Welcome to episode 4 of our New Year Reset Series! High audience engagement is a good indicator of a successful podcast, as it often leads to increased word-of-mouth promotion and a more dedicated listener base. And that's the dream, right!?

So, in today's episode, we're tackling how to keep your current listeners engaged enough to actually stick around. I'm sharing the 5 indicators to look at and 4 ways to revive your audience engagement going into the new year.

⭐️ Resources Mentioned:

• New Year Reset Series
• The Role That Listener Retention Plays In Your Podcast’s Success [Organic Growth Series] [Ep. 81]
• Podcast Email Marketing Made Easy With Liz Wilcox [Ep. 70]
• 5 Easy Ways To Brainstorm Episode Topics That Your Audience Will LOVE [Ep. 47]
• Using Facebook Groups To Build A Podcast Community With Brittany Verlenich [Ep. 42]
• Follow me on Instagram @podcastingforeducators 

🎤 Recommended Podcasting Resources:

• Hosting: Captivate.fm (Get a free 7-day trial!)
• Transcription: Otter.ai
• Project Management: ClickUp
• Private Podcasting: Hello Audio
• Launch Your Podcast: Free Podcast Launch Guide & Podcasting for Educators Prep School
• Level Up Your Podcast: Podcast Like You Mean It
• Leverage Podcast Guesting: Guesting for Educators Mini-Course

Show Notes: https://podcastingforeducators.com/episode130

Some links mentioned are affiliate links. This helps to support this podcast at no additional cost to you. 

Sara Whittaker 0:01

Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators.

