The Best NJspots
0:00
[Music] [Applause] [Music]
0:07
[Applause] [Music]
0:13
forever all right what's up everybody welcome
0:18
back to another episode of greetings from the garden state i'm mike ham we are here at the jefferson diner today good friends of the show former guests
0:25
so appreciate them letting us use the space but we're here with virginia buchel yes nailed it uh i've like forgot
0:31
how to say it as i was saying it um and you run the nj spots instagram account
0:37
yep uh so very excited to have you on another person that loves jersey and yeah thanks for having me of course yeah
0:42
no i'm really excited and uh when we were talking about having you on i was like yeah this is perfect we just needed a place to do it
0:49
and thankfully the guys nick and jimmy here at the diner were open to have us having us here but um so let's learn a
0:55
little bit about you first so the person behind nj spots because ng spots has about was it 65 000 followers we just
1:01
hit 66 last week i think it was so good who's counting yeah right
1:07
but uh but like we always like to kind of learn about like the stories of the people behind the places that we go or the places you know that support jersey
1:14
in different ways so let's kind of like learn a little bit about you what you do beyond nj spots and kind of go from there yeah yeah absolutely so um i i
1:20
work in marketing so i'm a full-time marketing director for the last 10 years
1:26
and i'm a full stack marketer so what that means is i do everything from social media to paid marketing to email
1:32
marketing to projects on websites so that's what i do as my everyday job but before that i was i was a college
1:39
athlete played four years down at arcadia university down outside of philly um played softball third base
1:45
ever played baseball in college perfect there we go arcadia but tcnj but oh i almost went there oh that would have
1:50
been great we would have been like semi-teammates right yeah basically um yeah so i went there i actually
1:56
majored in history which is completely opposite of marketing yeah i was a political science major so you could see
2:02
the direct correlation between of course what i'm doing now and that obviously it all makes sense yeah this is exactly
2:08
what our professors wanted exactly yeah um so i came out of college and i i wanted to go work in museums the
2:14
recession hit um right after like a couple years before i graduated college and
2:19
i just couldn't get a job at museums and so i really liked researching things so i
2:25
turned to marketing and here i am and uh i i kind of just fell into marketing and
2:30
i fell in love with it because every day it's different yeah and then um it kind of developed into you know just what i
2:37
do every day with projects including nj spots so yeah a lot of people think with nj spots it's just like a marketing
2:44
brand and uh i know early on i remember like growing it a lot of people were like oh there's actually a person behind
2:49
it i'm like yeah there's a person behind everybody every instagram account so um it was cool to kind of just get involved
2:55
in that way where it's like i brought my marketing skills to something that people didn't even realize there was a
3:01
person behind yeah so so i guess like maybe the obvious question would be like
3:06
why in new jersey so you start an instagram account like why did you pick to do an instagram account on jersey you
3:12
could have done a history based yeah instagram account exactly kind of like marry that love of wanting to work in
3:17
museums and maybe not um but like take me through that so yeah why new jersey so
3:23
in i believe it was 2014 i traveled to utah with my dad for
3:29
a week um it was my first time going we were hiking it was it was a couple years after i had instagram because i
3:36
got my first iphone in 2011 and uh it was you know instagram was the new thing so i think i joined instagram
3:42
in 2012. and so 2014 i went to utah hiked over 70 miles in a week with my
3:47
dad and while i was there i was just following all these instagrams that were sharing all these cool places in utah
3:53
i'm like this is awesome like this is so cool i didn't know all these places existed right and then it came back to
3:58
jersey because of i was born raised in jersey and i'm like you know i know that a lot of people have this like
4:04
stereotype about jersey and like we all of course especially if you're born here everybody says the same
4:10
thing it's crap and you're full of it and you don't really know who you are um but i was like you know i would love to
4:15
have an instagram account similar to the ones i was following out in utah yeah to find these really cool places that
4:20
people don't even know exist right to kind of bash the stereotypes like that was my goal is like i started it for the
4:27
purpose of just showing all these cool places because i almost felt liberated when i went to
4:32
utah because like it's just so massive out there and anybody that's listening that may not have gone if you have a chance to go i i i totally say go here
4:40
to promote other states no virginia i'm sorry i'm so sorry
4:46
but um no it's just it opened my eyes and i'm like there's places like this around here like you don't have to
4:51
travel to utah utah to get that feeling like that was like kind of like my whole basis around it so when it came back i
4:57
was like looking through instagram like yeah there's not really anything out there like so i tried to think of like a really simple
5:04
because hashtags where he was huge back then try to find a really short simple one that people would remember and i
5:10
started using the hashtag nj spots and started to promote people that were taking pictures of awesome places around
