Podcasting: The Future of Communication at Bonita Bay Club
Oct 10, 2023Season 1Episode 1
Bonita Bay Club
Ever wonder how a premier club like Bonita Bay maintains constant communication with its members? As we navigate through the digital age, traditional methods like print and emails are merged with modern platforms like digital signs, our website, and chiefly, our state-of-the-art app. Becky Salaun, Jonathan Fossani, Kaylee Zuedima, and Jayne Rinne, offer insights into how we've enhanced our communication strategies at the club, using our app as a conduit. Unique features like an email feed to a QR code for amenities access allow us to keep our members updated and engaged, right at their fingertips.
As we continue to innovate, we are thrilled about podcasting as a new medium to reach out to our members. Highlighting future plans, we discuss how podcasts will be used to share club news, historical tidbits, and upcoming events. We also invite our members to be part of this exciting journey, encouraging them to share their suggestions on topics they would like us to cover. Come, join us, and be a part of the evolution of communication at Bonita Bay Club.
Ever wonder how a premier club like Bonita Bay maintains constant communication with its members? As we navigate through the digital age, traditional methods like print and emails are merged with modern platforms like digital signs, our website, and chiefly, our state-of-the-art app. Becky Salaun, Jonathan Fossani, Kaylee Zuedima, and Jayne Rinne, offer insights into how we've enhanced our communication strategies at the club, using our app as a conduit. Unique features like an email feed to a QR code for amenities access allow us to keep our members updated and engaged, right at their fingertips.
As we continue to innovate, we are thrilled about podcasting as a new medium to reach out to our members. Highlighting future plans, we discuss how podcasts will be used to share club news, historical tidbits, and upcoming events. We also invite our members to be part of this exciting journey, encouraging them to share their suggestions on topics they would like us to cover. Come, join us, and be a part of the evolution of communication at Bonita Bay Club.
Speaker 1:
Hello Bonita Bay Club members, welcome to our first podcast today. It's the first week of October and we're excited for our first podcast. Yes, we are Yay. Joining us today is Jonathan Fossani and he is our Creative Content Coordinator.
Speaker 2:
It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:
And we have Kaylee Zuidema, our Communications Coordinator Thanks for having me. And we have Jayne Rinne, our HR Coordinator Thanks for having me. There we go. So what are we gonna talk about today? Today, I think, is because it is our first podcast and we're mainly talking about communications, because it's changed so much over the years. I remember when I first started here 24 years ago, a lot of our members did not even wanna have emails. They wanted everything hard copy. But things have changed a little bit. What are different formats, Kaylee, that we're using today.
Speaker 3:
We have a lot of different formats. We have social media, we have print, we have emails, we have digital signs around the club. We have our website, we have our app, which we're really starting to lean more into.
Speaker 1:
And that's why, especially on this podcast, I'd like to encourage members to get the Bonita Bay Club app and either the Google Store or or the App Store, or the App Store.
Speaker 3:
If you're on the iPhone, it's App Store. If you're on an Android, it's Google Play Store. Google Play, yeah.
Speaker 1:
If we download the app, there's a great feature in it where it has a feed right in the middle of the app where, along with the directory, you can get members' information there and make reservations on the app. But they also have a feed where every email that we send out is right on that feed and they're able to just locate it right there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's an awesome feature. Because, everybody gets emails from a thousand different places, a thousand different people, and you have to search through to find the ones from the club if you're looking for something specific. But now you can go straight to the app, click that Feed button and find all the communications we've sent out.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love it, I use it all the time and I think it's a great tool. So I'm encouraging all our members to download that app because we're also gonna be using it over at the pool gate area, because on the app they have member card with our codes on it and you can just or a QR code and you can just scan it. The scanner is up already. If you don't have your fob with your keys, you can use the scanner right on your phone. So I just saw one member use it today. I told her about it and I said but I haven't sent an email out yet, which I will, or maybe by the time the podcast goes live the email might have already gone live yeah it might.
