Ways to Boost Audience Engagement

Jordan: 0:00

Podcasting is an easy way to reach a wide listenership, but can also feel like you're shouting into the void. So how do you turn your audience into active participants on Join host of Podcasting Q&A, where we answer your questions about how to start, grow and monetize a podcast! This week's question is from Mary.

Mary: 0:23

Hi, my name is Mary, I host the podcast, Stop Drinking and Start Living. And I was wondering if you have any tips for more audience engagement, my podcast is completely content driven. There's not a lot of discourse, a lot of tools and practical strategies to use. And I have had the call to action many times for listeners to send in questions or things they would like for me to cover on the show with little to no response. So I was wondering if you have any tips about that, because I would really love to engage with my audience in more of that way. And I definitely have the listenership for that. So I'm wondering if you have any suggestions? Thank you.

Jordan: 1:08

Great question, Mary. To help me answer it. I've invited Gill Tietz from the Sober Powered Podcast on the show. And she is the perfect person to answer this podcast because she is in your niche! And I know that she has a really big engaged community for her podcast, you have like 31,000 followers on your Instagram. So I kind of feel like you are exactly the person that we need to have on the show. So I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for coming.

Gill: 1:41

Well, thank you for the awesome intro. Yeah.

Jordan: 1:45

Mary is looking to drive up her audience engagement. And I think that the first thing that we need to look at is what kind of things is she doing to encourage her listeners to engage with her?

Gill: 1:59

Yeah, I think the most important thing that we can do to get people to respond to us is be accessable. Like people have to know where to actually talk to you. And if we don't tell them where then they're not going to now, like they might go to your website briefly. And like if they can't find it, you know, they just drop it. But if you want them to reach out to you like how should they go to your Facebook group? Should they DM you? Should they email you like you can reference something in the shownotes? Do you have a form, like there are a lot of different ways that you can do it, but you should tell them exactly how to contact you otherwise, they're not going to know. And I think the other main issue here is with public figures, like a lot of us are selling services. And at least in my experience, and I know a lot of other people when we reach out to people that we like and we ask them a question, they respond immediately with, get my course. And you'll learn like all about this. Thanks so much for your question, or like, here's the link to book a call with me. And it's like a discovery call. And we kind of know what that means. So I think also being mindful of are you trying to funnel everybody into something? Or do you want to invite them to ask you questions just for the sake of asking you questions.

Jordan: 3:14

Interesting. So be very specific about where you want people to go. And then also make sure that your intentions are very genuine, and not too salesy, because people see right through that, is that what I'm hearing?

Gill: 3:29

Exactly, yeah, people and they might be worrying too, like, if they know that you have services, they might be worrying that you just want to sell them your services or something. So you could start an email list. That's another way that you could do it. Like when I was first starting with my email list, I did this thing called the question of the week. And I have like a little Google form that was always in the email. And people would just submit their questions. And sometimes I made up the question myself, because no one asked me one.

Jordan: 3:59

I think we've all done that. Yeah, right.

Gill: 4:01

Sometimes you do it a few weeks in a row, but sometimes like the answer to the question will inspire more questions. So that's another way that you can connect with people is through an email list or like you could do that in a Facebook group and have like a Ask Me Anything day or, or just like on your Instagram, like some way of just making yourself accessible to people.

Jordan: 4:25

When you do your call to action, you would mentioned you know, sending them to specific places do you just kind of rotate where you send people in your call to action?

Gill: 4:35

So I will say whatever's relevant. So if I have an episode where I'm talking about how, you know, maybe you're not alone, like it's important to get support, I will plug my Facebook group. There's a great place that you can get support, hang out with me like whatever you want to do, it's safe. If I'm talking about like people that are new to sobriety or something. I'll plug in a freebie that I have, that's a free ebook with a bunch of resources. So then they can download that get on my email list where then they get access to me. So like, it depends on my topic, but I sprinkle it in when it's relevant. I don't like like when people ask for, like ratings and reviews, like they'll go on and on, like, don't forget, rate the show and review it and it helps so much and like, people just zone out when we talk about that. So I think making sure that it's really relevant because they're already listening closely. And then you just plug it,

Jordan: 5:34

it sounds like you also kind of incentivize people to do certain things, you know, like by offering the free ebook if they're like new. So that's definitely something that Mary could do to is come up with some sort of like incentive for people to give her their email and make sure that it doesn't come across like spammy or salesy. What kind of posts do you create, in order to get people to kind of engage with them and things like that?

