Celebrating Gratitude and Community in Podcasting – PCI 422

Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, the VP of customer relations here at Blueberry Podcasting. I'm Tod Cochran, CEO of Blueberry. I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist at Blueberry. And today, we've got some fun ideas on how this month you can give thanks to your podcast audience.

You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting. With all the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting, welcome. Let's dive in.

Today, we're gonna share some ideas on how you can give back to your audience and become more involved with your followers and your greater podcast community. Yeah. Being Thanksgiving in the US this month, that's why we're doing this. And, there's lots of ways to give back to your audience. So, you know, one way really is these charity shout outs and can always highlight something that's going on in your local

community or a Revlon charity that you support. Maybe it's something you support on your podcast on a regular basis. You can always dedicate an episode to featuring charities or organizations that resonate.

You can share their stories, invite representatives to speak and of course encourage listeners to donate or get involved and I know that every year I do a couple of shows for a variety of charities and then whatever contributions are made during that episode, I contribute to the charity that's been talked about. So it's always fun to be able to do that. And, of course, pledging a portion of your podcast sponsorship revenue for the month to a chosen charity or

match listener donations. And that's what I do a lot as well is up to a certain amount. I will announce the initiative a few episodes before and encourage listeners to join in and create a collective effort to make a difference and really doing a true donation

drive. And you can collaborate with your listeners to raise funds for this for a cause and provide incentives like shout outs on the show for those who donate or set a community goal and celebrate together if it's reached. And I've even done things like, you know, for the top donators, I've always given some swag, something simple, nothing too expensive, some stickers or something like that that allows me to show my appreciation for them participating.

Yeah. A couple years ago, we did we did a match, a donation match with with a different company for shows that participated, and all the money went to Meals on Wheels, which delivers meals to senior citizens and anyone that might need 1, and I actually deliver those meals about once or twice a month. So I think that would be cool if we could get involved with them again in the future. You know, it's really easy nowadays that everything is so online for people to figure

these things out. I think when we were all probably a bit younger, we were just more in tuned with donating things directly to a location, you know, a canned food drive, something like that. But there's really a variety of ways that you can do this online now. So And definitely do. Also you also have your audience assured that they're giving to the the charity and they're not basically going in your pocketbook.

Right. Gives them a reassurance that, you know, the money's going direct because there have been some scandals not necessarily in the podcasting world, but in the YouTube world, there's been some scandals where people done a big fundraising that turned out they never donated any of the money. So that's not that's not the side of the giving that you wanna be on for sure. Yeah. I guess when you are figuring this out, figure out how to be transparent as well.

Alright. Another another way of doing it is give back through special listener content.

You can do an audience appreciation episode. You know, host an episode dedicated to thanking your listeners, including shout outs, listener submitted stories, or even a fan of the year award. That'd be kind of fun. And show your gratitude to the community that keeps your podcast going. This one's really easy and can be done in a very creative way too if you are using, you know, premium podcasting or, like, a private RSS feed or anything like that for your show. Like, yes, do it for

your full audience. But if you wanna do something special like this with, you know, fan generated content or something, you could do that on a premium feed. And another way you can do this is a listener q and a episode where you get people to send in episodes. I've done this before and it worked out pretty well. You you know, you say, hey. You ask me anything. Do, you know, like an AMA sort of thing. And it sometimes it's even cooler if you can go live and and, you know, get people to ask

questions live. But you gotta have a bit more audience than I do to get everybody together in the one the same place, but definitely a way to kind of give back. Let them, you know, give their stories of gratitude or memorable thanksgiving moments or, you know, all kinds of of things, you know, to do with your podcast. It might not be a bad idea for us to do this sometime in the next, you know, month or so.

For the end of the year, have you guys send in your questions or, you know, feedback, whatever it is you want to share on a podcast insider episode. Another thing to consider would be fan generated content. You know, let listeners take part in the show by submitting their own clips, answering a question, or sharing a message, and compile these into a community driven episode that highlights the diversity and voices of your

audience. So this is hard to do because getting people to record something and send it in is is is a pretty big step for folks, but something they could be considered.

