grow her business.
Viva hasn’t totally left radio; she was recently scooped up by The Dunes Radio X102.3 “Cape Cod’s Music Channel,” which started broadcasting April 1 (no joke!) Her morning program is called “And Stephanie,” which features guests and a different co-host every week.
But back to Lemonadio.
Lemonadio’s business angle is to educate businesses and organizations about the value of podcasting and help them get started in podcasting. Podcasting is a relatively new phenomenon in digital media. Basically, it’s a series of spoken episodes in digital audio that a user can download to listen on their computer, smartphone or other device. The most popular podcasts in the world are the New York Times’ The Daily and NPR News Now, but there are countless other companies and individuals, famous and not-so-famous, who use podcasts to further brand their business, educate or entertain.
“I find that here, on the Cape, people are not using it to brand their business,’ Viva says. “I saw a hole in the marketplace.”
Podcasts, she notes, are creating huge SEOs. The cost of producing a podcast is also less expensive than traditional advertising and analytics gained from a podcast are valuable.
“It brands you as an expert in your field,” Viva says. “You can share your mission, show your clients why you are an expert.”
Big business is also using podcasting as an internal communication tool, she adds.
Viva will set up a template for a podcast, explore licenses to music and other potential legal issues and direct her clients to apps and resources to create their own podcast.
She’s taught a course in how to get started in podcasting at Cape Cod Community College’s Center for Corporate Communication.
Viva’s favorite website is The Joe Rogan Experience, hosted by the comedian Joe Rogan. Her website (stephanieviva.com) also lists new favorites and of course, you can listen to episodes of her own podcast on Lemonadio Live. Recent episodes focused on the annual Dance Marathon supporting Cape Cod Health Care’s Women’s Early Detection Fund, Seaside Bridal’s owner Melane Wayburn, the women behind Orleans’ Wild Water Collective and even a plug about hiring Lemonadio to launch your podcast.
Keys to podcasting success?
“People get caught up on content,” she says. “Reuse your blog posts, for example. It’s also important to be consistent and create content constantly.“
