Producer Maribel Quezada Smith Of Diferente Podcast On Community-Building Your Way to Success

Embracing cultural diversity through a strong podcast community with Maribel Quezada Smith, Producer and Host of Smith of Diferente Podcast

Podcasting is a long game with a lot of opportunities. Among these is the opportunity to amplify cultural diversity through strong podcast communities. This is such an important conversation to have and I was thrilled to share this conversation with TV documentary and podcast producer?Maribel Quezada Smith.

Maribel is incredibly experienced in podcast launches and developing dedicated communities around each new show, by making strategic decisions that create deeper connections with your audience. Sounds like a lesson in podcasting 101 that should never be skipped. Maribel is the host of?Diferente,?where she shares her journey as a Mexican immigrant woman living in the United States who loves hip hop and cumbia. She co-founded the?BIPOC Podcast Creators Group?in order to help amplify the voices and stories of people of color, so we’re also going to talk about how-to’s when it comes to marketing to two entirely different markets at the same time.

“Diferente came from the idea of literally being different. Growing up in the United States and always feeling that I was different. Ironically, I was talking to a couple of family members, and I was thinking, “What should my podcast be called because I’m trying to think of something unique. It has to be something different.”

Setting Realistic Expectations

As an immigrant, as someone in the world of production, A-type is a label Maribel is very familiar with. When she launched her podcast, she didn’t want people looking from the outside saying, “She’s a producer and she isn’t putting out perfect, mind-blowing content every single time we hear from her.” This perception of potential judgement has a very debilitating effect on so many podcaster wannabe’s. This stops people from starting, keeps them from continuing on, and forces over editing and overthinking on the production side.

“When this comes into your creation process, it makes it hard to put out content in a meaningful or natural way. But you learn as you go, that the most important thing about creating a podcast is having something important to share or having a story to share and being able to relate to other people when you’re telling the story.”

Discretion Required

Community building is something that happens more naturally when we are in a space that we’re comfortable in. Some shows, I won’t name names, are all about outrage and chaos, and those shows oftentimes go into topics the host is definitely not an expert on. That doesn’t mean there’s one way to build things, but if you aren’t a household name, it is so important to stick to what you know.

“If you check out my very first episode, you’ll hear me talk about how I have a lot of uneducated and unresearched opinions, but I don’t share those out loud or in public with people. I try to keep those to myself. In that same spirit, I also don’t want to only view information that has been regurgitated or assumed or stereotyped. I want to speak from experience. I want my guests to speak from experience. The reason why the episodes are driven by a topic and not by the guests specifically is because we want to explore specific topics that relate to personal experience. Sharing in this way also creates deeper connections”

Taking Care of Each Other

Maribel explained to me, growing up as a person of color or “a minority” living in the United States, she was raised to believe that there’s only room for one or two at the table or at the top in leadership. That scarcity mentality, which I believe a lot of us grow up with, makes it feel like you have to fight for everything that you get, put other people down, or not bring others with you because they might take what could be yours. When we focus on uplifting and building a strong community with longevity, it’s so much easier to see how there is as much space as we are willing to create. I hear ads on true crime podcasts for other true crime podcasts all the time. Is it because the show in the ad wants to steal the other show’s listeners? Of course not. Because everything isn’t a threat. They are simply meeting their listener in a space they know they enjoy, and creating a new space for them as well. Community building, where we take care of one another, is the smartest business strategy you can employ.

Do It Anyway

Maribel, leaning into her own discomfort, added a few solo episodes to her show to address topics she felt really needed to be talked about. Embracing discomfort is not easy but it is part of the process when we’re talking about podcasting in general. It is amazing to look back now and see how much I truly did not know about hosting and launching. And sometimes I wonder how I got over all the humps and mishaps and lost episodes and technology failures and no show’s and the list goes on and on. But I believed in what I was offering, I wanted to build this community, and much like Maribel, I embraced the unknown.

“The main thing that I want to do with Diferente is to continue to explore the complexities of living life between two or more cultures and celebrate that. In doing that, I do believe that I have to share my story. I have to share my own journey in coming up in the United States as an immigrant, even in coming up in Mexico — and some of that isn’t comfortable to talk about — but that’s not going to stop me because my mission is bigger than my discomfort.”

Binge Factor:?What Maribel is building is actually beyond community. She is creating space for more voices to be heard, for more perspectives to be shared, and for more light to be shed on the struggles of the BIPOC community. Not only is she creating this in a way that is authentic, she is showing her listeners, with every episode, that she is human and invested, and that she cares. Her experiences make the show personal, her mission makes the feel like a place you want to be, and her ability to draw you in with a story and see you out with a heart full of empathy is something the world needs more of.

You can watch Tracy Hazzard’s full on-air podcast coaching with Maribel Quezada Smith below or listen to?The Binge Factor?on your favorite podcast player.