How to Say Thank You to Your Podcast Listeners Meaningfully

This is Feed Your Brand with hosts Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard. Thank you for being here, Tom.

Hey, thank you, Tracy.

I think this is kind of fun for us to do a simulated coaching call every so often and try it out.

Sure. Well, especially on a holiday or just before a holiday, that makes sense for us, right?

Right. So we're recording this in advance, so it's not actually Thanksgiving tomorrow, but it is for those of you who are gonna be listening. So here we are recording Feed Your Brand and our coaching call at the same time, and a thank you message as well.

That's right. Well, expressing gratitude, showing gratitude to your listeners is really important, isn't it, Tracy?

Well, it's not just about showing gratitude to your listeners, but I mean, I think it's about just gratitude in general. I mean, saying thank you to podcast listeners in a meaningful way is important, but it might be the broader audience. It might be all your guests. It might be your entire community. It might be a thank you to the social media that it's gonna be going out on. You have to think of it as a bigger, like, I'm putting thanks out into the world through saying thank you on my podcast.

Well, that's true. And I can think of no better way to continue to build a relationship and trust with your listener, really.

Right. And the thing that I want to be right up front is I want to say thank you right now, because this is our typically our coaching call time, right? This is a time when our clients show up where we can give them advice and keep them going on whatever it is that they need. But I'm really grateful to have them showing up. It makes me feel great about my job, right? It makes me feel great about our company. It's so much easier to coach when you have a willing student.

And when those students show up on a regular weekly basis. So, I mean, obviously we've admitted we're not live here today. This is prerecorded. So I'm missing seeing, oh, who showed up today, seeing those names, especially welcoming the new people who we see when you're new and you show up, we see your name, we know you're there. So I do enjoy that and I do feed off of it. It gives a different energy. So Admittedly, this is a little different, but it's also practical.

It's also practical. But I don't know. I mean, I always feel it's something that I think I've been good at in my show is always feeling that audience. That is really my job to be channeling the questions that they want to hear. So I do feel their energy even though they're not actively listening now. And I think if you can do that from a place for whether it is expressing your gratitude or just recording your show in general, then you're gonna be farther ahead in creating a better community and environment overall. Support, engagement, all those things are really important. And if you show gratitude to that audience, if you build this strong community, they're gonna come back for more. They're gonna refer people to your show or to your products and services, right? They want upgrades. They want things from you. Our audience in 3D printing used to ask us to give them more stuff like Hey, where'd you get this? And how do I find that? And they wanted more from us. So the other thing is that it's like, it doesn't matter if you have what kind of show you have, if you're a nonprofit and you're taking donations, being grateful and sitting back and taking a moment to say that is going to increase your donations because they feel recognized even in this sort of group and distant environment, they feel recognized for what they've done. We also know from our clients who are in the investor space, investments increase when they hear you again and again because their trust level's way up there. So gratitude and showing up in the world, right? All of those things tie together.

Certainly do. And the benefits really come in, I think, a reciprocation, right, of what you put out there into the world, right?

Right.

And to you on your show.

I'm not a big fan of a— I'm going to call it a Thanksgiving-themed podcast episode. I mean, like I had typed into Bard just to see what it would give me. And it said, create a Thanksgiving-themed episode of your podcast, write a blog post or newsletter, thanking your listeners for their support, record a video message, thanking listeners for their support and wishing them a happy Thanksgiving. It seems a little contrived, right? But gratefulness and thank you, just because it is this time of year and it makes a great timing of being able to say that. That's not a bad tie-in, but remember that a lot of your listeners will not listen to it over Thanksgiving. They might be a little busy having turkey with their family and they might listen to it a week later. So that's why I like to pull the Thanksgiving part out of it and just keep it with the thanks part.

Well, I understand that makes perfect sense, Tracy, although I do think many people traveling for the holidays, since it's one of the highest travel weekends of the year, a lot of them are loading up on podcasts and listening on the plane or the train or as they're driving.

Which is a good reason to make sure that your show is published before the holiday to make sure you get in that travel time. Let's talk about 5 ways you can show gratitude to your listeners, because we were making a list of some things that we thought might be fun and just thinking about ways that you could do it. I'm sure there's 100 different ways, but we just came up with 5 for today that we thought we'd share with you.

Absolutely. Well, starts with thank them at the beginning and end of every episode. That's the most straightforward way right there, right?