Speaker 3:
We'll see how that goes, but she was all excited, she was wow, this is so cool, yeah, and it's something that we're hoping to expand to the fitness center and the spa, basically anywhere, you would use your fob Exactly. Eventually, you'll be able to use that app that way. If you don't have your keys or we do have issues with the fobs going dead sometimes, yeah, not working, but you have the member card that everybody has.
Speaker 1:
So that's great. So, jane, yes, hr communications. I know you know we're gonna talk about more our member communications, but we're also doing podcasting. That we thought it would be a great tool because you know it's challenging to communicate to the employees From time to time and try to get all of them Online with everything that's happening. How do you see podcasting being beneficial to your, to all the employees here at the Bonita Bay Club?
Speaker 4:
Yeah, I think it's a super helpful addition to all of the different ways that we try to Pass out information to everyone, and I'm excited to be able to try to talk about some of the employees here, try to have them on the podcast and get their stories out and just get to know that different people from different departments. I know there's a ton of employees here who have been here for years and years and that's a really special thing about Bonita Bay Club, so I think it'll be fun to have them. Yeah, it really is we have.
Speaker 1:
That's what makes Bonita Bay Club special is we have so many employees that have been here, you know 10, 15, 20 years and and it's just like a family here. So to get to know them a little bit more would be really, I think all of us would be like wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I went to a conference actually last year in Houston, a communications conference, and they had one club where they did like a monthly or weekly Podcasts with just employees talking about themselves, which I thought was, you know, a great idea, and so that's kind of got me on the road to podcasting. I'm like, okay, maybe you know it's always we like to try something new, you know, because we have such a wide range of members, different ages, from really young to your older crowd, mature crowd. I should say that you know there's different ways of communicating and everybody hears it in different ways and if we can get you know certain percentage to listen it in, whether it be digital signs or through podcasting or emails, we're getting the word out at today's stage is such a fast pace, information is constantly going really fast. Where do you listen to all your communications?
Speaker 3:
I find almost all of my communications on social media and I listen to a lot of podcasts. Most of them are fun podcasts are not necessarily informational podcasts, but I think podcasting is really popular with my generation and I think it's starting to get more popular with everybody because it's mainly an audio medium, which is very different than the rest of the communications that we use. Most of the communications we use is visual and this is an audio medium, so people can put this podcast on while they're driving, while they're cleaning, while they're walking, while they're cooking. Just put it on in the background while they're doing other stuff.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I you know what I think is. Another tool that we can use is we'll probably add a button on our app, the member app, so they can get the the Podcasts right from there and be able to tap on whichever one they want and also, maybe, down the road, get like an app for our Employees where they be able to.
Speaker 1:
That'd be cool, yeah, yeah so, like we're always, you know, looking for ways to expand our communications. How can we get the message out to everybody in a timely fashion and so everybody will get the information at the same time. This year we're also using a lot of videos, thanks to Jonathan, our creative content coordinator, who's been on board a little over six months and he's a Welcome asset to Bonita Bay Club. His videos and photography are really gonna kind of up the mark for for us here in our department. We're gonna try Thanks.
Speaker 2:
You know I love being here and you know when we first started it was just. You know we were going to a couple events taking pictures, and you know I was getting started right at the end of last season. Yeah, right, right before the Classical.
Speaker 1:
So, and you are worried that this summer oh, am I gonna be busy Becky.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's been a crazy summer.
Speaker 1:
It's crazier than during season, so yeah, yeah, we've been getting a lot of videos ready so that members can see them. You know, all during season sports instructional videos coming out.
Speaker 2:
We got tennis, pickleball, croquet. We already do the golf ones. We're gonna start helping them out a little better, so make everything look good, yeah, and we're doing some recruitment videos.
Speaker 4:
How has? Where do you?
