Building a Podcast Community
Podcasting, like blogging or any type of influencing, is done to share knowledge and/or gain views from an audience. Regardless of one’s motivation behind podcasting, a strong audience base is necessary to having an accomplished show.
Building a podcast community is imperative to a strong healthy audience. In doing so, understand that a podcast community is, not only, a group of returning listeners but people who are invested in you and the success of your show. Who may debate with you, bring new perspectives, brainstorm, and more.
A podcast community is a great resource for advancing one’s show. This community is who you can go to for feedback, and ideas, as well as a group of like-minded people who banter about the topics that you discuss.
Without a podcast community, it can be difficult to grow your podcast into a successful show. While social media can grow your listener base and bring attention to your show; a dedicated community, no matter how large or small, is the best advertisement. This community of listeners is the best form of marketing as they are likely to discuss your show with others, enticing them to view your podcast.
Understanding Your Audience (or target audience)
But how do you gain a podcast community? Some viewers may come across your show at random and stay, some may come from your social media, or word of mouth. It’s imperative to keep these listeners and entice them to become a part of your podcast community. You can start doing this by creating listener personas, representations of your ideal listeners.
Listener Personas
To make your listener personas work for you, you need to use that listener profile to understand the demographics and preferences of the podcast community. Lower Street puts it perfectly, “Who they are, what they do, why they do, and the challenges they're facing that your podcast could fix.” Using this knowledge to tailor content to best fit your audience’s needs will help grow and maintain a podcast community. Creating detailed listener personas can be as comprehensive as necessary for your show needs:
What is your niche and who is interested in your niche?
If you like discussing music, what genre are you invested in and who might also be invested in it?
Are you geared towards people of a specific location?
Career
Education
Challenges being faced/overcame
entertainment/informative
etc.
From building your listener personas now you can take a step back and really understand audience demographics and preferences. Doing so helps you to create a podcasting plan that allows you to create a podcast community of like-minded individuals who can come together and have discussions. From your listener personas are these people likely to be a certain:
age
gender
race
ethnicity
social class
etc.
You will use your listener personas and their demographics to tailor content to meet your audience's needs. This can be reflected in the verbiage used, i.e. will your audience understand the lingo being used? Are you incorporating background music, art, guests, etc that are likely to entice your audience? Use your knowledge to engage your audience
Engagement Analytics
Listener personas are integral to the success of a podcast and in creating a podcast community. That being said, staying flexible and understanding that listener personas may change or need to be adjusted based on your podcast needs is crucial. Yet you do not want to play a guessing game, potentially causing you to lose listeners if the change you made was unnecessary. To avoid doing so, use engagement analytics.
Analytic tools are a great resource to understand listener behavior. Are you seeing a drop or spike in listeners after bringing on a guest, changing the style of your show, changing the cadence, etc? From these analytics, you can identify popular episodes and content themes. Using these as a sort of template to re-create/build upon in the next episodes.
In addition to using analytics, to help build a podcast community, listening to your viewers’ feedback is key as their feedback and comments give you real-time advice. Analyzing these comments and feedback allows you to make adjustments from their suggestions or keep certain aspects the same from their comments that state they enjoyed a specific part.
Creating spaces you can interact with your community
Podcast communities can only interact so much on your podcast platforms. To grow and create a strong podcast community it is helpful to create additional spaces where you can interact with your audience. Such as social media and forums/groups.
Social Media Platforms
It is important to continue to pay attention to your demographic and use social media platforms that your podcast community is comfortable with.
Choose the right platform, one that your audience will likely use. Some ideas to get you started:
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
TikTok
Etc.
Once you have created your social accounts it’s important to establish a consistent brand presence by:
following a posting schedule (posts & stories)
using easily recognizable layouts
posting about topics that will engage your audience
Encouraging discussions and interactions by:
Create posts that end with questions and entice your audience to respond in the comments
Do questionnaires on stories
Respond to your viewers’ comments
Ask your viewers what they want to hear/discuss
These are great ways to start to grow your podcast community engagement. As you do so you will see what is working or not and can adjust accordingly.
We discuss the use of social media platforms in further detail on our blog page here!
Online Forums and Groups
Forums and groups can be a really great way to foster a sense of community through shared interests and create an environment that encourages discussion with your podcast community.
Set up dedicated forums or groups. Such as a Facebook group -
This can be used to post updates, questions, and more. It also can be a place that allows your podcast community to start discussions of their own that pertain to your show’s niche.
E.g. your group can allow a listener to post knowledge they just learned from your podcast and would like to discuss further.
As with any open forum, it is important that you moderate and create community guidelines to avoid any trolls or ignorant comments that may be hurtful to your podcast community.
Create interactive content
How do these interactions on social media and forums help your show? They not only inform you of what is working/not working but also can be used to create episodes. Some ways to encourage interactions and how to use them are:
Q&A Sessions and Polls:
Incorporating listener questions into episodes
Using polls to gather feedback and preferences
Creating a two-way dialogue with your audience
Contests and Challenges
Organize contests related to podcast themes
Encourage listener participation through challenges
Recognize and reward community contributions
Can be literal prizes or mentions in your show
Incorporate Listener stories and testimonials
Highlight listener experiences and stories in your podcast
Incorporate listener testimonials into episodes
Build a personal connection with your audience
Encourage User-Generated Content
Another great advantage to building a podcast community is the user-generated content. As mentioned, listeners are a great go-to for topic ideas! But that’s not all they may be able to contribute. Each of your listeners may have a different strength/hobby that they may want to share with you. From art, music, and episode ideas to testimonials and more. The more you encourage things like fan art, reviews, and contributions, the more you and your podcast community can benefit.
How do you encourage your listeners to do so?
Celebrate fan-created content related to the podcast
post about it on social media and/or mention it in your show
Encourage reviews and ratings
literally, ask for them
Incorporate user-generated content into episodes
a song created by your listener can be used as background music
questions/comments can be used as content
As you can see user-generated content can open the door to a world of possibilities for your show and can strengthen your podcast community.
Measuring Community Growth and Impact
The size of your podcast community and its growth is subjective. A small community, as long as very strong, can have a huge impact. But more often than not, growing your podcast requires growth of your podcast community - the stronger the community the more likely to gain listeners through them. As time progresses, the use of metrics and analytics is needed to see how your audience is growing and the impact they have on your show. Use metrics and analytics to:
Track community engagement metrics
Assess the impact on podcast growth
Make data-driven adjustments to community-building strategies.
Conclusion
All things considered, a strong podcast community can make or break the success of a podcast. Whether 20 people or 2,000, the engagement and communication within the community impact one’s ability to learn from and improve upon a show based on the feedback from said community. While listener/audience numbers are important, it is the returning viewers - the podcast community- that is pivotal in growing. When working to create and/or grow one’s podcast community:
create listener personas
be cognizant of their demographics
engage your audience through your show, social media, and forums/groups
remember the importance of establishing clear community guidelines to help:
deal with conflicts and disagreements
foster a positive and inclusive community culture
ask for feedback
use metrics and analytics
encourage user-generated content
create polls and questionnaires
praise those who support you (through creating art, topic ideas, purchasing subscriptions, etc.)
Building a strong podcast community is one thing. You must also view that community as an integral part of your podcast's success and recognize that this community can truly make or break your podcast.
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