EP26 Crickets? Here’s How to Get Listeners Talking 🦗
Struggling with listener engagement? Let's dive into how to turn those crickets into conversations and get your audience talking.
Ideas Discussed This Episode + Episode Timecodes:
00:00 – The struggle of talking into the void and why listener feedback is essential
01:15 – How feedback shapes content, builds community, and boosts growth
02:30 – The power of directly asking for feedback (and making it easy)
03:45 – Using social media and email lists to encourage responses
05:00 – Ethical bribery: Incentives to motivate audience participation
06:15 – Troubleshooting: Why you might not be getting feedback and what to tweak
07:09 – Preview of next week's episode: Managing the feedback you receive
026 Crickets? Here’s How to Get Listeners Talking 🦗
Getting feedback from your listeners can feel like shouting into the void, but it doesn’t have to be that way. This episode of VIC Podcasters breaks down practical strategies to encourage audience interaction, from making direct asks to leveraging social media and email lists for engagement.
Listener feedback is more than just validation—it’s the key to improving your podcast and growing a loyal audience. Encouraging feedback requires consistency; making direct asks in episodes, descriptions, and social media increases the chances of hearing back from listeners. Additionally, reducing effort for your audience, such as allowing emoji reactions or quick polls, makes participation more accessible.
Beyond direct asks, leveraging tools like social media and email lists can increase engagement. Sharing episode snippets, running interactive polls, and providing exclusive content or small incentives (hello, coffee vouchers!) can motivate listeners to take action. Experimenting with different communication channels—such as Instagram DMs instead of emails—helps tailor engagement strategies to your audience’s habits.
If feedback still isn’t rolling in, it's time to troubleshoot. Assess if your call to action is clear, placed in the right spots, and easy to remember. Patience and persistence are key—sometimes audiences need time to warm up. Stay consistent, keep testing what works, and let us know how you go! If you’re looking to refine your video and podcasting strategy, reach out to Zoë Wood at Video Confidence Coach for personalised guidance.
TIME FOR A QUICK QUIZ 🤓
What’s a great way to get podcast feedback?
A) Ignore it, who cares?
B) Hope for the best
C) Ask directly & repeatedly
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Answer: C) Ask directly & repeatedly - You don’t get what you don’t ask for 😉
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Zoë Wood 0:00
Talking into the void. We've all been there today. Let's focus on how to get that sweet, sweet listener feedback.
You're listening to the Vic podcasters podcast, your bite sized slice of podcasting. Know how we're here to connect Victorian podcasters, whether you're just starting season Pro or stuck in the one day I will phase Stop dreaming and dive in, join our email list or hop onto our Facebook and LinkedIn groups for updates, resources and a supportive community, because podcasting is better when we do it together. Vic podcasters is proudly produced on watarung land, the why even bother with this? Let's address that in the room. First, listener feedback matters, and the reason it does is because it shapes your content, your audience are why you're creating a podcast. So it helps to know what works for them, what flops, and what makes people hit the next button when your podcast comes up as an option to listen to, it also creates community, because you're getting more engagement, and you're in turn, getting loyal followers and listeners, because you're actually changing and shaping a podcast to their needs and wants. And also, of course, as you can imagine, this all helps with growth. The more interaction, the better visibility you have on the platforms where your audience is located. But let's focus on crickets. Let's imagine you've done a couple of episodes of your podcast. Maybe you're between, say, zero to 10 podcast episodes, or maybe you're a fair way in, and you're up to say podcast 20 or 30 or 40, and you're getting no feedback whatsoever. Here is how to start getting feedback for your podcast. Make sure you ask for it directly, and you make sure that you ask it repeatedly on every single episode, in both the audio or video format, however you're planning to do it, and also in the show notes and in the description of the podcast episode, the best way to do it is usually at the end of an episode, ask for people to give you feedback directly and make sure it is in a format that is easy for you to read it and consume it. So through me, we like emails, so because that's the best way that I filter through my information. So you can check us out at pod pod at Vcc dot training, that is how you email us at other podcasters. But maybe for you, maybe Instagram DMS are better, or Facebook DMS are better, or even better, yet, reach out via your website platform make sure that maybe even asking them a question may help it make it easier to prompt a response from your audience. Ask them, hey, tell me what you think. DM me on whatever platform, or leave a comment on Spotify and help shape this podcast. For example, make sure, when asking for feedback, that you make it easy for your audience to do this, keeping in mind that most people listen or watch podcasts as they are doing other things. Is it chores? Is it driving whatever it is, so make sure it's easy enough for them to be able to reply with an emoji, or maybe click an answer in a poll, or provide Q and A boxes on your website. Whatever is low effort is going to re going to yield higher response rates. Just pausing your podcasting experience to let you know that I run a business called the video confidence coach, which emboldens women and non binary superstars with killer video marketing strategies, empowering them to show up, stand out and smash their goals. If this sounds like you, reach out to me in the show notes below. Also, use social media by hopefully in your marketing of your podcast, because remember, people need to hear about your podcast. You need to tell people about it. You can use social media to share episode snippets, ask questions or run a poll. You can engage with your audience, where they already hang out, and also grow your audience and your influence on places where your audience is more likely to hang out. Another way that you can ask for feedback is leveraging your mailing list. One thing I recommend for most podcasters, if you have the bandwidth, is to start an email list. This is asking for people to subscribe to our email list. Yes, that requires a little bit more effort on their point, but it allows you to have a curated audience of people who want to hear from you, and also from my studies and the stats out there, there is about an 85% chance that people are going to respond to you whenever you send out an email. I have a fairly modest size email list, and I get a minimum of three to five responses every single time I send an email out. And of course, you can always bribe them ethically. Of course, you can always provide incentives such as shout outs exclusive content or even a coffee voucher, if that works with your podcasting. Brand, but providing some incentives that would actually work for your audience and would be something that they would want, but it's easy for you to do is always the best port of call, and even after trying all of these things that your audience still is giving you nothing, try these things. Check your call to action. Is your call to action easy? Is it in the right place, as in, is it in the actual podcast and in the description and even in the show notes? Is it clear? Is it something that people can do relatively easily, or is it something that they can remember to do when they're no longer listening to your podcast? Because remember, when people use podcasts, we're usually when they're doing something else. So is it easy to remember? Have you tried experimenting with different methods? Have you tried asking people to communicate with you via LinkedIn or Instagram instead of emails? What works best for you? And that's something that you're gonna have to try over time, and also be patient. Feedback, takes time, stay consistent and keep asking, because your audience sometimes it's quite shy, and that is okay, but always make sure that you ask for it, because if you don't seek it out, it may not come to you. Try these things out and report back. See I'm asking for your feedback, and let us know how we go. So you can do this yourself next time we're going to tell you what to do when the feedback actually rolls in, the good, the bad, the ugly and the lot. See you next week. That's a wrap. Remember, we're here every week to share quick tips, updates and the occasional bad joke. Feeling inspired good now hit record or go to the show notes of this episode for a backstage past experience of the Victorian podcasting scene. The Vic podcasters would like to acknowledge and pay our respects to the wadawurrung people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians on the land on which we work, live and play. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We stand with the traditional custodians of these lands in working towards a more equal future. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land, and remember, podcasting doesn't have to be a solo gig.
The above episode description and transcript were generated with human knowledge + ai.
Photograph of 4 members of VIC Podcasters who met up in Geelong.
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