5:16
here and then kind of fast forward to now that was back in june 2015 i started it okay so
5:22
it's been going basically for like seven years oh yeah yeah yeah which is impressive thank you um yeah i mean
5:27
because we had uh carrie from jersey collective yes love carrie yeah and so it was like a similar story i feel like
5:33
because she was she might be the same amount of time almost yeah i think she started the year just before me yeah and
5:39
uh because we've done a lot of meetups together which has been really cool but yeah it's kind of like right around the same time there's a few different like
5:45
new jersey hubs that came out yeah so uh so you start with the hashtag like the
5:51
nj spots hashtag and i've seen your stuff on like your own account where you're talking about like hashtags yeah
5:57
you know you got to like we'll get into that um but uh so take me through also like you know maybe like the purpose
6:04
behind it i know you said that you were uh highlighting people that were taking pictures around the state um but was
6:10
that something that like when you started you were like oh this is what we're gonna do we're gonna highlight other people's pictures yes or just like
6:15
i'm gonna go and take pictures no like i i obviously have a camera but i was not
6:20
planning to take the pictures and go out i mean i i featured some of my pictures but really my my whole goal was to feature
6:27
other people's pictures yeah um because even though new jersey's a small state it's really not because it's like
6:34
there's just so many different places you could go to and it's just such a jam-packed state so i wanted to use it
6:40
as an opportunity to yes i could be biased and show you all the places that i like but there's lighthouses there's
6:47
places down by the shore that i would that wasn't always accessible to me right so uh from the very get i just
6:53
wanted to feature other people because there's there's there's phenomenal talented photographers in the state yeah and i'm
7:00
definitely not one of them so i'm like i might as well just feature
7:05
everybody else because they've really cool places that they're sharing yeah so i think that's cool because i think like you know like you said i mean i like
7:11
certain places yeah i obviously like the diner here this is why i'm here again and then have come here
7:16
plenty of times but i think like one of the things i think is interesting too is like the same kind of thing we're talking about with kerry is that there's
7:22
like so many people that have so many different perspectives on like what jersey's all about and all the cool things that are here and like you just
7:28
don't even know because there's yeah you said it's small yeah but it's got so much stuff just packed in here yeah like
7:35
you could do basically like anything like think of it you could do it yeah you know like you can go hiking or the
7:40
beach you can go to into the city you um can go all that in three hours in three hours and three hours of driving i should say
7:46
right yeah you're obviously gonna spend some time you know but uh but i think that's really cool and i think a good way to kind of like show some different
7:52
perspectives so maybe like early on um what were some things early on that you were seeing and
7:58
happening with the account that you were just like oh this might actually be something that can get some legs and
8:03
kind of turn into something bigger yeah i mean it's funny because it wasn't even a lot of people especially with
8:09
instagram or really anything with like any type of project you want to grow your following right but what i was
8:15
noticing it wasn't the following that was growing as much as the people using the hashtag because it was really easy
8:21
to remember so what i found is so many people tens of thousands of people started using this
8:27
hashtag and i'm like all right like this is catchy like people are sharing like off the beaten path places
8:34
with my hashtag so i'm like this is something that like it's almost like hey uh this is like my backyard spot that
8:41
i'm sharing with you and i'm not really going to use like the insta-famous you know hashtags that everybody else
8:47
was using yeah so it was cool because it was like this the super niche hashtag that everybody was using and
8:53
then the following of nj spots account started growing with it
8:58
exactly exactly yeah yeah so can you tell us a little bit about hashtags yeah i can't i
9:04
could talk like for a whole episode but we're not going to do that because it's super boring and people will be like all right i didn't come here for that yeah
9:10
well i'm just curious just kind of like learn a little bit about it just because you know obviously that's like a big thing yeah it's one of the things that you do yeah um so i would love to kind
9:17
of like you know a spark notes version of like hashtags and like what the importance i guess yeah yeah from the
9:23
garden state does not make a good hashtag we can always you know shorten it somehow and make it more
9:29
user-friendly we'll figure something out it has to be catchy yeah it does but you could do something i mean i can't super
9:34
workshop right now because i have so many things going on in my mind right now but we could totally work on something but
9:40
the importance of hashtags are huge i mean it's it's really twitter was like the kind of cultivator of the hashtag i would say
9:48
facebook tried to dabble in a little bit and then they just took over instagram and said anyway so then they just use
9:53
the hashtags there but specifically speaking about instagram because that's where most of my experience is is
9:59
