Welcome to podcast answers the show where we help you grow and start your podcast answering any questions along the way. So guys welcome to a new episode a new edition I we it's been a while since I've done this show. And that's because I was really busy last week and I had to take some time off. So with that, we are back and we're ready to do this show. So what is today's topic? I'm glad you asked today. We are going to be talking about community creating a podcast
community around your show. And so at the end of this show, I will be actually introducing the podcast community for podcast answers. So stick with me. There's a couple of different ways that you can do podcast communities and the way that I like to do it, well, several different ways. The first one is going to be Facebook groups and Facebook groups are great. If you're on Facebook, you can create a group and you can make it private. You can
make it people answer questions first. You can have moderators. It's great. The one thing I don't really particularly like about you can even go live in that podcast group. So that's cool because if you want to go live with a live video, you can you can do that. The one thing I don't like about podcasting or any community groups on Facebook is that you have to be on Facebook.
That's the problem with any application that you're going to be using to build your community around is it has to be a you have to have people use that app. So whether you're using Facebook or Discord or Telegram or any other application that you can use to create your community around, they have to be on it. The thing is, is people are likely going to have a sign up for things like Discord. They will sign up for that for Telegram.
They're less likely if they're against Facebook, they don't want to have a personal Facebook page just to join your community. So that may not be the best way to actually have a community when it comes to your podcast. So another option is Discord. And well, actually, let's go back to Facebook real quick. The way that Facebook is set up is just like your Facebook and normal Facebook timeline.
You have timelines, there's one stream of consciousness, people can post and then there's, you can do comments and stuff off that. You can then have moderators moderate that and I would actually recommend doing that. But the one thing that I don't necessarily like about Facebook is just that it's hard to organize your thoughts. You can't break things down into rooms and things like that. There's all going to be kind of one stream of consciousness.
So the app that I like using for creating communities is Discord. So if you've never heard of it, it actually started out as a gaming application and for for games, gamers and things like that. But what it has turned into is everybody uses it to create communities. And so one of the things that I like about it is that you can have different channels, what they call them.
So essentially rooms, you can create a, for instance, I have created a discord for this for podcast answers and I would love to have you there but for this one there's
like an audio room, a video room, a roadcaster room, things like that. It's gonna be different topics that we're talking about, different things, different subjects that you can go in there and ask about that because hey we may have a community member that's really good at let's say video podcasting and so you may want to go ask your question to them in there because they're gonna be in that channel watching. So that's what I would do for that, because I would have it so that
way you can have different topics of interest. The cool thing about Discord too is you can have audio and video chat in there too. So I could be streaming, I'm not right now, but I could be streaming as I'm recording this podcast episode to a room in Discord. And you could watch me as I'm doing it. You can have like an open community time with voice calls, video calls, back channel type things. The cool thing about Discord is that you have
permissions in there. So you can have all sorts of permissions. You can say that only people who have the role of guest, guests on your show, a guest role in there, can see certain rooms in your Discord. And so, and it and go in there and chat. And so you can actually block people out based on different things. You can, if they pay for your, you
know, support, they can have access to extra rooms. It's just kind of a really cool community, a way to build community because you're able to go in there and have different rooms based
on interest and then also based on whatever you want. You can have it set up so that you can have it based on the, you know, if they're a member, if they're not a member, if they're a guest, you can do different permissions on different channels, whether they can do, you know, whether they can chat, whether they cannot chat, whether they can do whatever. So I really like, I really like Discord as a community. There's so much in there to get
to know and to when you become what they call it, it's a Discord server. So it's really not, you're not really running your own server per se, but you go to Discord and you sign up and you create what they call a server, which is a room, a house if you will. So think of the whole thing as a house. So my podcast answers Discord is the house. It only pertains to me. I can only let people in. If I want to let them in, I don't have to let just anybody in. They can have to have an invite or whatever.
But then with that, then there's little, the channels think of those as rooms. And so you have, you know, let's say your living room and your kitchen and your bedroom and your bathroom and things like that. So there's a different channels where you're going to talk about different things, but then your overall server is your house. But you can lock people out of different rooms.
So if you have people coming over to your house as a guest, normally in your physical house, you can shut your room to your, let's say your bedroom because you don't want people to go in there. You can lock them if you have a physical lock on it. You can do the same thing in Discord. You can say, "I don't want you into this channel because either you're
not paying for it or it's a special thing." For me, I think no matter what kind of podcast community you're creating, whether it be in Discord or in Facebook or in Telegram or any other number of different kind of apps that you can create a community in, I think it's important to have moderators too because, well, you can, if you're just starting out, you can moderate all the chat you want. You can go in there and tell people, "No, I don't want you to
say bad words. I don't want you to be talking about this." You can do that. But when your community becomes so large, it becomes almost impossible to moderate by yourself. So I would recommend getting trusted people that you trust to be moderators and you can have them, they can go in there, they get extra. Like for me, I have it set up so that my moderators can see like kind of a behind the scenes type of a thing. And then you can set it up so that way they can chat with each other.
And then they can go in and make moderation things like delete comments, delete posts, delete people, ban people, things like that. So that's what I would do. And again, like I said, there's a lot of other different kinds of places that you can create community, but it's important that you create a community for your podcast. It's not necessary.
