My Work at The Sharp End Podcast

Photo Credit: Ashley Saupe

I met Ashley, owner of The Sharp End Podcast, LLC, through Social Cookie Media Marketing. She was originally a client of their agency and when I left the company, she asked to continue with me as her freelancer. I am incredibly grateful to the Social Cookie team for releasing her contract to me! Since October 2022, I have partnered with The Sharp End on monthly social media calendars and posting, monthly newsletters, blogging, Patreon management, event planning, website updates, and marketing consultations.

Organic Social Media Management

I've managed The Sharp End's Instagram and Facebook presence for four years, building and executing a monthly organic content schedule around the show's release cadence. Episode drops on the 1st and 15th are promoted through Reels clipped from full-length video or custom audiograms. I write the rest of the month’s social calendar around various topics, including sponsor callouts, listener reviews, polls, episode lessons, and outdoor education content.

When a guest submitted video footage of a 1,000-vertical-foot fall, I posted the clip and it went viral, becoming a major driver of the account's follower growth. The account has held above 10k ever since.

This past month I added YouTube to the mix, beginning with Shorts with an eye toward a fuller video strategy. As the second-largest search engine and an increasingly cited source for LLMs, YouTube represents a real opportunity to expand the show's discoverability in ways Instagram and Facebook can't.

Facebook Past 90-day Stats:

  • 196% increase in account views

  • 185% increase in profile visits

  • 78.5% increase in interactions

  • 100% increase in followers

Instagram Past 90-day Stats:

  • 16.8% increase in account reach

  • 21% increase in views

  • 51% increase in profile visits

  • 16% increase in followers

Photo Credits: Ashley Saupe

Member-Based Platform Management

The Sharp End's Patreon is home to bonus minisodes, full-length episodes, photos, transcripts, and occasional video content, and I handle the production side of getting it all live. My role covers:

  • Writing post copy, titles, and descriptions

  • Editing guest-submitted summaries and transcripts

  • Publishing content to the platform

  • Promoting each release through audiograms or Reels on social media.

With tiers ranging from $3 to $25/month and a community of 391 active members (259 paid), the Patreon is a meaningful revenue stream for the show. In 2025, Patreon generated:

  • 3711 page visits

  • 23,609 accounts reached

  • 74 new members

  • $15,700+ in revenue

Email Marketing Management

Since February 2023, I've written and designed the monthly email newsletter for The Sharp End. Each campaign is built around a content brief I develop covering the month's primary episode, any minisodes, sponsor features, active giveaways, special announcements, and blog content (either a summary of a partner post or a Sharp End original I write myself.)

I also handle the full design layout in MailChimp and manage the list on the backend, including uploading giveaway entrants, archiving unsubscribers, and maintaining web sign-up integrations.

The newsletter has grown from 1,045 subscribers in 2021 to 2,158 today. In 2025, monthly campaigns averaged a 26.4% open rate and 2.9% click rate.

Photo Credits: Ashley Saupe

Giveaways

Over the past four years, I've helped facilitate brand partnership giveaways for The Sharp End. Once Ashley makes the initial brand connection, I take it from there, coordinating with her and each brand to get all agreed-upon promo assets in place and handling execution end-to-end. That includes creating feed posts, Reels, and Stories across Instagram and Facebook, building out giveaway landing pages on the website with custom copy, entry forms, and email list opt-ins, and connecting each form to Google Drive for automatic entry collection. For select partners, I put together post-giveaway analytics reports covering email newsletter performance, social reach and engagement, episode plays, and website page views to give brands a clear picture of their exposure across every channel.

Past brand partners have included: Wallpoppe, Kahtoola, Ski Babes, Ermine Skate, Outdoor Vitals, Rocky Talkie, MyMedic, Sterling Rope, SWOOP, Protekt, Minus33, and the American Alpine Institute.

This year, I helped run five organic giveaways through social media and The Sharp End website, driving 777 total entries.