We recently connected with Roxanne Darling and have shared our conversation below.
Roxanne, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I have two!
Beach Walks with Rox: We were very early podcasters (in 2005) and wanted to experiment with video podcasting. Living in Hawaii at the time, I took my dog to the beach every morning for exercise. We started filming, mostly to test the technology, but had viewers in 60 countries in the first month (Feb, 2006). I realized that ‘what I wanted to be when I grew up’ hadn’t been invented until now! We went on to produce nearly 780 episodes, 2+ million downloads, and many awards.
For the Love of Nature: a self-portrait photography and poetry project. It started the day of my mother’s funeral, continued a year later when I went camping in the western US for two months. and wasn’t understood in my consciousness until yet another year later when I took a photo workshop. It’s a message from nature about aging, consumerism, and acceptance. I have a book, and have been in many juried art exhibitions.
Roxanne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I consider myself a serial specialist and have been an entrepreneur my entire life. My careers have ranged from marine biology, ballet, health coach for Johnson & Johnson, award-winning marketer and technologist, and artist. I love solving problems for other entrepreneurs and artists and at this stage of my life my toolbox is rich and diverse. I want to help people express themselves, via their website and marketing strategies, without being phony or a copycat. This is not easy as we work in a noisy marketplace. But standing out by being true to oneself is one of the best strategies unless you are just trying to sell a million widgets.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I was a very early adopter of social media. I saw great promise for individuals and small businesses. “Anyone can be a publisher!” While this is still true, the way we go about it has been overtaken, IMO, by formulas and a need for meaningless metrics. I regret that there is such a lack of authenticity in so much marketing these days, and I’ve learned that being quiet has a role to play. “Make them beg” means that when you share less, and only what’s meaningful, that people are thrilled to be there for you. Stop emailing so much. Stop posting so much. Fill your own creative tank and share when you have something of note or value. People can and do respond!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
While I was lucky to be an early adopter, my social marketing has always been focused on human to human interactions. I built a huge audience by having a daily video podcast — the only one in the early days to post 7 days a week. This was very hard work but I loved the feedback from our viewers. The content was very positive. I walked the beach in Hawaii with my dog Lexi and shared a few thoughts for a max of 5 – 6 minutes. I had no idea initially how this would affect people, but soon they began telling me things like:
I am going through cancer treatment and your episodes take my mind off the pain
I am crisis management expert in DC and when the shit hits the fan, I watch an episode or two to chill
I am feeling suicidal but your episodes and your responses to comments are keeping me here
Our 3 year old daughter won’t eat her porridge until we pull up the new episode of Beach Walks for her to watch!
I think it’s critical to respond to your audience, too, and I did to every single comment we received.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://roxannedarling.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/roxannedarling
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rox.darling.75/
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/roxannedarling
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/roxannedarling
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@beachwalks
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/@RoxanneDarling
https://barefeetstudios.com
https://barefeetblogs.com
https://beachwalks.tv
https://iamfortheloveofnature.com
https://biophilicartphotography.com
Image Credits
Initial portrait: Credit Tracy Wright Corvo
All other images credit Roxanne Darling