it allows you to get seen by people who would never ever find you otherwise right um and i think one of the biggest
10:06
things that people do that is really beneficial is they change up their hashtags and that's when they see
10:12
themselves trending on hashtags and now you can follow hashtags on instagram um
10:17
the key with hashtags is not just to show up on those pages but what's really cool about it is it allows the algorithm
10:25
of instagram to understand your pictures better so think of it almost as like a closed captioning for not
10:45
so maybe available like a mountain a waterfall and the sky in the picture without even knowing what your picture
10:50
really looks like right and then what's cool is they'll be able to start matching that up with other similar
10:56
content that you might be trending for and then you throw in some random hashtag like nj
11:01
spots then all of a sudden you're showing up to people in new jersey too right because it's specific to those people within that
11:07
area yeah yeah so obviously instagram we're not that famous in nj spots where instagram knows like oh nj spots is only
11:14
new jersey like they don't know that right but they realize that the people that are using the hashtag are only in
11:20
this area gotcha so linking it with like you know locations i mean it can get a
11:25
little redundant to like constantly be like oh hashtags hashtag hashtags more recently instagram actually said that
11:32
they're like thinking of getting rid of not getting rid of but like not really using them as much but they're still
11:37
really valid they're still really important it helps you get seen helps you get found yeah um but yeah i mean the thing with nj spots is it was catchy
11:44
it was easy to remember right it's uh it's in all my stuff all my posts i put it in every single one perfect which i
11:50
don't know if it's good or bad because i use like the same main ones core and then i add on like
11:55
today's episode that posted today was the asbury park distilling company no that's smart so that's a free park and
12:00
that's good and all that kind of stuff we're just like slammed in at the end yep you know so that's that was kind of like my thing no that's no that's good i
12:07
mean i same thing what we do in nj spots is i have a core set of hashtags that i
12:12
use for almost every single post that we feature and then we add you know like you mentioned
12:17
asbury park we'll add you know if it's a certain business name we'll add a business name
12:23
hashtag typically i try not to tag businesses just because that's kind of not what i'm about with nj spots yeah um
12:30
but yeah i mean it's good to keep a core set like i know for my own personal instagram i'll use like sony alpha
12:36
female because i have sony alpha camera and they have a female page where it's like all chicks that are taking pictures
12:43
so i'll use one like that which is kind of specific to me okay so like it's cool because i think early on in
12:49
instagram those hashtags really allowed you to find like these really tight-knit communities and so it allowed you to
12:55
kind of just stay within that community but also expand with other hashtags without having to like tag accounts and
13:00
connect with accounts and find other people like you could just get found and you know what i like to do one of the
13:06
biggest tips that i would give for whatever hashtags you use because we all like to think in our own little
13:12
tunnel yeah click on your own hashtags once in a while and go see what they see yeah because you might
13:18
be using a hashtag that you think is really good when all of a sudden you're like um this is not what i'm posting at all right like why are there people with
13:25
dogs and cats uh and a cup of coffee you know so um no hashtags are really
13:30
they're really powerful i think they're more powerful than like tagging accounts in my own opinion because i think it
13:35
just like ties more things together than just like tagging a business or a page right yeah because it's just one that's
13:42
the only exactly you get one exactly and then yeah like one place but just like that's the only place that gets and if
13:47
they don't see it right because speaking from experience here when you reach
13:53
10 to 15 000 followers you don't see everything you can just don't you can't
13:58
i mean as much as you want to you just can't so like i always tell people if you're trying to grow your audience
14:04
hashtags is the first place you should start because if you just keep tagging like i'm a huge fan of iceland i went to
14:10
iceland awesome place to go not better than new jersey though i don't know where we stand on other
14:16
countries okay so other states are out okay absolutely so enough like new york we're not even going to talk about yet
14:22
yeah we don't need to you should actually cut that part out but um the sensor b exactly yeah and be like
14:29
what'd you say um but with iceland there's like a couple iceland pace pages that everybody
14:35
just constantly tags well it's like they've got hundreds of thousands of followers they're not gonna see you tag it yeah right but the people who are
14:41
tagging and using their hashtag might find you and they might find you interesting and follow you yeah hashtags
14:47
are really powerful it's really really hard to like crack the code on them too i'm trying constantly trying to yeah um
14:53
i just know that they're super important to continue to use and just really like like you said like have a course set is
14:59
good but change them up right don't use the same ones over and over and over again even if your instagram looks like
15:04
