Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized tip to help you podcast. Welcome back to Help me, Podcast. Today I have something that I'm really
excited about talking about. It's a new tactic to help grow your podcast and to help give your listeners what they're looking for. This is something that I just heard about and I haven't actually tried yet, but I am definitely going to try to set this up. And what I'm talking about is getting on a call with your podcast listeners, like just jumping on a quick call and talking to them about your podcast. And this, to me, when I first heard it, I
immediately was like, yes, that's a great idea. That's a wonderful idea. And it immediately brought me back to thinking about business and how you run a business. And a lot of times when you're first starting a business, maybe you have an idea and you think it's a great idea, and then you put so much time and effort into it and you launch and then you realize that, oh, this really wasn't something that is helpful to the
people that I'm trying to reach. And then maybe you find out like, oh, maybe it's this other thing that's helpful. I'm speaking from personal experience here, but really it makes more sense to first get feedback from people about their problems and then make something that can help solve that problem instead of thinking you're solving a problem in your head and then creating
that thing. So I hope that kind of relates back to podcasting, where obviously you're making a podcast for yourself and for your own reasons, but if you're trying to improve and to get more listeners and to incorporate your community that you're growing. And I always think it's helpful to get feedback in anything that you're doing so you can help improve and be better. So I got this idea from Alex Sanfilippo, who is the co founder of a bunch of online podcast helping softwares, including Pod
Lottery and Pod Match. And he talked about this idea of just jumping on a very quick call, like a ten to 15 minutes call with some of your listeners and the people that are really fans of your show. And I just thought that this was a brilliant idea. And as soon as I heard it, I was like, this is great. This is definitely something that I want to be doing. And I think it's just the most valuable thing that
you can have, right? Because you're going directly to the people that are liking and listening to your show and you're asking them what do they like to see more of what do they think you can improve on, and most importantly, how they found you and how they're sharing you and that sort of thing. So it's just giving you tons of data about your show, so then you can use that data and improve going forward. So the first thing is, how do you find people to ask, right, where do you even go?
Well, the first thing is if you have people who are engaging on social media, maybe they're on Instagram and they're liking your post or they're commenting on your post. Those people definitely a good place to start. Send them a DM and ask them next place could be anybody who's leaving you a review. Maybe somebody left you a review and they left their full name. You can go find them on LinkedIn and do a little bit of stocking and ask them like, hey, I saw you left me a review. Thank you so much.
Would you mind jumping on a quick call? Any places like this that you're getting any engagement from people, that's the place that you want to ask for people to jump on a quick call. And even if somebody's sending you an email, right, maybe somebody sent you an email saying, hey, I love your podcast. That would be a perfect segue into, hey, I'd love to talk to you more about that. So the next thing is the approach, and how do you ask people for this? Right? Because I think it
might come off a little bit jarring at first. If you're just asking somebody like, hey, can I jump on a call with you? They're probably going to be like, well, that's a little weird. Are you trying to sell me something? So I think it's important to just be super transparent and upfront and clear in saying, like, hey, I'm just trying to get some feedback for my show, and I just want to talk to the people that
really love the show. And I can see that you're listening, and I just want to get your feedback so I could make changes and improve and make the show better for everybody who listens. And I think when you come at it from that angle, they'll see like, okay, they just really want my feedback. And there's no sort of sales thing in here. And also, I think it's important to say it's only going to be a
ten minute call, not too much of your time. And me personally, I would also do only on the phone because I feel like that's a little bit less of a commitment than jumping on a zoom call. But if you prefer, you can obviously do a zoom call as well. But I just think it's a little bit less of an ask to jump on a phone call than to jump on a zoom call. So you also want to make it super easy for
them to schedule one of these calls. Go on Calendly, or I used Absado for my scheduler, but make it easy to send them a link so that way they could set up a call with you very easily. They don't have to go back and forth, you don't have to play what time is good for you sort of thing. They just go into your calendar and pick a time that you're already available and then you
