The key to successful podcasting...is community?
So I've been working on a podcast for podcasters...
https://www.recordeditpodcast.com/blog
...and an interesting pattern I am noticing - from the people I have interviewed to the clients I work with is...
top podcasters focus on COMMUNITY - not just an audience.
Jay Shetty, the most notable person I currently work with and host of the #1 Health podcast in the world constantly reiterates in the intro & outro of every episode how thankful he is for his listeners and the "community" they are creating together
Now for him that community is his following on social media and his direct engagement with them.
Indie Hackers, a community, is crushing the indie founder community and the podcast is just an extension of that...
So I'd like to ask you, the podcasters of IH a few questions:
- What is your show and how is it valuable to your listeners?
- What are you doing to create a sense of community with your audience?
- And if you've already got an awesome podcast listener community...how did you do it?
I love this!
We had a similar assumption back in 2015 and tried to build a "Reddit based on audio" where podcasters could set up a channel (e.g., subreddit) for their audience. The channel was a place where hosts and listeners could post audio messages to communicate, similar to threads within Reddit. It was so cool when a podcaster would play-back a listener message or thread on the podcast.
We ran it for two years but couldn't find a business model that worked. The more podcasting continues to grow, the more I think we were just too early.
Plus, this was back when Ionic was the hot hybrid model and the mobile apps were a beast to build & maintain.
Not answering your questions but thought you or other IH'ers might find it interesting.
Wow man I need to talk to you. I'm building the exact same thing.
https://podtalk.app
How did you get your first "subreddits" going?
Direct outreach to podcasters & radio shows. Gaming and sports podcasts were the most receptive. Podcasts with active Patreon's were good too.
We had to work with the hosts and provide them with copy, assets, etc,. to talk about the app on the podcast. It really required their effort and the hosts to get the conversation going to get a channel off the ground.
Email me baird@wavve.co. Dedicated two years of my life (full-time) to that thing. Hopefully, can help you avoid some pitfalls.
Also, I tried a lot of business models. Ads, Sponsorships, Subscriptions, Premium Channels, etc., Should still have all the docs, numbers, etc.,
I hope the crickets here are the podcasters trying to develop their communities and figuring out how they're making their audience more successful.
Whats up Bradley!?
Hey Steve! It's a difficult few questions. Personally, I'm not sure how to apply them to my situation yet either and it seems like something we all need some help with. Excited to see more ideas in this thread :)
One thing I've noticed with a lot of podcast communities (esp. those on twitter) is the communication tends go between host <-> listener, and not as much listener <-> listener.
I recently started Software Sessions and I'm one of the hosts on Software Engineering Radio.
Episodes are a bit like having a coworker or friend explain a technical topic to you. Ideally you'll passively build up some background on the topic and then have enough information to decide if you care and how to get started after each episode.
Software Engineering Radio has a fairly substantial audience but it hasn't built a community. I'm curious to see how other shows approach that.
but if you had to build a community what do you think you would do? Just curious
I would probably start with asking questions for a community to discuss.
In my case that would be something general like “what kinds of projects are you working on now” or more technical like “how do you decide whether to build a single page app vs a traditional webpage?” Even better would be to tie it to a discussion that happened during the episode.
Then decide where this conversation should happen. For example, in the comments of an episode, forum, social media, etc.
I think it’s very challenging to get people to follow up on these discussions based on a podcast alone though. I’ve heard sometimes shows will get more direct email feedback than public comments.
@Merott probably a lot of parallels here with the community stuff you're working on!
Bradley, I got a different question - how do you like those Cloudboosters? Saw in your intro video you add them to the mixer. Do you find it adds value?
I wrote a Shure mic being the best for podcasters and included those boosters as a nice-to-have, but personally the jury is still out.
Do you like those?
haha, the CloudLifters are great, especially for SM7B's or similar gain-hungry dymanic microphones. Really helps to give a ultra-clean signal.
Very much a nice-to-have though ;)