one of those pretty perfect instagrams same tone same colors don't keep using the same ones because you're just it's
15:09
not gonna help you mine doesn't look like that but i don't i don't want it no you don't you shouldn't be unique yeah
15:14
exactly that's what a new jersey right yeah it's homage of everything exactly yes well said um so that was great uh so
15:22
we're in the second segment we're gonna learn more about kind of like where nj spots is now and kind of the progression that it kind of took um but uh so we're
15:28
taking our first break of this episode so this is the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we're here with virginia beuchel i'm gonna crush
15:35
that for the rest of the episode of nj spots we're here at the jefferson diner we'll be right back
15:41
today in new jersey history is sponsored by silverstream studio a full-service podcasting studio gallery and retailer of oddities in montclair new jersey
15:48
check them out on instagram at silverstream studio nj boxer marvelous marvin hagler was born
15:53
on may 23 1954 in newark new jersey he was the undisputed world middleweight champion from 1980 to 1987. he would get
16:01
upset that the sportscasters would often not use his nickname marvelous so in 1982 he legally changed his name to
16:07
marvelous marvin heckler and that is today in new jersey history
16:14
all right we're back for segment two of this episode of greetings from the garden state i'm mike hamm we are here with virginia buchel at nj of nj spots
16:20
at the jefferson diner uh so in the first segment we kind of learned a little bit about your background uh we learned how nj spots got started we got
16:27
a great lesson on hashtags which you know certain version is basically like poking the bear and then you just like
16:32
it's all going to come out but in the second segment we kind of we're gonna learn a little bit about like
16:38
what that like we learned a little bit of the progression of nj spots we're gonna kind of learn what nj spots is all
16:43
about now because you told me before we started recording that it's a little bit different than maybe when you first started yeah absolutely so um
16:50
when i first started nj spots i obviously was trying to share a lot of photos and i really
16:55
i guess my end game at that point was really just like grow a following and see what happened um ironically i
17:02
actually started a another hashtag project a few years before that that fizzled out it was a hashtag sunglass
17:10
scene and it was pictures of things reflected
17:15
in sunglasses so it was cool it was a cool concept yeah but um and i think i grew it to
17:20
like maybe 1500 followers that's pretty good but thank you but it kind of like fizzled out because it was just like too
17:26
many s's in the hashtag and just like it just got a little clumsy and it kind of fizzled out so with nj spots i before i
17:34
really had an end game i wanted to figure out if there was actually like an interest and any type of growth so i
17:40
think it was probably about eight to ten thousand followers i started realizing like i might have
17:46
something here because this is really like catching on a lot of people are using the hashtag but then at that point i'm like
17:53
i don't know what to do with it like what do i do right okay so yeah exactly because i'm a huge like advocate for
17:59
like if you want to have an online project don't rely on social media yeah because if instagram or facebook like
18:06
which actually happened recently if they go black like if they're down what are you gonna do yeah like if you have a
18:12
business or any type of project that's built around a social media site and it's gone or all of a sudden they turn
18:18
around and say hey you know what to use this you gotta pay yeah but then what are you gonna do right then you're stuck yeah so like i'm a huge advocate for
18:24
like make your own website and try to get people to your website and try to get like some type of email list going um
18:31
and just get people involved that way yeah so i guess it was right around eight to ten thousand followers i was
18:36
like i think i should start like figuring out some type of blog or like some type of like at the time i think i
18:42
had a tumblr blog actually okay um which thinking back now i'm like oh my god what was i doing
18:47
yeah well you gotta it's the process exactly exactly so i started to share those photos to the tumblr blog and then
18:54
i would write like a little bit more about those different places so i tried to make it more of like an interactive
18:59
like place that people could go to um and then i started to grow like an email
19:05
list and i'm talking grow in terms of like 30 or 40 people yeah
19:10
and then i decided i was like you know what i got to make the move to make it a better type of website experience
19:16
because this was probably about like 2017 18 at that point so i moved over to
19:22
a full actual website so i could have blogs i could have different pages i actually for a hot minute really
19:29
started to like sell merchandise like i had t-shirts and stuff which i definitely don't miss doing like
19:35
i have t-shirts on for sale but it's not like i don't buy them anymore like they're just kind of like shipped out
19:41
which is cool like do you use like the third party thing exactly and it just i don't want to have no hundred shirts in
19:46
my little apartment no it's just not gonna happen and i did i mean i still have shirts left over so if anybody wants a shirt and you're listening dm me
19:53
on nj spots if i have your five your size i'll send it to you like cool whatever like i have tons of shirts um
19:58
but no it was kind of like i was kind of just like in a place where i was like i'm not really sure where i want to go
