Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you
launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice
a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks
for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning
intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized
tip to help you podcast.
Welcome back to Help me, Podcast. Today I have something that I'm really
excited about talking about. It's a new tactic to
help grow your podcast and to
help give your listeners what they're looking for. This is something that
I just heard about and I haven't actually tried yet, but I am definitely
going to try to set this up. And what I'm talking about
is getting on a call with your podcast
listeners, like just jumping on a quick call and talking to
them about your podcast. And this, to me, when I first heard it, I
immediately was like, yes, that's a great idea. That's a wonderful
idea. And it immediately brought me back to thinking
about business and how you run a business.
And a lot of times when you're first starting a business, maybe you have an
idea and you think it's a great idea, and then you put so much time
and effort into it and you launch and then you realize that, oh,
this really wasn't something that is helpful to the
people that I'm trying to reach. And then maybe you find
out like, oh, maybe it's this other thing that's helpful.
I'm speaking from personal experience here, but really it makes
more sense to first get feedback from people about their
problems and then make something that can help solve that
problem instead of thinking you're solving a problem in your head and then creating
that thing. So I hope that kind of relates back to
podcasting, where obviously you're making a
podcast for yourself and for your own reasons, but if you're trying
to improve and to get more listeners and to incorporate
your community that you're growing. And I always think it's helpful
to get feedback in anything that you're doing so you can help
improve and be better. So I got this idea from Alex
Sanfilippo, who is the co founder of a bunch of
online podcast helping softwares, including Pod
Lottery and Pod Match. And he
talked about this idea of just jumping on a very quick call, like a ten
to 15 minutes call with some of your listeners
and the people that are really fans of your show. And
I just thought that this was a brilliant idea. And as soon as I heard
it, I was like, this is great. This is definitely something that
I want to be doing. And I think it's just the most valuable thing that
you can have, right? Because you're going directly to the people that are liking
and listening to your show and you're asking them what
do they like to see more of what do they think you can improve on,
and most importantly, how they found you and how they're sharing
you and that sort of thing. So it's just giving you tons of data
about your show, so then you can use that data and
improve going forward. So the first thing is,
how do you find people to ask, right, where do you even go?
Well, the first thing is if you have people who are engaging on social
media, maybe they're on Instagram and they're liking your post
or they're commenting on your post. Those people definitely a good place to
start. Send them a DM and ask them
next place could be anybody who's leaving you a review.
Maybe somebody left you a review and they left their full name. You can go
find them on LinkedIn and do a little bit of stocking and
ask them like, hey, I saw you left me a review. Thank you so much.
Would you mind jumping on a quick call? Any places like this that
you're getting any engagement from people, that's the place that you want
to ask for people to jump on a quick call. And
even if somebody's sending you an email, right, maybe somebody sent you an email saying,
hey, I love your podcast. That would be a perfect segue into,
hey, I'd love to talk to you more about that. So the next thing is
the approach, and how do you ask people for this? Right? Because I think it
might come off a little bit jarring at first. If you're just asking somebody like,
hey, can I jump on a call with you? They're probably going to be like,
well, that's a little weird. Are you trying to sell me something? So I think
it's important to just be super transparent and upfront and
clear in saying, like, hey, I'm just trying to get some
feedback for my show, and I just want to talk to the people that
really love the show. And I can see that you're listening, and I just want
to get your feedback so I could make changes and improve and
make the show better for everybody who listens. And I
think when you come at it from that angle, they'll see like, okay, they just
really want my feedback. And there's no sort of sales thing in
here. And also, I think it's important to say it's only going to be a
ten minute call, not too much of your time. And me personally, I would
also do only on the phone because I feel like that's a
little bit less of a commitment than jumping on a zoom call. But if you
prefer, you can obviously do a zoom call as well. But I just think it's
a little bit less of an ask to jump on a phone call than to
jump on a zoom call. So you also want to make it super easy for
them to schedule one of these calls. Go on Calendly, or I
used Absado for my scheduler, but make it easy to send
them a link so that way they could set up a call with you
very easily. They don't have to go back and forth, you don't have to play
what time is good for you sort of thing. They just go into your calendar
and pick a time that you're already available and then you
schedule them for a phone call. And now once you have them on the phone
call, I think we have to think about it in like a data collection
sort of thing. So for me, very analytical. And Alex also
had mentioned this is you make an Excel spreadsheet
know have your questions there. So then when you're on the call with them, you
can quickly type in their responses. And now the more people
that you talk to, the more this looks like data and
you can then use this data to improve and make
changes down the line. Some of the questions that Alex
mentioned that you should be asking these people, and this is coming from
somebody who's done this multiple times, is one,
how did you found out about the show and why are you listening? How did
you get here? That's going to be helpful to understand
how people are getting to your show. And is it a random they just found
you? Or maybe somebody's writing about you or
maybe you're doing something else and not realizing that this is
how you're getting your podcast listeners. It's definitely a super helpful idea
to find out where they're coming from because then you can
double down on whatever that is and get more people to come
and listen to your show. So that's a great tactic and a great question to
be asking. The next thing is what do you enjoy about the show?