Something else that you can also do is giveaways and contests. This is good year round, but specifically for Thanksgiving. You could do a gratitude giveaway. So for your loyal listeners, do we run a giveaway that features prizes related to your podcast? The the niche of your podcast or, you know, the audience's interest? If our show was gonna do this, we would probably give away, like, a microphone, something like that. Because, you know, we're a podcast about podcasting and we wanna help you

guys have the best equipment you can. So that's one way that we could do a giveaway. Nominate a friend contest is also kinda cool for people. So you can encourage listeners to nominate someone that they think deserves a reward. That reward can be small cash, gift card, Amazon gift card, podcast shout out, you know, something tangible like a microphone or something, whatever it is. Just something to promote the community spirit and get your listeners really involved. Now you can also host a

Thanksgiving theme livestream or virtual gathering. Now I always

encourage you if you're gonna do this to maybe do this the weekend after Thanksgiving. Because usually think about traditionally everyone's on the move, but maybe Saturday or Sunday following Thanksgiving people are back and looking for something to do. So, again, you can host a live stream Thanksgiving hangout where your new listeners can chat, share stories, express gratitude, invite guests, and of course, you can have a live charity stream too. That's what takes a lot more work

as well. So, you know, need to have a pretty big audience to be able to support this as well. And again, this is where listeners can donate in real time to cause they enjoy enjoying a special Thanksgiving theme podcast episode or q and a. And one of the last things that comes on this kind of theme as well is to host a

Friendsgiving round table and bring together past guests or members of your podcast community for a Friendsgiving episode where each guest can share something they're grateful for in podcasting and creating an atmosphere of appreciation. Yeah. Another thing you you can do is a community project of some sort. You know, organize

a volunteer event. Encourage your listeners to volunteer, you know, for a, you know, some sort of local organization or the organization of their choice, but make it, you know, like a food drive or or cleanup or, you know, any sort of thing you can volunteer for. That would be, you know, in in the name of the podcast or, you know, whereas in the community that you're talking to. Other otherwise, you could do, you know, an in person event that's

feasible. Some of them aren't, you know, but encourage listeners to participate in virtual or local volunteering, volunteering opportunities in your area or online. You know, let listeners know, you know, the options for community. So do some research, you know, to, you know, maybe some national or international organizations that are looking for volunteers and encourage them to And, you know, a lot of these things don't necessarily have to be for Thanksgiving.

It's it's really just the holiday season. This type of stuff happens more often, but, really, organizations and communities need help throughout the year. So the the crowdsourcing content with a purpose, you know, you could do a Thanksgiving gratitude wall. You could do a listener created playlist or blog about, you know, how much you care for your community, and you can celebrate them with

community achievements all year long. So you can dedicate a section of your podcast to to your listeners, you know, shouting them out, talking about their achievements, businesses they started, anything that they are proud of. You can do the listener stories to express that gratitude. There's there's a lot of ways that you could do this just for whatever purpose that you that you choose throughout the year. Now, of course, there's also a lot of re resources and tools for

listeners. You can do exclusive content as a thank you.

You can do free access to paid content. That's something if you have a premium show that you could throw on there. Again, that exclusive content could be a bonus episode, resource guide, some sort of gift. Of course, you can give the gift of podcasting as well. Share tips, resources, or templates for listeners who want to start their own show. I found in my own podcast. I've had a number of people that have wanted to do that as well.

And you could do a give the gift of podcasting, you know, share tips and resources, templates for listeners who wanna start their own podcast. Maybe, you know, give them some gear, you know, the old microphone giveaway. If, you know, if your show relates to that or, you know, maybe there are some people on that listen to your show that wanna, you know, get into it. And it's a great way to kind of pay it forward just so that, you know, those that do wanna get into it, you

could help them with that. So these are just some ideas. You know, there's there's all kinds of ways to, to give back to your audience and it doesn't as Mackenzie said, it doesn't have to be Thanksgiving. It could be anytime. And, you know, giving back to your audience, giving, you know, value for value, I guess, would be the right term. You know, if they're getting value from you, they're more likely to give you value

back in some way, shape, or form. We hope some of these ideas sparked some interest for you and your podcast and that you are able to share with your community later this year. And by the way, we are very thankful for you listening to Podcast Insider. If you wanna read the show notes or see other blog posts and whatnot, go to podcast insider.com. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.

And in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford the e's.