20:03
with this yet um and i know in an earlier episode with carrie you talked from jersey collective you talked about like meet-ups like that was a huge thing
20:10
yeah so like her and i did a couple meet-ups together so we just started having these events and it was hiking it was just like
20:16
meeting up and like walking around like a state park so like that became something that was an identity of nj
20:23
spots that i didn't even consider at all right from the very beginning um and what was really cool and and we still do
20:29
it today i mean we have workshops and we have meetups too what's really cool is it turned into
20:35
that where it's like all of a sudden i was like wow this is like becoming a community of people that are connecting and it's kind of an
20:42
interesting concept because i i guess because it was like a brand i never thought of it being like a people brand
20:48
right if that makes sense yeah so i was kind of like all right this is cool because like people are actually meeting up like they're you know we had meetups
20:54
with like 50 60 people yeah like regularly which was awesome um and that was when instagram was like encouraging
21:00
that um and it was before facebook took it over which that's a whole nother beast in itself um
21:07
but no it was is cool because it was all of a sudden it was like this people brand and this community that was being created right and so the website really
21:14
turned into hey let's start featuring some of these guides of like hiking spots and things like that and
21:20
what was really unique at the time which is no longer on instagram which pushed me to my next part of nj spots was um
21:27
excuse me was on instagram i don't know if anybody remembers you used to be able to look at
21:32
a map on your own profile of where you took your pictures wow so it was like if you looked at your profile there's a tab
21:38
i believe it was all the way to the right that if you clicked on it was a map and you saw all your pictures scattered
21:44
around a map so if you tagged locations wherever you were in the world it showed up on this map they should do that again
21:50
i don't we don't want them to because then i created my own oh nj spots part of it oh no we don't do that
21:57
no no don't do that instagram horrible idea everybody hated it yeah it was terrible
22:02
no no no no no no exactly and if you do then call us we'll gladly talk on another podcast
22:08
[Laughter] but we um so at that point the map on nj
22:14
spots was showing all of these awesome places across new jersey right and then instagram got rid of that feature so i'm
22:21
like um that was really cool and i like people to be able to find like a picture because you see cool pictures where like
22:27
where is that in the state yeah like is it near me like because that'd be cool to go to right so what i did was i
22:32
started then creating maps on njspots.com and showing like different places to go
22:39
hiking or waterfalls or things to do around the state and started to create maps throughout the website of just like
22:46
dog like it was like dog parks we had swimming hole well i still have it swimming holes there's
22:53
one of our most popular ones is sunrise and sunset spots throughout the whole state okay so it allowed me that like
23:00
feature that was taken away from instagram allowed me to continue to grow something else off of the platform of
23:05
instagram that people started subscribing to yeah which is really cool that is really cool yeah because people
23:11
i kind of want to do that well you can i'll help you yeah yeah thanks i'm wrong yeah cause it's cool because
23:17
you know like i mean granted a lot of places that i've had on the show i mean i live in north jersey so a lot of places have obviously been in north
23:22
jersey but like you know you see places or like you know your account or the other new jersey accounts you're like ooh i like want to go check that out
23:29
exactly and then you have to like go to like the location and then go to the map and then try to find you and it's like oh and they zoom out and it's just it's
23:35
a hot mess but then like if you could just get like let's just take all the guests that we've had on like where yeah record it that's awesome there's a map
23:41
yeah there's a map that certainly keeps kind of growing exactly you can kind of see like where i've been and then you could link to link it to like exactly
23:49
and you can link it to the podcast episode right and you know just be like a visual it's a different way of like
23:54
consuming the same you know you're consuming the same content just in a visually different way
23:59
yeah and that was a big thing like all of a sudden we'd have people like uh message nj spots and say like hey
24:07
i want to go somewhere this weekend where should i go and like i used to type out like all the time like okay you
24:12
should go to this place or this place instead i just say hey check out our maps yeah and then they can see what's near them they could see how far they
24:18
want to drive like fast forward to i believe it was 2020 right in the middle of the pandemic um
24:24
that summer we created scavenger hunts for every county oh cool because some people don't want to drive three hours
24:30
down the shore or up you know if you're down the shore you don't want to drive all the way up to like mount tammany at the delaware water gap right so you're
24:37
like well what what's around me like all i see is beach well there's really cool places down in every single county so we
24:43
have a map for every county scavenger hunt for every county and i guess really at that point it was like the 2018 2019
24:51