Maybe they have a favorite episode, or a favorite segment of your
show, or a favorite guest. And I think it's also helpful
to know what they like about your show. The next thing would be to find
out what they don't like about the show. And one thing that Alex said that
I really liked is don't ask them what they don't like about your
show. Ask them what's one thing you would do to
make it better for future listeners. Because that way if you ask somebody
what they don't like and they're not
confrontational, they may not want to say what they don't like. But if you ask
it in a way that's positive and like, how can I improve the show? What
would you do to improve the show? It makes it a little bit easier to
give constructive feedback and then the last question to ask them
is just ask them what they're struggling with right now.
And this could be helpful if you're using your podcast as a
business or you may down the line
want to make products for your listeners just to know what they're
struggling with, depending on what your show is. For me, my
other podcast working towards our purpose, I would really love it if I could be
able to help people work more in their purpose. So if they
tell me what it is they're struggling with and maybe why they're
having a hard time leaving their job or making a career
switch or following their passions, then it can help give me
insight into how I can help them. So I think this question is
helpful in being able to figure out how you can help your audience
and your community to do whatever it is that
they want to be doing. And then you can also ask them before they leave
to leave you an Apple review and send them the link. Make it
easy. Just like we talked about in our last episode, episode
59, they obviously really like your show. If they're on a call with you
and if they haven't left a review yet, I think it's a really easy sell
to say, hey, do you mind leaving me a review on Apple? Here's the link,
how to do it. And doing all this again in ten minutes,
really quickly, just asking these few questions. And now you can start
to build your data sheet of like, what do people like? What do people not
like? What are they struggling with? How'd they find this show?
And with this information, you now understand your
listeners more and you can better make content to
make them happy and to give them what they need and to
serve your community. So I just think that this is a genius
way of being able to hear from your listeners,
because as podcasters, you're in the dark a lot of times with
who's listening, right? You don't really get a lot of chances to get
feedback, and if it's not through a review,
you really don't hear from people. So I think it's a great
way to be able to listen to your community and
to talk to your community. And this is kind of a win win,
because you're getting somebody who is dedicated
to your show and they like your show and you're listening to them and you're
letting them speak, and that's going to make them feel good and make them feel
like they're a part of the show and a part of your community. And
that's really what podcasting is about, is it's building community and
creating a bunch of like minded people and putting them
together and having conversations. And
I just think that that's kind of the beauty of podcasting. So thanks
again to Alex for suggesting this and I wanted to share it all with you
so that you can go forward and start interviewing some of
your guests. So as a good segue, if any of you would like to
be interviewed about this podcast, shoot me an email. And I would
love to talk to you and to see what your thoughts are about this
show and how I can help better serve you all and
make podcasts that are more helpful for you so that you can
grow your own podcast. As always, there's a link to send me an email
in the Show Notes and I would love to hear what any of you have
to say. So thanks for listening and happy
podcasting. We've reached the end of the episode and if
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and happy podcasting. Our.