Speaker 1:
put those recruitment videos.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, so Johnny has just been making videos that kind of give a little snapshot of what each job description we have that's open right now. So if we post a new job, applicants can see just a little idea of what it might look like in a day in the life of the new job, which is awesome, it's another way to kind of I think that's a great tool.
Speaker 1:
So let's go back to podcasting, because I'm so excited about it. I never thought I would feel really comfortable talking in front of a microphone, but this atmosphere here makes it really comfortable.
Speaker 3:
I think everybody does.
Speaker 1:
It feels very casual, very casual. We're having a conversation, but yet our members will be able to get some information from it, and one of the things that I wanted to bring up was some future. What do they have to look forward to? So we're doing this, this is our podcast intro, but what kind of podcasts are we gonna be doing in the future? I think, as Fred mentioned in his video with EJ, we're gonna be doing a lot of instructional podcasts with the instructional staff of golf, but we're also gonna extend that to the sports center with pickleball and fitness and tennis and some of the other things that we're gonna be talking about is the culinary team. Also, we sent out an email regarding the housing project over at the sales center and how that got approved by the city council. So we could do podcasts on that with Fred and Joseph, because sometimes we wanna have these discussions and to articulate it and make it so long that three pages long that a lot of members don't wanna.
Speaker 3:
Sit and read that much information. Yeah, it's a lot easier to listen to it.
Speaker 1:
It's a lot yeah, and I think it articulates better when you're talking about it and it explains it better. So I think that would be a great topic to use. We're also gonna. Maybe we thought about hey, how about discussing the history of Bonita Bay Club? How many of our new members really know all the history that's involved since the beginning back in 1985 when it started? Like, again, I've been here 24 years. All the history of Bonita Bay Club, it's fascinating. We could do one we're definitely gonna do one for the USTA event or do a few podcasts to try to promote that event, since it's really popular. A lot of wonderful tennis players that have come through.
Speaker 3:
Coco Gauff was in our first one and look, look where she is now, look where she is now.
Speaker 4:
I know I love her I know, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1:
So to have a podcast for the USTA event and even during the event in the end of April, beginning of May, we probably might do a live stream podcast.
Speaker 3:
So that will be exciting to put together, yeah and we talked about doing sort of the same type of thing at the classic or the invitational, some of our big golf tournaments where we have a table set up and maybe where everybody's having lunch one of the central areas where everybody's coming in and we can just pull members in and sit down and talk with us for a few minutes and get their perspective on things.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, definitely definitely Also Melissa. I thought that would be a good podcast to Melissa Hemingway, who's our wine sommelier. She's so wonderful at talking about wines. I've attended some of her classes and it's amazing her knowledge of wines and I think every member that knows her and that purchases wines from her are just in awe of her, because she's very, very good at her job.
Speaker 1:
Very knowledgeable and very passionate, yes, very passionate, and so I'd love to have her on a podcast maybe how with some of his staff, or agronomy, and give us some information that our members are not aware of. We can do podcasts on that. So these are the different I mean I can go on and on and on of all the different podcasts that we can have or that we will have. I would love to have some with members also. There's, I'm sure, a lot of members, their backgrounds that we'd be like wow, you really did that, or that we don't know about.
Speaker 3:
And we also want to hear what the members want us to talk about. Yeah, what they want to hear about.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, suggestions will always be open. You can send all your suggestions to our communications department at bbcmfo, at bonitabayclubnet, and I'm looking forward to doing more podcasts and having more discussions and our communications team. Maybe down the line, after we've created a few podcasts, we might get together and do another one and see how we've grown with it.
Speaker 1:
A little check in A little check in and see if we've heard some feedback from members and how they have enjoyed it, and so we will give more information as time goes on on different topics that we'll be doing. Thank you very much, our Bonita Bay Club members, for listening. We hope you continue to listen to our new podcast and we look forward to bringing it to you. So thank you again and you have a wonderful day.