Holt Public Schools Superintendent David Hornak and Delhi Township Supervisor John Hayhoe created a local podcast for their community called “Talk with us Tuesdays” talking about local events going on in the community and how to get involved.
Hayhoe and Hornak will soon celebrate their 100th consecutive podcast together. The Podcast can be found at https://holtpublicsch.podbean.com/.
Hornak created the idea of the podcast after failed communication between the the local governments’ boards and their residents. He hopes this will allow the two to join together and stop rumors.
“We have done in partnership with the township many things to try and link our two organizations, but one is that we promote one another and we promote the amazing work that’s happening by making it visible in our hope that other people will tell our story for us,” Hornak said.
They are currently on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on the Holt schools side each day along with a weekly email every Sunday called the “Peak at the Week,” which reaches over 7,000 people. To help reach audiences without Internet access, information also appears in the local paper.
The podcast has over 2,200 followers. To help gain their followership, they continue to bring on different guests every week to keeps viewers listening and get the community involved.
“By having our guests on that helps create interest in our followership,” Honrak said. “The listeners on the podcast will bump up at times when we have someone who has a decent social media platform of their own because they will share and retweet. When it’s just John and I sometimes it drops down a little bit.”
When they first started, the two agreed it would be just the two of them and talking about local events. After their first few tests run, they found that if they would bring on new people they would gain a more interest.
Everyone who comes on the podcast is from the community and Hayhoe usually schedules speakers the day before they start recording their podcast for the week.
“We developed a very good relationship between our schools and the township,” Hayhoe said. “One of the things we do is that anyone who is involved with a project, community or an organization, we try to get them on the podcast because then we believe they will start listening to the podcast and their groups will listen to it.”
Area Girl Scout Manager Sara Reedy has been on the podcast several times this year to raise awareness about events with Girl Scouts and arts council.
“I’m very passionate about the things I volunteer for and I think it’s a great way to get the message out,” Reedy said.
There are no plans yet as to what they might do to celebrate their triple digit recording, but they might bring it to a local event at the end of the month. During their 50th, they did a Facebook Live event while recording their podcast to have the community involved.
“We’ll probably do some type of live event against to heighten our awareness and figure out a way to celebrate,” Hornak said. “There’s no way we can have a 100 guests.”