Get More Podcast Downloads Via Your Community | Megan Smolen

Getting more podcast downloads is on every show host's mind. Many of us look to social media and paid options to grow our listenership, which can be frustrating, expensive, and lacking results. Thankfully, there's a free alternative to these tactics that actually works! In this episode, Megan Smolen shares how to build a thriving community around your podcast that drives listenership growth and interaction. Get ready to see your podcast growth take off through the power of community!

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Chapters

00:00 Understanding Podcast Communities
02:55 The Importance of Community Value
05:49 Building a Community: The Acquisition Funnel
09:14 Engagement and Retention Strategies

Takeaways

A community is more than just an audience; it's a supportive space.
Email subscribers and social media followers do not equal community members.
Asking your audience about their community needs is crucial.
Value can manifest in various forms, including membership signups and customer retention.
Focus on one business challenge when building your community.
The acquisition funnel includes acquisition, conversion, onboarding, engagement, and retention.
Onboarding is essential for helping new members understand their role.
Engagement strategies can include live events and forums.
Retention is key to maintaining a thriving community.
Understanding the 'why' behind your community is vital for its success.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/321

📊 This month's Independent Podcasters Report is now available! To see podcasting industry insights that matter for indie podcast hosts and podcast guests, please visit https://PodMatch.com/Report!

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Podcast Communities
• 3:14 The Importance of Community Value
• 6:08 Building a Community: The Acquisition Funnel
• 9:33 Engagement and Retention Strategies