Sara Whittaker 0:27

Welcome to episode four of our new year reset series. In this series, we have been looking at each piece of your podcast and determining how we can hit that reset button, tweak things for improvement and head into the new year with a sense of renewed energy. And episode 127. We reflected on your podcast progress so far, and visualized what's to come and episode 128. We reimagined your podcast routines with the decide once principle, and an episode 129. We brainstormed how you could re energize your episode content. Now, when we think about improving our podcast or growing our podcast, the first thing your mind probably goes to is how can I increase the number of people who are listening to my show more people equals a bigger audience, right? Well, yes, in a sense, but perhaps the more important thing to consider is, how can I keep my current listeners engaged enough to stick around. And that's what we're going to be looking at today. audience engagement. I think audience engagement is a big pain point for a lot of podcasters because it can feel kind of lonely and isolating, sitting here talking to a microphone and a computer with nobody to look at on the other side. And very often. Nobody talking back at you once these episodes air. So first, let's define what audience engagement even is. When it comes to podcasting. audience engagement can mean a lot of different things. But it is a level of interaction connection, participation between you the podcast host and your listeners. And I have come up with five indicators of audience engagement. So these are five things that you can look at when you are considering how your audience engagement is going. Number one is consumption, meaning is your audience listening to most or all of your episodes, and even a little bit deeper than that when it comes to each individual episode. Are they listening to all or most of that specific episode. And if you don't already know this, you can look at inside of of your apple podcast Connect account, you can look at average consumption rate that will only be for Apple listeners, but it's a really good indicator to show you what your average consumption is. The second indicator of audience engagement is retention. Are your listeners sticking around long term? Once they find out about your podcast? Are they in it? Are they like a long term fan or are they kind of in they listen to a couple episodes, and then they hit that unfollow button, and they don't come back to it. This can be a really tricky thing to measure. But one thing you can look at is again, going into your apple podcast Connect account. And you can actually see how many followers you have on Apple podcasts. And you can even see by month how many followers how many new followers you've gained on Apple and how many you have lost. So you can kind of track that number to see wow, I'm gaining a lot of new followers each month. But I'm also losing a lot of followers. Or hopefully I'm gaining a lot of followers each month and those followers are sticking around. I will tell you right now you need to have a little bit of a thick skin when you look at this number because I have never looked at a client account and Apple podcasts connect and seen that zero people have stopped following them, you're going to have people that stopped unfollowing you and it can be for a variety of reasons it can be because of your content, or how you're delivering your content. But it can also just be maybe that person feels like they have a lot of podcasts in their library and yours didn't quite make the cut or maybe they had a change in their life and now and now your episodes don't apply to them anymore. Or you know there's so many different reasons so don't take offense but it is a good number to look at. The third indicator is ratings and reviews. Are your listeners giving you any kind of feedback are they going and leaving you a written review and tapping the five stars on Apple podcast to let you know that they are loving your content? The fourth indicator is feedback okay outside of reviews, so this could be in the form of messages On maybe Instagram shares that people are sharing on social media, you know, when people screenshot an episode and they tag you, and they say, Wow, I'm really loving this episode, or hey, you need to check out this episode. So messages, shares, emails, maybe that you're getting, and not just unsolicited emails, but maybe hopefully, you are sending a weekly email. And in that email in some way, you're talking about your podcast episode, maybe you get an email back from somebody saying that they really enjoyed the episode that week or something along those lines. And getting this type of feedback is harder for some podcasters than others. And this is totally going to depend on the type of audience that you have. Some podcasters can get people sharing or commenting about their episode every single week and other podcasters go weeks or months without hearing a word from their listeners. And I know that that can be really disheartening. But the fact is, is that this type of feedback is not the only form of audience engagement, your audience just might be a type of audience that doesn't communicate in that way. So we're going to look at these other indicators, and things that you can do in order to get other types of audience engagement. And then the fifth indicator of audience engagement is kind of like a level up, I kind of want to call this like a bonus indicator, because this isn't going to happen to all of your listeners. But obviously, it is a goal for us as podcasters to have this happen. And that is conversion. So are your listeners converting to either email subscriber or to buyer in some way, this is showing you that they are so engaged with your podcast content that they want to continue learning from you outside of your podcast. Okay, so those five indicators were consumption, retention, ratings, and reviews, feedback, and conversions. When we get any of these types of audience engagement, that's a really good thing, because it's showing us that people are engaged with our content, they're trusting us. And that often leads to them, sharing about your podcast or word of mouth promotion, and just an overall more dedicated listener base. If your audience engagement has fallen flat in one of those areas, or more than one of those areas. Let's look at how we can revive that. I'm gonna give you four kinds of steps to take in order to revive your audience engagement. Step one, and this might seem really basic, but it is so very important. And that is to understand your audience. Do you really know who's listening to your podcast? What are their interests? What are their needs? What are their pain points, I preach this all the time. But if you have never ever done a listener survey for your podcast, you need to do one, this is going to be the best way to find out who actually is listening because it might not be who you think or their needs might not be what you think they are. And doing a formal podcast survey can really give you all types of great information about your audience, it can give you insight into their demographics and their preferences and their needs and their wants. Okay, so step one is to understand your audience. Step two is to then create high quality content that meets their needs and their wants. Creating consistent high quality content is a surefire way to engage your audience. You want your episodes to be well planned, based on what your listeners need. High quality content also means that your content is well edited. Are your episodes flowing? Is it easy and pleasurable to listen to, as one of your listeners? Or are there things that are getting in the way of an enjoyable listener experience. And most importantly, your content needs to be relevant to your target audience. Having content that is consumable helpful for most of us as