Gill: 6:05

Such a good question. So in the beginning, I was doing what a lot of us do, like, ask me a question, or people will do it on their stories, like ask me anything? And like, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And then I'm like, Why won't anyone talk to me? I have a lot of followers, like, Why won't anyone talk to me? I know there are people here. And then I started asking questions about them. So because it's sobriety all ask, like, what triggers you? What's a craving you experience? That's my question box now. Or like, I just posted a real like, before we got on this call. And it was about like, three things that you might not expect when you first quit drinking. At the bottom, I say, was there anything I missed? Is there anything else you think people would like to know? I don't make it about me at all. It's about you guys. And that's how people respond. So instead of saying, you know, if you have a question that you want to ask me, reach out to me, like, Wherever, wherever, you can say, if you have a sober win, or a sober milestone that you want to share with me, or you just went through something hard, and you got through it, or, like, I did an episode once about shame. And I invited my listeners to share their shame with me, I shared one of mine in the episode and I said, if you have a shameful memory that you don't feel comfortable telling people tell me and almost two years later, I still have people from that episode, like reaching out to me. So you need to be more specific about like, what you want them to talk to you about and make it more of them focused. And then they people love to tell you their opinion, or tell you their experience. Or you can ask like, you know, what's your favorite alternative for alcohol? Like, what do you drink? Now, when you socialize? And then you get like, 1000 responses?

Jordan: 8:00

That is so smart. And I'm just kind of like kicking myself that I didn't ever think of that. Because, you know, I think about that I do I do the AMA's on my Instagram stories, and I'm like, ask me anything. And then if only two people message me, I'm gonna start answering my own story with questions. You know, it's it's that whole, like, facade of people engaging like, and sometimes that spurs more engagement. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's just you talking to yourself. And it's so funny, because it's, it's obvious, like everyone knows that people love talking about themselves. People love it any opportunity, they get to, like, share something about themselves, even if it is something embarrassing, or something personal. So that makes so much more sense to be like, What do you think and it's no longer I, I also really love that you talked about specificity in the things that you are asking for. And it's not even so much as asking, it's just like telling people like, hey, share this with me if you have this if you have that. And I think that's so great, because it is really easy. I mean, I do it on this show, it's really easy to be like, Hey, if you have a question about you know, ABC, then go ahead and send it in. And that's that, that's my call to action, and then fingers crossed that people actually send in a question. So I think that's so wonderful. I love that that's such a great tip. Are there any other tips that you might have for Mary or for anybody that is really struggling to get people to respond to them to get people to interact with them on their podcast,

Unknown: 9:41

So giving people a space to interact with you, asking them about themselves. And then if you want them like, you know, what do you want me to talk about in future episodes like no one's gonna say anything, or you're gonna get like, super specific stuff that you would never make an episode on. Instead? What are you struggling with right now? You know, let me know, let me know what's going on with you, if you and be careful how much you invite, because like, once this starts going and you figure it out, like, you'll get a lot of responses. And that might feel like really overwhelming. So I would invite them somewhere like a group or like Instagram or something. But just be careful how many things you invite. But yeah, invite something specific. So don't invite people on a discovery call with you, because no one's going to take you up on that. Because we all know what that means. And we know that that's a funnel into some kind of sale. So instead of inviting people on a call, invite them to be an Email Friend. And then once they're on your email list, then they get content from you weekly or something. And they can ask questions there. And then that email list is also a funnel until like your other stuff. So I think just being careful how much you sell and like where you try to direct people, because that'll turn them off really quickly. Like I have had, it happened to me recently, actually, I discovered a new podcast and like I wrote the podcast, or kind of from my personal email, because I didn't want to be like, Look at me, podcasts are over here, like writing you telling you Good job. And I sent her an email telling her like how much I liked her show. And she actually had a call to action at the bottom of the email, the call to action was inviting me to share with her, like a goal that I had. So I'm like, Oh, I love her show. Like, I'd love to tell her about my goal. So I told her about my goal. And she emailed me back the same day, I was like, Hey, this is awesome. And I opened the email, and it's like, buy my thing for $1,200. And I have this exact answer to your question. And I was like, man, now I can't now I can't talk to you anymore. So I think being really careful of like when you drop those sales, when is too early, because now any call to action that she has for the rest of my life, I'm not going to respond to it. Because I think that she's going to come back with a sale. So I think just being mindful of like creating relationships and having more of a purpose than just making a sale.

Jordan: 12:13

I love that. Thank you so much, Gill, you were the perfect person to have on this question. And I hope that this is helpful to everybody in every niche. I know that you are in the same niche as Mary. But I mean, there's so many things that I'm going to be taking away for my podcast, and I can't wait to see the results of that. So thank you so much for coming on.

Gill: 12:37

Yeah, thank you for asking me.

Jordan: 12:41

I hope this episode of Podcasting Q&A has been helpful to you. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode, go to podinbox.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes to leave us an audio message. And as always, Keep podcasting