Naomi: [00:00:00] My name is Naomi Mellor. I guess I should say that I had no background in audio or the creative industries before I started podcasting. I'm actually a veterinarian by trade I started podcasting four or five years ago. When I was at a bit of a lull in my career, I had just relocated to a new area of the UK with my husband's job, where I didn't know anybody.

And I was unemployed for a little while. And I actually started a podcast as a bit of a challenge to myself. My first podcast, which is still running is called smashing the ceiling, and it was conversations with women with unusual. Inspiring careers. I fell in love with podcasting from there, and over a period of time just carried on intermittently.

My podcast had a few breaks, and then I was asked to produce some podcasts in the veterinary space. Initially, people kind of realize that I was a vet and a podcast, and there weren't many other vets that knew how to meet. And then during the pandemic, I just really realized that podcasting had become real passion and that I wanted to combine my passion for raising up other [00:01:00]women and nonbinary folk in the podcasting world with my love of podcast.

And so I founded the first European based network for women and nonbinary podcasters, which is called the Skylark collective. we teach, we connect, we collaborate. And as part of that, I also then had the idea to start an award ceremony which is the international women's podcast awards. The first one of those was held last year in London and the 2022 edition. That will be. In London in September. 

Laura: I want to talk a little bit about that award ceremony, because as the person who is sort of putting all of this on and bringing it all together, when you look at the winners, what did all of those submissions have in common?

Naomi: So the way the awards are structured is a little bit different to other awards. We don't have categories for the best documentary podcast or best sports podcast or best comedy podcast or whatever. What I wanted to actually reward where. Really intimate, special moments that people were creating [00:02:00] in podcasting.

So you might be a comedy podcast, but have a real moment of raw emotion in there. Or you have this real moment of cliffhanger drama, which left your listeners just waiting for your next episode. One of them.

The moment of behind the scenes brilliance, because the other thing I wanted to really acknowledge where the unsung heroes and heroines of podcasting so that's writers, producers, editors anyone that makes your podcast tech, I guess. So there was eight categories. And so what we were really looking for was the quality of audio production, even with indie podcasts that hadn't been going for very long.

You know, Laura and Nate would have taught that about the fact that you don't need to be in a professional recording studio to be creating good quality sound they were really looking for the impact of the moment. So whatever the category was that was the, how did it make them feel? 

What was the special-ness I suppose if the moment that you are submitting and the third thing was originality. So how different was it to the other things that we were hearing? How unique was that moment that you'd captured? How much did that make them sit back in their chair or catch their breath or whatever?

Because these categories are structured in quite a different way, the breadth of the entries that we had was really quite startling. I mean, we had a lot more entries than I was ever expecting. 

We had submissions from India, New Zealand, Spain, the Caribbean all over the place. It was just really amazing 

Laura: I want to step back a little bit and ask you a bigger question about awards, why should podcasters submit for awards and how do they know that they're ready to submit for awards, 

Naomi: one thing I always encourage people to do is to just put yourself forward, because if you don't do it, nobody else.

Well I also really feel that my. In the podcasting bubble is to serve small to medium-sized indie podcasts, which is not to say that I don't see the value in professionally produced very successful podcasts. But for me, I think the most impact I can have is with people like you, Laura to be quite honest people for whom the recognition of even being shortlisted will do something for them.

I think when I look at what some of my finalists and some of my winners from last year have done with their nomination or their win in terms of helping to boost their profile, it's really. Brilliant. One of the podcasts cross that one is called creativity, found and play.

Who's the winner of that. She's a member of the skylight collective actually or has joined subsequently, she did a lot of press releases. She was in her local newspaper. She was on her local news. She was on her local radio she really used it as an opportunity to spread the word very locally about her podcast.

And she has really utilize that as a springboard a little bit like you as well, Laura, 

Laura: it definitely changed the conversations that I was having in the industry. After winning that award. So thank you. I mean, it has definitely made a difference in the work that we're doing.

Naomi: it validates what you're doing. it gives people proof [00:05:00] of concept and it really shows that your work is recognized for its quality for. It's impact and for what you're doing and for potentially the community that you're building around your listenership.

And actually we don't judge these awards on how many listeners you have. You know, there's a lot awards where you have to detail about how many downloads you're getting per episode. I'm just not that interested in that because I don't think the importance or influence of a show is related to the number of downloads you're receiving. I think there were an awful lot of people out there doing important work who had their downloads are in the hundreds or the thousands as opposed to the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, or even God forbid the millions, you know? and those are the people that I think. Should and can be recognized. Our entry price point is very low. This year we're partnering with the podcasting seriously fund for LGBTQ plus and BiPAP creators as well entering awards can really give you a boost if you do it in the right. 

Laura: What's the biggest mistake that you see [00:06:00] people make when it comes to submitting their podcasts for awards.