was really when like it kind of clicked for me where i was like hey people just want to know like what's around and what
24:57
to do yeah um and what was really cool is at the time we started having a lot of meetups and one thing that was really
25:03
interesting that i still say today is these places are all over that people
25:09
could go to but all they want is someone to organize an event there and they'll show up right so it allowed them to meet
25:15
people to go to a new place um and that's kind of what nj spots has kind of turned into now is like we're really
25:22
like my goal is to cultivate like that adventurous like weekender who wants to go you know or people that visit new
25:29
jersey right like hey there's like a lot of cool places you could check out yeah um and then you know obviously highlight
25:36
a lot of creators and photographers around the state too because they're the ones that are driving that content on nj
25:42
spots because i want to say less than one percent of the content is even mine right so we use you know we feature a
25:48
lot of people around the state yeah really cool really cool um so before we take our second break and our last break
25:54
of this episode i had their you know been doing the account for running the account for about seven years um
26:00
excuse me uh is there like a place or like a spot an nj spot
26:05
that you [Music] did not really know about but then someone like took a picture tagged it
26:11
with the nj spots hashtag are there a couple i'm sure there's several i'm sure there's plenty give us like a couple
26:17
just to kind of like be like hey i didn't even know that this was here just running this account yep i found out about this place yeah i mean uh first
26:24
thing that comes to mind is mount tammany yeah um that's over at delaware water gap i tell people that even if you
26:30
live at the most southern part of the state it's a place you gotta go see um it's just it's just a really cool vista
26:37
over the delaware river um i kind of knew it existed but like because i was away in college down in pennsylvania i
26:44
never went to it yeah so like once i started seeing more pictures there i'm like i gotta go there right like we've
26:49
actually had several meetups there and had hike up hikes up the mountain because it's just it's just a cool spot
26:54
it is cool um i would say that's really cool i would say the palisades cliffs are really cool
27:00
um what's really unique about those is you get a lot of great bird photographers that go there so all of a
27:05
sudden you realize okay palisade cliffs whatever but then you realize how much wildlife is there it's pretty cool yeah
27:11
um i would say let me think a blue hole in new jersey which is down in the pylons so it's a i believe it's like a
27:19
mineral type pond and it's like bright blue don't swim in it i'm not advocating
27:24
anybody to swim in it even though people still will go swimming it um but it's just cool to see a lot of people like
27:29
drive their four-wheelers back in the pylons and or or even just jeeps just go back there and check it out um so that's
27:36
a really cool place and then i would say one of my one of my favorite places that i still haven't been to yet is the uh
27:43
oh gosh it's drawn a blank right now there's a falls over in morristown
27:48
buttermilk no especially the s i don't remember it's kind of like a it's like a damn
27:54
speedwell yes speedwell haven't been there yet yeah it's cool yeah i have to go there fishing in like that little
27:59
area oh cool cool cool yeah i haven't been there yet but i didn't know that existed it's gotta be like that little
28:05
like thing that little like waterfall thing has to be like one of the most oh photographed places like all the time
28:11
all the time that and the red mill and clinton yeah like it's just yeah it's wild it's and and what's cool is like
28:17
you don't even realize like that place you could drive by it and it's like two minutes off of a road that you pass every day you don't even realize it's
28:22
there right so yeah yeah i would say those are some of the top spots okay no i like that yeah and more sounds not
28:28
that far why don't you go no i don't know all right we got to get there so i'm always
28:33
distracted with the great restaurants instead i know well that's that's another thing too but um okay so we're gonna take our second break our last
28:39
break of this episode so this is the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we are here with virginia buchel of nj spots at the jefferson
28:46
diner we'll be right back it is time for new jersey fun fact of
28:52
the day did you know that the first seaplane was built in keyport new jersey and that is your new jersey fun fact of
28:58
the day all right we're back for segment three of this episode of greetings from the
29:04
garden state i'm mike ham we are here at the jefferson diner with virginia buchell of nj spots so in the first two
29:09
segments we kind of learned all about you and then j spots yep that's basically what we did yes for the first
29:15
basically half hour of this show um but now that we're gonna get into our last segment this is our community segment
29:20
and we've touched on it quite a bit with like the uh the meetups that you guys do and all that kind of stuff
29:26
but maybe kind of take me through and you talked about it in the second segment uh and i think you did a good job that it was like
29:32
the it was more of like a people brand yes which i think is really cool and like what i kind of strive for with this
29:39
because it's like literally stories of people yeah it's not just me running a show it's like you telling your story
29:44
about like why new jersey that's the first thing i asked you um so like let's talk about that like take me
