What better way to tell the stories of Wabash County residents and businesses, while capturing the sense of community, than to invite those folks to tell their stories using their own words?
By engaging in firsthand interviews and insightful discussions about Wabash County, Visit Wabash County hopes its next endeavor,
ThriveIN Wabash County Podcast, can get those stories out to the community and across the nation. Created as a way to combat population loss, the podcast is part of a county-wide branding initiative and marketing partnership that highlights the quality of place and life in Wabash County.
As executive director of
Visit Wabash County, Christine Flohr says her organization has two focuses: getting people to visit and experience the county, and then converting those visitors to residents. She oversees and executes projects and programs within the chief marketing organization for the county. She’s also one of the three ThriveIN Wabash County podcast hosts, alongside Alex Downard, president and CEO of the
Community Foundation of Wabash County, and Adam Stakeman, Visit Wabash County board president.
“The three of us are all podcast listeners, and always trying to learn what other communities or other organizations are doing within the economic and community development, tourism, marketing, and tech space,” Downard says. “As I was listening to these different podcasts, I recognized that Wabash County has incredible stories to be shared about the remarkable work we are accomplishing.”
Inspired by the
Destination Marketing Podcast, Downard had the idea to launch a podcast to promote the great work going on within the Wabash County community. Downard, Stakeman, and Flohr had a shared realization that Wabash County had its own story to tell.
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From left: Alex Downard, Adam Stakeman and Christine Flohr host ThriveIN Wabash County.“We have a lot of things we can highlight — a lot of people, organizations, and projects that are going on in our own community,” Downard says. “That really started the conversation with the three of us around what it looked like as part of our overall
Imagine One 85 county-wide comprehensive plan. Partnered with the branding and marketing work of Christine and her team, we thought about what it would look like if we created this podcast series to highlight those people and stories. It would be used as an internal and external communication tool to create more champions and awareness in Wabash County.”
The
ThriveIN Wabash County Podcast trailer dropped on May 27, and the
first full episode was released on June 3. The podcast is supported by the City of Wabash, Lisa Gilman Investment Fund, Sandra Kunkel Trust, Mark and Amy Ford, PaperWorks Industries, the Community Foundation of Wabash County, and Visit Wabash County.
Stakeman considers himself an early listener to the trend of podcasts, spending a lot of time listening to true crime or storyteller podcasts instead of the radio. Later on, he realized the value and education that podcasts could bring to listeners.
“When Alex shared that particular podcast episode, I realized it was more of that educational piece, bridging the gap between tourism and economic development,” Stakeman explains. “The three of us all had that lightbulb moment … we realized that we truly had a story that matched up to any of those podcasts that we could find out there.”
Leveraging the expert advice of local award-winning podcaster,
Shane Waters, they decided to launch across a multitude of platforms, including
Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, and
YouTube.
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Podcast Host and Expert Shane Waters talks with Alex Downard for the ThriveIN podcast.“In addition to that, the team at Visit Wabash County takes all of our raw data and images to produce shorts as well,” Stakeman says. “Those are used on YouTube and social media, so we’re taking our hour of dedicated time that we record in the podcast studio and finding ways to break that up across a variety of media outlets. We feel like we’re really maximizing our efforts in that area.”
Part of the podcast’s goal is to address population retention and attraction, Downard says.
“If we don’t get the population retention piece right, we have no chance at the attraction side,” he explains. “If we can get the part of that awareness level locally right, that’s our best chance at the opportunity to retain residents. Right now, we know that our audience is primarily going to be current residents, which is great. The idea is that we continue to instill the positive things that are going on in our community, and change perspective here locally, creating champions for what we have in Wabash County.”
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Erica and Jared Cordes, owners of The Cordes Berry Farm, were recent guests on the ThriveIN Wabash County podcast.Each of the podcast hosts brings their own expertise: Downard on community development, economic growth, and entrepreneurship; Stakeman on outdoor adventure, health and wellness; and Flohr on marketing, community collaboration, and tourism.
“Each of us will rotate one episode a month in that area of focus, and then once a month, the three of us will come together,” Flohr says. “We’ll either recap about what we’ve learned, talk about some hard-hitting issues affecting our county, or we may share a guest that all three of us have an interest in interviewing.”
Episodes are released every Tuesday, typically ranging in length from 30-55 minutes. An upcoming ThriveIN Wabash County podcast episode features an interview with City of Wabash Mayor Scott Long, scheduled to be released on Aug. 5.
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Heather Cruz of Manchester Alive: Main Street Chamber Alliance was a recent guest on the ThriveIN podcast.Future guests include local business owners, nonprofit leaders, educators, creatives, and more who call Wabash County home and are investing in its future. These overarching conversations prompt listeners to take action within the community.
By sharing Wabash County’s successes and struggles, Flohr says she hopes the transparency can inspire and help other towns and cities, too.
“We also want to inspire other communities that through sweat equity, grit, hard work, and perseverance, you can accomplish great things,” she says. “But at the same time, we know that we’re still facing struggles and hardships, and want to make sure that we’re relatable to other communities as well. We’re not afraid sometimes to have those hard conversations, we’re going to have to if we’re going to be honest and vulnerable with the listeners at times. We really want people to feel inspired and to think innovatively about their communities so they can leverage their own natural assets and resources.”
For more information or to inquire about being a guest on the podcast, you can send an email to
[email protected].
Find the
ThriveIN Wabash Podcast on
Spotify,
Apple Podcasts, or
YouTube.
This story was created in partnership with Visit Wabash County.