educators, maybe you don't have an educational podcast, in which case maybe that your content needs to be entertaining, or it needs to be inspirational, and relevant. So having content that's going to be consumable, helpful and relevant, really is kind of that golden ticket to audience retention, which, as I said before, is a form of audience engagement. I know that the question of should I niche down or not is a common question in this space and my stance on this when it comes to your podcast? Is that Yes, niching down is good. You want your episodes to apply to a very specific listener and this overlaps with this high quality content. Because if your episodes are not created for a specific niche person, then your listeners are are going to go into your podcast library. And they're going to pick and choose to find which episodes apply to them. And if most of your episodes don't apply to them, then they are going to be more likely to unfollow your show, because there's not going to be enough of a connection for them to stay. Alright, so step one, understand your audience. Step two, create high quality content that meets their needs and wants. Step three, give them a place to communicate. We cannot put feedback and engagement all on our listener, if you aren't hearing anything, like anything at all, you're hearing crickets from your audience, get creative, and how you can change that you really have to be the one that builds that bridge from your podcast and your listeners. So maybe you're seeing your downloads, you've got downloads, people are listening, you know that people are listening, but it's radio silence, you're not getting anything from your listeners? Well, you're gonna have to make it really easy for them, to engage with you to engage with your content to give you that feedback. An example of how you can do this really easily is to put up a poll on Instagram that asks a question related to your episode each week, or pose a question, like an open ended question on socials or through email, I say open ended. But it should also be something really simple. That elicits a response from your listeners, you can create a Facebook group that hosts discussions around your episodes, you can host a monthly contest. Let your listeners know that your DMS are open and if somebody reaches out to you talk back to them. This is also a really good opportunity to ask them right then and there to Hey, can you if you're loving my podcast, if you're loving this podcast, if it's helping you in some way, I would love for you to go to Apple podcasts and write a review that would mean so much to me, send them the link right then in there. It's that personalized one to one, ask. And I cannot preach this enough. Invite your listeners onto your show, this is a really fun thing to do. And it's how we get to know each other and highlight their voices on your podcast. That's like the ultimate way to engage with your listeners is to actually have a face to face. Virtually maybe it's in person, that would be cool, but most likely virtual face to face conversation. Okay, so all of these things are different types of engagement strategies, the polls on Instagram that are related to your episodes, the question and answers, the DM conversations, the interviews, these are all really fairly simple ways that you can get engagement from your audience, that you are kind of starting and making it really easy for them to engage with you. Alright, so step one, understand your audience. Step two, create high quality content that meets their needs and wants. Step three, give them a place to communicate with you. And step four, track and tweak the five indicators that I had mentioned before five indicators of audience engagement, consumption, retention, ratings and reviews, feedback via social media and email, and conversions. track them, keep an eye on them. Because if you're not looking at your average consumption rate, or you're not looking at your follower count, or your downloads, even, and you're not tracking your ratings, and reviews, if you're not tracking these things, then you're not going to have any idea that you need to improve in these areas, or that you need to make these things a little easier for your audience. So track these things. Determine how you can improve in these areas. Depending on your audience. Remember, we talked about how everybody's audience is different, they're going to respond to things differently, they're going to engage with you differently. So try something that is going to work for your audience. And then, depending on how that works out, either lose it or continue doing it. Alright, so step one, understand your audience. Step two, create high quality content that meets their needs and wants. Step three, give them a place to communicate step four, track and tweak those five indicators. It might seem like a fairly simple process, because it can be it can be really simple. The key is figuring out what engagement looks like for your audience. I think that kind of stereotypical thought when we think about podcasts, audience engagement is when we see people sharing about our episodes on Instagram, and that might just not be happening for you. And I just want you to know that that's okay, if that's not happening for you. It's not happening for a lot of people. And you can put more effort into trying to nurture that and to get people to do that. But there are all of these other ways that you can really encourage other types of engagement. So you're Step or action item today is to really think about one way that you could really focus on reviving your audience engagement. And maybe that could be as simple as going to your Instagram right now and putting up a poll sticker that says, Did you listen to my episode this week? Yes or no? Simple, straight to the point. But that will give you that feedback and that engagement from people so that you can see, oh, these people did listen, or these people haven't listened. I actually usually like to put something like, Did you listen to that episode this week? Either? Yes, I did. No, but it's on my list. And then a third option that says something like, Oh, I didn't know that you had a podcast. So if anybody clicks that third one, you can send them a quick message and say, Yeah, I do have a podcast. Here's the link to it, I'd love for you to check it out. If it sounds like it'd be something that's helpful for you. And that's just another way to kind of spark that conversation with people. Your Podcast is a free resource, so you don't have to feel icky or slimy to send a message like that.

Alright, during this reset series, I am ending all of these episodes by referring you back to a few episodes that you might want to revisit or listen to for the first time that are related to today's topic. So some episodes that you might find helpful after listening to this episode are episode 81. The role that listener retention plays in your podcast success. I talked about retention in this episodes. If you want to dig a little bit more into that, you can listen to episode 81. Episode 70 was about podcast email marketing with Liz Wilcox. Liz is a really fun, super energetic email marketing expert and she talks a lot about how to make email marketing really easy and personable, and how to write really quick newsletters and incorporate your podcast into them. So check out episode 70. If that sounds like something that would be helpful for you. Episode 47 is all about easy ways to brainstorm episode topics that your audience will love. And episode 42 is about using Facebook groups to build a podcast community and that was a guest episode with Brittany for linage. As always, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you're enjoying this series. And I hope that you will join me next week because that will be the last episode in this reset series. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.