29:51
through like a deeper dive into like that people uh brand thing that you were talking about yeah yeah absolutely so
29:57
early on i realized that like i started once stories came out on instagram um i
30:02
just started going on camera and talking so it was kind of funny because i thought it was like a natural thing to
30:08
do yeah but i get a lot of responses of people being like wow there's really a person there like oh my gosh like that's
30:14
who like there's someone and so i actually started getting feedback that people were like oh it's nice that there's somebody behind the brand and to
30:20
be able to like put a face to a name and when we had meetups they knew who to look for right like it wasn't just like
30:26
hey there's just this random group of people in a parking lot meeting up at three o'clock like show up yeah um
30:31
so what i realized was it that people first approach really resonated into the meetups and the
30:38
workshops um so when i say workshops is a lot of the photography workshops that we run um to kind of teach people a
30:44
little bit more about just like their camera or just taking pictures in general yeah um i should go to one of
30:49
those workshops if you're more than welcome to yeah yeah i'm gonna absolutely i mean i got the camera now i used to do this show just
30:55
as a quick sidebar sorry to cut you off no that's okay like if we were doing this show back in the day like you know
31:01
six months ago um i would have my laptop over there doing it with a webcam doing it with a webcam oh that's cool all
31:08
right because i didn't have a camera and i didn't have you know six hundred dollars to spend on a camera sounds like
31:13
screw it you know and then i bought the camera um and then i was like oh i could take pictures too and it's not like it's
31:19
not anything crazy the lens is pretty the best camera that you have is the one that's with you in my hand exactly so um so yeah no i'm
31:26
interested in that but sorry to no no no totally fine totally fine um so i realize it's like you know
31:32
the the whole community aspect of it was a bigger thing than i thought yeah so uh
31:37
we've had meetups from mount tammy like i mentioned earlier we've hiked stairway to heaven out up in uh vernon new jersey
31:44
we've done cadence island state park down i believe it's right outside of toms river
31:50
but the meetups were really a big part of just kind of like getting creators together and i actually met several
31:57
friends from it i mentioned carrie earlier i met carrie through instagram um a couple of my best friends are
32:03
actually i met through one of our meetups too they came to my wedding like it's just like it's cool to be able to
32:09
like meet up with people that like it's this big brand that you're like oh it's just you know a brand that you see a
32:15
logo for and they feature my photo but then like to actually meet the people who also contribute other photos
32:22
yeah so like naturally like it was gonna be a people brand without me even knowing it because i'm featuring people
32:28
yeah um and really like what's really cool about it is it the brand has kind of grown to a place where we have a
32:34
facebook group um i have a patreon that people support like if they want to be really involved and like you know get
32:41
featured more or they get background information on what projects we're working on they work exclusively with
32:47
some of our projects um what i really realize is like people just wanted a place to go to and have a
32:54
community of like-minded creators um and it's kind of been this balance that i've had to work out over the last few years
33:01
because the nj spots community is like twofold you have your creators and your
33:06
photographers videographers drone pilots and then on the other side you just have the consumers of the content you're the
33:12
people that want to find new places to go hike with their family yeah or to bring their dog for a walk so like we
33:19
have this like balance that i have to work on constantly in a good way it's a good problem to
33:24
have but it's like you have two audience that you have to feed like that content to and kind of like feed like the
33:30
community aspect too um so you know with different giveaways like sticker giveaways like different you know
33:37
meetups that we've had it's just kind of been that people-first approach where there's so many different people that
33:42
are thinking the same thing and you don't even realize it until you connect with them right yeah no that's really cool and you know i think it's cool too
33:49
is the idea that like i have the same type of thing that i need to kind of
33:54
like balance because i have people like you and businesses and you know nonprofits that i've had on this show
34:00
but then i also have like an audience yep which are the people that follow the show or the people that listen to the episodes like all that kind of stuff and
34:06
i think it's just like it's this constant you know like it's not a struggle but it's like trying to make
34:11
everyone feel connected correct in some way yeah and you're also trying to figure out like am i spending enough
34:16
time on that audience do i need to cultivate it more or do i need to like post more for my other audience or do i
34:23
need to do more like outreach to people that you might have on the show like it's hard to have that you know balance
34:28
yeah but the key is is to just continue go back to your roots because like i kind of try to think about i i sometimes
34:35
i get lost in like some of the things i'm doing and i'm like wait people really like our maps i need to post that
34:40