Like I don't think that you 100% have to have it, but what the community allows you to do is it allows your people who are your fans to come in and talk about the show. You can have a post each post and you create a new show. And then comments about that post. If someone has a question, a comment, they can go into that post and they can ask it. It also creates a community. A foster is a community because when you have a community, it feels like a family.
It feels like you're part of something and people wanna be part of something. So they don't just wanna listen to a show, but they want to chance to chat with the hosts. They want to chat with other people who listen to the show, other people who watch the show. I mean, think about it. When you watch a TV show, let's say you have a, let's say, you know, way back in the day, you were watching the TV show "Lost."
There were podcasts that were created about that because they kind of created an extra community. And then those had communities so that people could chat with other listeners of the, or watchers of the show "Lost." You can do that same very thing with your own show. You can create a community around your show and then people get to know you more.
And then the next thing you know, you are, let's say, going to take a trip down to Texas and you just make a call out in your show and in your community, "Hey, I'm gonna be in Texas "for a week, let's do a meetup." And you can have the podcast answers listeners meet you there. It's really, really cool, guys. I would, I would. Invite you to check it out now for, for me, I would suggest only doing one community place per podcast.
So I didn't necessarily follow this, my own advice on this when I created the community for the dudes and dads podcast. That's my other podcast that I host, but I, I didn't necessarily follow my own advice on that show. I created a Facebook channel, a Facebook group. I created a Facebook page, which isn't necessarily for growing community, but it's for getting information out there. And then I created a Discord too. And so what that does is you end up having a fragmented community.
So your community is a little bit fragmented. You don't necessarily have the cohesive community. It works. It's doable. You can do a fragmented community like that. It's not as big of a deal, but you just have to, it's more work for you because you have to post things in both places. If you're trying to do prompts to keep people talking, because again, creating a community is great, but you have to have some engagement. People aren't just going to go in there and naturally create posts.
So you as the creator of the community, the creator of the content, you need to go back in there and you need to maybe say a post like, "Hey, what does everybody use as their audio mixing board? Do you use an audio mixing board? Do you just go right directly into your computer? If so, how?" You have to ask those questions so that way people, you're engaging people and they talk back.
Most of the time, people aren't just going to come into a room, especially a room that they don't necessarily know people right away and chat. you as the community manager, as the person who started the community or the moderator, you have to go in there and you have to start conversation. It is your job to start conversation.
So again, in two places, if you have two different communities, if you have two different places where you're going to be posting and creating this community, you need to make sure that you're in both of those places and engaging the people because nothing is worse than having a community and having it dead, having not many people there to make the engagement, to have not many people when people come in, they're going to turn right around and leave
because who wants to go to a party when the party is, whenever it was just standing there looking at their phones and not chatting? No one wants to go to that party, right? I mean, community is the same way. You need to get in there, make some posts, engagement, and things like that. One of the other things that I really, really enjoyed, and I've seen this done on some of the Ecamm channels. What Ecamm is, if you don't know, it's just the video software that I use to create this show.
I stream this show live and I do video. So I use a program called Ecamm. It's a Mac-only software, but again, it's the best video production software out there for doing live stuff. do in their Discord is after a show is done, or on some specific shows, the hosts will go stop the stream, stop the recording, because again, that's all if you're streaming live, so people are watching you as you're recording.
But after that, they go into a Discord chat, Discord video chat, and they just kind of talk.
People are there and just kind of talking, whether it's about the show or just hanging But it's cool because you're not you're not only able to hang out and do video chats with The host but other listeners excuse me, but other listeners too and so that's that's really cool is you kind of get the sense of Being friends with the host and being friends with other people in the community and you can continue the conversation
Maybe it's only for five minutes ten minutes that they go on talking after the conversation But it's cool because it's kind of a more behind-the-scenes type of thing so guys I Said at the beginning of this that I'm going to be introducing the discord community for this If you want to join us, please please please come and go to podcast answers comm slash discord that's gonna get you to our
Community that I'm starting for this and again. It's it's on discord It's not on Facebook, but it's it allows me to do different rooms different topics So I thought that that would be best for podcast answers because Because there's different types different questions different topics for podcasting so again guys Please go to podcast answers comm slash discord and that'll that's dis Cod and that will get you to our discord server
You have to have this for the app, but you can sign up right there as as you as you go to that webpage
It's free. It doesn't cost you anything, but I want you to be part of this community I want you to come in and I want you to that's another way to answer For us to answer questions for you podcasting if you have podcasting questions, we can answer those in Discord so come join us again at podcast answers comm slash discord and If you have any comments or questions about this episode definitely go to discord and put it in there
But you can also contact us at podcast answers comm slash contact again podcast answers
comm slash contact. I'd love to see you there guys next week. We're gonna be actually talking about how to do a podcast when you are on the road And I mean like like when you're out in the field because I'm actually gonna be at our county fair All week next week and so I won't be in my studio and so I'm gonna be trying to record an episode and I'm gonna explain to you how I'm doing that episode all from my mobile phone And maybe my iPad but all from my mobile phone it again
That you're you'll have to wait and see so next Thursday We will be talking about how to record a mobile e from your phone [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]