How to Turn Your Podcast Audience into a Podcast Community (& How PodRoom Can Help)
Without your audience, what’s even the point of having a podcast? To speak out into the void?
No, I didn’t think so.
Your audience is the heartbeat of your podcast. And the best way to keep them engaged with you is to have a community around your podcast.
Why Building A Podcast Community Matters
To differentiate your brand from many others online, you need to have something that your audience can immediately connect and engage with. This is often found in a group of people sharing similar interests interacting with each other consistently – your online community.
Now building an engaged community is more than having followers or subscribers on social media platforms and sending out social media posts for them to comment on. And for many, the first thought that comes to mind for a community is a closed Facebook group, which can work quite well. But, only if you’re putting in the work.
Because community building is about how you engage with your audience and how what you do connects with their shared beliefs, interests, concerns, passions, and everything to do with them as a collective group.
Plus, with an engaged community, you can identify topics for future episodes, see how to add more value to your audience, and of course, get better conversions for your paid products or services.
You can also get support from your audience in the form of donations. So, it pays in more ways than one to have an engaged and active podcast community.
How PodRoom Helps You Turn Your Podcast Audience Into A Community
As we understand why building your podcast audience is necessary, let’s look at how you could do it. I’m using PodRoom as the example here because we know the community building features inside and out.
If you know another way to meet the recommendations we highlight below, then feel free to go for it. What you need to do is just start and engage consistently – without having to overextend yourself on a million and one platforms.
PodRoom was designed from the outset to be a community enhancer for podcasters. With PodRoom, you and your audience can experience a high level of interaction and engagement not found on any other podcast app.
Live Chat For Engagement
A live chat feature is an important necessity for audience members to engage with each other and with you. That’s why forums enjoy such popularity, even to this day. Look at Subreddit forums and you’ll likely find your community sharing your interests. While Reddit is not that live, you can get a fairly good idea of interactions based on shared interests.
Video Podcast
Video is a critical marketing tool as we’ve highlighted in this post. So, you can incorporate videos to increase your reach and expand your audience. But it can come with a lot of constraints, especially if you’re managing multiple locations. So, having a single podcast platform to give your audience audio and video can enhance how well they receive your message and interact with your content.
Live Podcast Rooms
There’s something to be said for the energy one feels when they hang out with their inspirations. Now, imagine you as a podcaster hanging out with your community globally, having a chit-chat or a Q&A. You know that the people there are your audience and your subscribers which makes those interactions even more meaningful.
Donations
Similar to Patreon (though users of that platform do offer gated content to their audience), PodRoom helps you to bring in a bit of cash from your podcast community to help offset the costs of bringing your message to your audience. It’s easier to manage your donations from a single platform. And if you want to adopt an approach of having exclusive content for persons using your podcast room, then even better.
Data Insights
And to top it all off, your PodRoom analytics dashboard gives you all the necessary stats to help you tweak and improve your engagement efforts. So, when considering how to build your podcast community, just think about this; you need a system with interactive features to connect and engage your audience.
If you can find a system that gives you interactive tools such as live chat and video podcasting, while allowing you to accept donations and get insights, then you’re well on your way to building your podcast community.
Article by Tolu Akintunde
Founder, PodRoom Inc.
Instagram: @podroompodcast | Twitter: @PodRoomPodcast
Website: http://www.podroomlive.com/