more because people like to be able to use that on the go and find a place to to go and hang out on saturday right
34:47
yeah no absolutely so um the other thing i know about you uh and this is only because you just told me um is the fact
34:53
that like you personally are very active in the community so tell me some of the stuff that you do yeah yeah so um i i've
35:00
been i think it's i'm going on my ninth season coming up i uh
35:05
i i'm a snowboard volunteer up at mountain creek up in new vernon i do i
35:10
work with burton chill so burton makes snowboards but they have a non-profit called chill which takes inner city kids
35:16
and they teach them to snowboard oh cool um so i've been doing it for nine years and they're in all these major cities across
35:22
i think north america because i think they're in canada too but what we do is it's a six-week
35:27
program and we teach kids to snowboard who otherwise wouldn't have the ability to do that we hook them up with gear we
35:33
hook them up with you know clothing um and what's really cool about it is they bake into like the whole snowboarding
35:39
experience they bake into like morals so like they'll have a week about respect or like patience um it's really cool
35:45
because it's something that i love to do i've been snowboarding for several several decades at this point i feel old
35:52
when i say that um but i've been snowboarding for such a long time to be able to share that with
35:58
people who i number one would never have met because they're from bronx queens i go to the city but i don't really
36:03
volunteer in the city right um so they come out here and they've never seen snow some of them before or like never
36:09
seen a mountain or like they don't know what a ski lift is so um that's something i've been involved with that i'm really passionate about like a lot
36:15
of people like to say like they have several charities they donate to that's one of the ones that i constantly
36:20
volunteer my time for right um and i like volunteering as opposed to donate donating is great yeah but the fact that
36:27
i can actually go out and do it right because it doesn't mean for you too exactly and i like to see the smiles and actually a lot of times what i do is i
36:33
take pictures so i'll take pictures of the kids there yeah very on brand of you thank you yeah i mean i figured i would yeah
36:40
no because it's just it's just a cool experience to be able to like share that and it's right in my own backyard why not right no exactly yeah i mean if you
36:47
have the opportunity to do it yeah then it's great absolutely you know and like it's like you said it's the it's the experience side so obviously you're
36:53
doing something good but then i'm sure you get a lot out of it as well oh yeah um so if people are listening to this
36:58
episode and they're like oh like virginia has like a lot of really good ideas um what are some ways that maybe
37:04
you can help them so i've got i've got several different free guides that i share um for
37:10
instagram and just marketing in general um i like to say i like to make the note
37:16
that it's free because i have 10 years of marketing experience and i have all these notes that i've
37:22
collected throughout the years that i'm like so many people could just benefit from it yeah and what i've noticed with
37:27
a lot of just not even necessarily photographers but just creators that have great ideas they just don't know how to like get it to that next level
37:34
right so i just provide a lot of that yeah happy to help you whenever you need help
37:39
i don't know what you're talking about no no no hand raising over here it's an audio based show yes being
37:46
granted youtube is going to be a different thing but sorry but yeah yeah no that's cool yeah so i mean if
37:51
anyone's interested feel free to reach out i'd be happy to help you yeah awesome um and then if somehow
37:57
people are unaware of like the instagram handle and the website at this point of the show they need to go back and listen
38:03
to the whole show over because they weren't paying attention um so let's hit them with like the instagram handle the website like where
38:09
can they go to check out the stuff that we've been talking about for the last 45 minutes yeah nj spots um on instagram uh
38:16
njspots.com and you can check out the maps there you can check out local guides we have something for every
38:23
county so regardless of where you are um check it out you can subscribe to our newsletter where we send out weekly
38:28
guides of like really interesting places to go hit up that you may not have even known were in your backyard yeah so yeah
38:34
i mean and then if you want to find me personally on instagram i'm at boohoo which is b-u-e-w-h-o awesome awesome uh so make
38:42
sure that we put those the website the instagram handles in the show notes everybody can go check those out and go check out nj spots because it is an
38:48
awesome instagram account thank you appreciate it i can't take the credit though i'm just featuring awesome people yeah but you are the vessel that gets it
38:55
out into the world which is great um so but again virginia thank you so much for doing this episode with us yeah thanks
39:01
for having me yeah absolutely it was it was so much fun uh can't wait to see more stuff on nj spots and and all that
39:07
um so this has been the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike hamm a special shout out also to the jefferson
39:13
diner for hosting us to us today uh so uh green from the garden state we were here with virginia buchel of nj spots at
39:19
the jefferson diner thank you for listening and we will catch you next time
39:30
[Applause] [Music]
39:39
[Applause] to talk about
39:45
[Music]
39:57
you