Transcript

0:20

You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple. Hi everybody. I'm Megan Spullen. I'm here to chat with you about how to build a thriving and interactive podcast community. And I'm so excited to be chatting with you today. I hope by the end of this, you are so, so confident in knowing is a podcast community right for you? Is this something that will provide value back into your business? We will be talking about the what, why, and how to go about doing this. So this will give you confidence in knowing. Is this wasting your time or is this something you should absolutely pursue or continue to pursue if you've already started your community? So with that, let's just get started with the first and foremost question. What the heck is a community? What is it? There are so many different definitions out there. And while there isn't exactly one right definition, I will first talk to you about what a lot of brands are talking about when they say their community, which is a myth. So what are the myths with it first? A myth of what your community is is, you know, we have 25,000 email subscribers, but on their website or their, you know, anything that they're displaying marketing, it says 25,000 community members. Your email subscribers are not your community members. You know what else isn't your community members? The amount of followers that you have on social media, on any social media presence. It's great to have eyeballs to something. but it doesn't necessarily mean it's your community. Your podcast listeners, you have an audience. This is an audience of people that are listening to you. Is it a community? No. A community is a safe and supportive place that offers connection and engaging with one another. So if there is a spot where people have a common purpose to come together on or offline, that is a community. So. You just want to get that clear as far as what a community is because you may or may not be at the forefront of having your community. It's great to have an email list. It's great to have followers on social media. It's great to have podcast listeners. This is just the beginning of getting people into becoming community members. And it's awesome. So it's not a bad thing. It's just not necessarily the actual number of what your community is, which is mostly how it's. portrayed a lot when it comes to marketing as far as what your community is. Sometimes it's adding all of your social media followers together on different platforms and you can say that's your community number. But a lot of them are duplicates and a lot of them may or may not be actually community members. So why should your podcast community exist? Let's just figure this out now. Your gut might be telling you why and that's a good start. The second thing is figuring it out by asking around. followers or audience listeners within social media, within your podcast, or that email list that we talked about. Ask them what kind of community is right for them. I will tell you right now, they will tell you. You won't have everybody responding as far as what kind of community it is. You have to be very thoughtful in the way that you're asking the questions as well as far as the types of community that should exist for them. But I will tell you if it's asked in a way that brings value back to your community members as to why they want it to exist. Your potential community members, they will tell you and there will be a common theme as far as what your North Star, what your community should be and what people want out of it. And asking is the first thing as far as giving you confidence as far as how to build it. Second is also getting a competitive analysis around other brands. What other brands are doing something like you might be doing? Does a community like this exist or is there a need for this that could make you stand out in a way that gives value to people coming to become community members? Is there a bigger why? Your community could be about something that obviously aligns with your brand, but it could be a bigger purpose and a bigger reason for people to come together. And that also heightens the reason for your brand. The reason why community is so important once you get them in is you can retain them. It's not just this one-off view that you get on your website or this one-off follower that may or may not know who you are or a one-time podcast listener. Your community could be something more where you're retaining members to connect and engage with one another behind your brand. And that's what's the beautiful thing about why your podcast community could exist and asking around, also asking experts within your field. Why do you think that a community should exist for somebody like them or people that they think? What are their guts? Figure out what they think and maybe it'll align with all the other people that you're asking. If you have employees, internally ask them as well. Why should a community exist? I'm telling you, the answers you'll see will be probably in one direction that will point you to the right way of building your community. And that will be so helpful for not only your community, but your value proposition, how you're talking about your brand, what you put within your site, why your brand should exist, because it's a bigger why. And so I hope that helps you figure that out. And just being clear with that is so, so, so important. So I've said value a lot. What kind of value would a podcast community bring to your audience? Value is a big one, right? There's a lot of different ways that can bring value back into your brand. I'll share a list. One is membership signups. That's a big one. Converting them over to becoming members and keeping them. Increased customer retention, brand awareness, account expansion, retention and satisfaction, account expansion, reduced support costs, crowdsource innovation. There's so many. It's almost overwhelming how many reasons. best way to go about doing this is identify one business challenge that would help with your community first. Focus on one first, not all of them. There's a lot of ways that can help, but focus on the one that helps community members want to be a part of your brand and that would help your business thrive. And that is how you can figure out the value. There's a lot more into that as far as bringing back to your ROI, but that's kind of the start of it. Then how to build a community based on your business needs. How the heck do you do it? There is an acquisition funnel that is so important that is usually focused on the first two of the five parts of this acquisition funnel where you feel like you have your community members, but there's so much more. So the acquisition funnel starts with acquisition. How are you finding people? Two, your conversion. How are you converting members? Three, onboarding. How are you onboarding members? Four, engagement. Five, retention. So let's go back up to acquisition. How are members finding you? Through your podcast, through the blogs that you're creating, through your social posts that you're creating, through Google search, organic or paid. There's so many different ways that people can find your brand. That is the beginning of eyeballs to the brand awareness of who you are and why you exist. It's hard to do. But second, conversion. How are you converting people when you're speaking to people? How can they find you when you're doing a podcast? Is it within the notes where people can click to hear more? Are you talking about it at the end of your podcast? Are you converting them in a way where you said all this stuff doesn't make sense to end it in a way that they can find you? Is it within your blog at the bottom and the middle at the top of clicking people to convert to sign up? pop-up login module where you can read some information, but you've got to log in to see more. There's so many ways to convert people or visitors into members, but you've got to convert people into becoming members. But that's just the beginning. This is usually when people celebrate. We have two registrations today, we have 100 registrations, we have 1,000 registrations. This is our community, let's keep focusing on getting more. When you go about doing it that way, you forget that these are people and they need to know what to do. And so there's this onboarding part of it. Who are the types of people that are coming to your page? Can they be segmented in a way that retains them in a way that's might be different? There might be experts and there might be newbies to your community. They all might be the same type of community members where the onboarding is pretty simple, but it tells The onboarding tells you what you do when you get there. So members can confidently know, signed up and this is what I do to be a part of the community immediately. This is how I can be awesome, is really the onboarding of it. And then engagement and retention, they're not one and the same, but they're so important because when you engage with one another, when you find a way to connect with one another, those are all different programs to make sure that they are. connecting over a live podcast event where at the end of it, you can really talk to one another or you have a place where you're onboarded where you can meet these people that attended the same event where you can connect or you can engage with one another that has a question on a certain platform. There are so many online platforms that aren't your typical social media sites where you can bring people together. You can control your own algorithm as far as what people see, but you can allow members to connect and engage with one another, whether it's forums or mentorships or whatever, but that all depends back to the why. Why should the community use this? Why do people want to be there? And then if it's offline, same thing. How are they interacting and engaging offline to sustain their excitement about being a part of your brand and more importantly, being a part of this community together? And that is how you retain people, which is retention is the last one. How can you report as far as, your, your churn is less this year because people actually know what they're doing when they are a part of your community. People want to stay, they don't just register, they're not converted and then they leave. That's a really, really easy way to lose people. But retaining members is so, so important. So there's specific programs that can be set up to really help you up to success. I hope. that by the end of this, that you are confident, excited to learn more. I hope that this was so, so helpful for you in figuring out if this is something at least right for you. But there's a lot of ways to really figure out how to build interactive and thriving podcast community. And this will hopefully set you up for success. Thank you so much for your time. It was so great speaking to you today. And have the best rest of your day. Thanks. For more episodes, please visit podmatch.com forward slash episodes. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, Alex here. I wanted to give you a gift as a way of saying thank you for staying around till the end of this episode. I put together a list of five things that you can read in less than five minutes that will help you level up as a podcast host, guest, or agency. To see the five things with no email address required, please visit podmatch.com forward slash free. Thanks again for listening. I hope these five things serve you well.