That's why we started that way today, just so that you could hear it. And we will end that way, right? But I always think of it, it's like when you acknowledge those that are there at the beginning of something, they're less likely to pop out and leave. We know that when we run a webinar, if we say hi to them, they're like, oh, they noticed me. And so they don't just passively disappear. So even though you're not calling them out by name, The reality is, is that you said thank you to them for being there, and they feel like that's an acknowledgment, and they're more likely to stick around because of it. And then if you thank them for being there all the way through to the end, you're really thanking your biggest fans because they stuck around. They really listened to you. They took in what you had to say, and you're acknowledging them for that.

That's an important part, thanking them at the end, because those are the real, the most valuable listeners, really. They just got through it all. Absolutely.

Yeah. And they're the ones that are most likely to share and refer because you thank them, because you really serve them during that whole call or that whole podcast episode or video. So I like the idea of acknowledging actual listeners. Now we do that in the coaching call, but we don't do it on the recording side because we don't want to out all of our clients. They may not want to be publicly acknowledged, but your listeners who leave you reviews and things, if you tell them you're going to do that, or if somebody submits questions and you say you're going to give them a shout out on the air, we used to do that. Those are ways where you can acknowledge real listeners. Now you don't have to say, Liam from New York, or whoever it is that, you know, your friend, whoever that is, and don't have to out their whole name or like everything about them. But I just interviewed Dom Brightman, Going North Podcast, for The Binge Factor, and he does that. And he saw a real success from doing a review shout-out where he went from 10 reviews to 75 reviews in a couple of months.

That's fantastic. That shows you the power of appreciation and gratitude there. And Tracy, when you mentioned, yeah, you don't have to out their whole name. That's true. I just want to throw in here that speaking to your actual listeners doesn't necessarily mean you have to mention anyone by name. I mean, I often stop in a podcast. I'm like, all right, listeners, did you really hear what just took place there? I want to make sure you got this or say, you know what, listeners, Tracy and I are looking at this image. You've got to see it. So make sure you go to the blog post later and do it. The listener feels you're speaking to them.

Yeah. We have many podcasters who used to call their community specific names, like, you know, yeah, we used to call 3D printers, right? Like, because they should all be printing, right? Like, it encouraged them to be someone who would be 3D printing. So it would get them off their butt and that they wouldn't just be thinking about 3D printing. Right. And I do that on my show. Hey, podcasters, even if you're not a podcaster yet, right? And so by doing that, you're also creating a little tighter community. There's lots of them that have cute names. I mean, I think we had at one point Podcast Peeps was something that Scott Carson coined. And yeah. And so who knows what you're going to call them, but acknowledge them as Tom was saying, and they'll feel like, oh, you are speaking to me.

And if it makes sense to label them, that can make them feel like they're more a part of the community.

So another way is to offer an exclusive thank you. Now I'm hearing some buzz from a lot of podcast advice, from a lot of the podcasting advice columns and stuff out there offering, make your Cyber Monday offer and be sure to like offer to your listeners first. And I'm not a real fan of that. Like, I think that feels contrived and it's not really a thank you unless you're giving it to them for free, because so few people do take action on things. That it feels better to me if you're giving your listeners something exclusive. Now, it doesn't mean you just say, go here and you get it. It means, hey, let me know that you're a listener and I'll give you a, a code, or I'll give you something so that you can get this for free because you listened all the way through this episode. You should get something. You've been listening all year to me. You should get something. So I like that better that rather than offering them a sale, which just feels awful. That's not a real thank you to someone who's been giving of their time to listen to your show.

Yeah, I would call that kind of thank you a reward for listening.

Yeah, and even a backhanded one at that. I just did this recently. So I do a podcast that's private that no one can access but our investors, and I just did it and I offered them access to the AI lab that we gave to our clients that was exclusive to our clients only. And I said, all you have to do is email us, reach out to us, and I'll make sure that you get into the list and get added to the webinars because they're a series of webinars. There's like 8 of them or something. And I'll get, make sure your email address gets added to it so you can access them directly, even though you're not in our podcast community. And I got 3 people who reached out from listening. So I knew they were listening and they got something of value, which they felt really strongly. Like they reached back out to me. It made them more excited to stay invested in our company because I shared with that. That with them. So that can have a really great effect on growing your business, even though you were just doing it as a thank you.

I like that one.

Yeah. So what else, Tom? What else do we have on our list here?