schedule them for a phone call. And now once you have them on the phone call, I think we have to think about it in like a data collection sort of thing. So for me, very analytical. And Alex also had mentioned this is you make an Excel spreadsheet know have your questions there. So then when you're on the call with them, you can quickly type in their responses. And now the more people that you talk to, the more this looks like data and you can then use this data to improve and make
changes down the line. Some of the questions that Alex mentioned that you should be asking these people, and this is coming from somebody who's done this multiple times, is one, how did you found out about the show and why are you listening? How did you get here? That's going to be helpful to understand how people are getting to your show. And is it a random they just found you? Or maybe somebody's writing about you or maybe you're doing something else and not realizing that this is
how you're getting your podcast listeners. It's definitely a super helpful idea to find out where they're coming from because then you can double down on whatever that is and get more people to come and listen to your show. So that's a great tactic and a great question to be asking. The next thing is what do you enjoy about the show? Maybe they have a favorite episode, or a favorite segment of your show, or a favorite guest. And I think it's also helpful
to know what they like about your show. The next thing would be to find out what they don't like about the show. And one thing that Alex said that I really liked is don't ask them what they don't like about your show. Ask them what's one thing you would do to make it better for future listeners. Because that way if you ask somebody what they don't like and they're not confrontational, they may not want to say what they don't like. But if you ask
it in a way that's positive and like, how can I improve the show? What would you do to improve the show? It makes it a little bit easier to give constructive feedback and then the last question to ask them is just ask them what they're struggling with right now. And this could be helpful if you're using your podcast as a business or you may down the line want to make products for your listeners just to know what they're
struggling with, depending on what your show is. For me, my other podcast working towards our purpose, I would really love it if I could be able to help people work more in their purpose. So if they tell me what it is they're struggling with and maybe why they're having a hard time leaving their job or making a career switch or following their passions, then it can help give me
insight into how I can help them. So I think this question is helpful in being able to figure out how you can help your audience and your community to do whatever it is that they want to be doing. And then you can also ask them before they leave to leave you an Apple review and send them the link. Make it easy. Just like we talked about in our last episode, episode
59, they obviously really like your show. If they're on a call with you and if they haven't left a review yet, I think it's a really easy sell to say, hey, do you mind leaving me a review on Apple? Here's the link, how to do it. And doing all this again in ten minutes, really quickly, just asking these few questions. And now you can start to build your data sheet of like, what do people like? What do people not like? What are they struggling with? How'd they find this show?
And with this information, you now understand your listeners more and you can better make content to make them happy and to give them what they need and to serve your community. So I just think that this is a genius way of being able to hear from your listeners, because as podcasters, you're in the dark a lot of times with who's listening, right? You don't really get a lot of chances to get feedback, and if it's not through a review,
you really don't hear from people. So I think it's a great way to be able to listen to your community and to talk to your community. And this is kind of a win win, because you're getting somebody who is dedicated to your show and they like your show and you're listening to them and you're letting them speak, and that's going to make them feel good and make them feel
like they're a part of the show and a part of your community. And that's really what podcasting is about, is it's building community and creating a bunch of like minded people and putting them together and having conversations. And I just think that that's kind of the beauty of podcasting. So thanks again to Alex for suggesting this and I wanted to share it all with you so that you can go forward and start interviewing some of your guests. So as a good segue, if any of you would like to
be interviewed about this podcast, shoot me an email. And I would love to talk to you and to see what your thoughts are about this show and how I can help better serve you all and make podcasts that are more helpful for you so that you can grow your own podcast. As always, there's a link to send me an email in the Show Notes and I would love to hear what any of you have to say. So thanks for listening and happy
podcasting. We've reached the end of the episode and if you enjoyed this podcast or you got something from it, you might be interested in my weekly newsletter that I send out every Monday morning, full of podcasting tips, tricks and news. So if you like this show, you might like this newsletter. To sign up, just go to the Show Notes and click the link. Thanks for listening and happy podcasting. Our.