Naomi:  Well I guess the first thing, which sounds obvious, but it was amazing how many people fell out. The first hurdle was not reading the terms and conditions. We specified that the episode you were submitting had to be from, within the previous 12 months that you had to have released a minimum of five episodes on your podcast that were still available.

And that all of the audio you were submitting had to be from one episode. 

So you could flip up sections of your episode as you did, to them into a 10 minute MP3, or you could submit a continuous stretch of audio. Or they could send us a link to an episode with just a timestamp for the section of audio that they wanted us to listen to. We gave people that choice, 

If your audio is not continuous within that 10 minute period, don't submit that you need to make an MP3. You will need to do a bit more editing and Clippers together, which is more time consuming. And it's the reason that I give people the chance to do it through the timestamp, because I felt that some people were being turned off from [00:07:00] entering by the level of work required to edit out a 10 minute clip.

But. if you've got to do the timestamp, it has to be decent. but it was amazing how many people clipped up several different episodes and put them into a one or as a kind of montage of their best bits.

for awhile, I was emailing people back saying, you haven't read the instructions. Please feel free to resubmit if you like, but this will not be moved forward, no matter how good it is, I'm afraid. And we had some good podcasts doing that, you know, some really good podcasts. So that is lesson number one.

Make sure you read the instructions carefully because every podcast awards has different specifications. So that was number one. The second one is don't send something that just sounds a bit rubbish. if you've got a section of audio that is not very good quality, it's probably not going to win. that is no slur on small, independent podcasts, because there is a lot of small Indies doing fantastic work out there, If your audio or your guests, audio is [00:08:00] poor. It's probably not worth submitting that.

And I think things that were just very badly recorded were. Put away pretty quickly to be quite honest. 

And we did again, have quite a lot of podcasts that clearly had been recorded on zoom. They had that sort of slight tinniness about them, the audio quality wasn't great. And some of them, because That content was really good were forwarded to the shortlist, but none of them came in the top two because the judges were scoring them down on that.

The other one was late submission, which was the absolute bane of my life which was, you know, we sent out, we left the window open for quite a long time.

I can't remember if it was six or eight weeks last year. It was quite a long period. Anyway, and then I sent out multiple reminder emails and then some people were submitting. Late at night on the day, which was fine, but the number we closed on a Friday and the number of emails I got over the weekend, it was ridiculous.

And then it just got to a point where the following week, I just said, no, absolutely not. I'm sorry, this is an absolute cutoff. [00:09:00] So I think if you're going to think about entering awards, don't leave it to the last minute. You'll do a better job if you're better prepared and you have thought about it and you've given it enough time, 

Laura: what do you wish that every podcasts are understood about this industry?

Naomi: I think that a it's not easy to make money and B it's not easy to keep going. I probably my two big ones, it's quite easy to start a podcast. It's less easy to start a really good podcast and it's even less easy to keep a good podcast going. And it's even less easy , to keep a good podcast going and make it financially viable.

I think the biggest thing that I didn't do that I wish I had was to have a proper marketing plan before I started. 

I always say that the reason that we exist is to raise up the voices of others. That is my mission at the skylight collective is to raise the voices of women and non binary podcast is I want them to be championed.

I want them to be elevated. I want them to be [00:10:00] rewarded, in whatever metric success means for you. I do have my own poker. It occasionally it makes a little bit of money, but nothing significant. But what I actually exist to do is to help other people.

And I wanted to start the international women's podcast awards because there's one big award ceremony in the UK, the seven in the states, but none of them solely reward the work of women and nonbinary folk. And I just feel that that is an important space. That needed to be filled. 

I should say lower that I have no background in events. I had never organized a big event on my own before. And I guess the last thing that I would say is that if you have a vision or a dream about something, you can make it happen. I mean, I made that happen and it was hard work.

Don't get me wrong, but. I had a vision in my head. I knew what the venue was going to be. I could see in my mind's eye, what that event was going to be like, who I wanted to be there, what I wanted the energy to be like in the [00:11:00]room. And I tell you every single little bit of it came true. We went around to the girls at the event.

And the support, the joy, the laughter I think it was partly due to the fact that it was the first time people had been allowed to help, but it was crazy exciting. And , there was no sense of I'm so sad. I didn't win.

It was, I'm so happy that you won. And that is the kind of ethos that I aim to create a place where. People can come together to celebrate one another, to learn from one another, to recognize each other's work and really by creating those connections to take each other along on that journey.

And I think, you know, you and I have a friendship now whereby we connect each other with other people. And that's one thing that, that is my forte is connecting people together. I love doing that. So I connect my members with other people all the time. I give out opportunities to other people as often as I can, because I love [00:12:00] doing it.

And you know what? It comes back around again, because I've had some opportunities land in my lap recently and, you know, call it karma, call it fate, whatever you want to call it. I think what goes around comes around. And that is the way I aim to run my business and to run Skylark.