Oh my gosh. You can host a special Q&A session or have special events as a thank you. And we give that as a benefit, really a reward to our customers while we, our coaching call starts out as a streamed live, you know, when we do it for everyone to see, there's a reward only for our customers. It's a way of benefit, but also a thank you for them being customers. And it's exclusive to them. They get more value. You could do things like that, but interact with your listeners and answer their questions in real time. That has value.

You can record something, give them a free recording training or something.

But if you're there to answer questions live, there's a different level of value there.

Now we just recorded an episode for Feed Your Brand a couple of, a month or so ago about doing live events. And we're not suggesting that you necessarily do live events, but if it ties into something that you can do at a holiday time or as a thank you to your audience, then go ahead and do that. So make sure you check out that episode on Feed Your Brand as well. So you can learn some lessons for running these kinds of event-based shows. The other thing is that during the month, why not be grateful? Because there should be Giving Tuesday. There's a whole bunch of things that tie around to the Thanksgiving time. Why don't you make a nonprofit your cause of the month, donate one of your ad spaces to them, make a shout out to them in every episode for the month, do a special bonus episode where you highlight the founder of a nonprofit or something that you're passionate about, where you talk about why you donated to them. Do something like that where you can give back to the community, something that's gonna be relevant and have resonance with your audience makes more sense here, but also letting people know what you're interested in, what you're passionate about. That's helpful too, as well. So those are just some of the ideas Tom and I had, ways that you can show gratitude to listeners, and you could do some. There's some general gratitude tips that I really feel are important, and I've learned these from a lot of coaches over the years. One is that gratitude needs to be sincere and genuine. You really need to feel it.

Yeah. It needs to— you've gotta deliver that in an authentic way, right?

Yeah. And I think some of it comes from being really specific about the thanks. Like, don't just say, thank you for listening. I'm thanking you for being an active part of my community because you're keeping me engaged. You're making a richer discussion and community, and you're helping to move the podcasting ecospace into a more impactful model, right? Like, I'm being specific about what I'm grateful for. So really be specific with your listeners and tell them what you appreciate about them and the support that they provide by listening. And then get a little creative with things, right? I mean, find things that make them feel valued and appreciated. Get creative with what you can offer and ways that you can offer thanks. There's a lot of studies, Tom, out there that gratefulness in business has a significant bottom line effect. Employees are more likely to go the extra mile if they feel that they're grateful and that their company is grateful for them. Grateful leaders create that positive environment and have more engaged employees. And customers who feel like you're grateful for their business are more likely to be loyal and repeat customers and refer more often. So all of it does come back to you. It is not a selfless venture being grateful. It's actually self-serving at the same time, which is kind of the interesting cycle about it, right?

It's a little counterintuitive, isn't it?

Yeah.

That being grateful, expressing appreciation and value to your listeners, your customers, they are your customers in a way for your message you're bringing to the world, is actually self-serving even though it is sincere on its face, but it's true. It is gonna help you achieve your goals.

Right? And so if you don't have a gratefulness practice, there's 101 books and, and coaches and other things out there for them. Gratitude journals, thank you notes, taking a few minutes each day to focus on the things you are grateful for. Like there's so many different ways. I had trouble with the gratefulness journal, I have to say, cuz it felt like I was saying the same things every day. So actually that's what I ended up doing. For one year I practiced this. I had a bracelet that said grateful on it and it was all spelled out in the letters. And each day I would touch the G, the R, the A, the T, and I had a, think of it like a mantra. I would say that I'm grateful for. So like, gee, I'm grateful for my girls. And I would tell them why specifically today I was grateful for my girls. So that was like what I would say in my head. And then I'll just go through mine, but you can make up your own. I was grateful for revenue to grow because it meant that my business was expanding and I could help more people and I could have more impact. I was grateful for my audience because without them, I wouldn't know what to talk about. I wouldn't know what impact was needed in the world, right? And sometimes I would say my active audience, right? I would even caveat it. T is for Tom, because I cannot do anything without being grateful for my partner in this.

Well, that's the most important one on the list right there.

That's the most important one, right? Exactly.

Does that ever seem— could that be more ungrateful? But thank you. I appreciate that, Tracy Hazzard.

Yep. E was for energy. And really, it was like for health, wellness, energy. Like, I could consider it the whole thing. Family and friends is my F. U was unlimited creativity. It's one of the things that I feel like it's a gift from God, from a higher power, whatever you wanna call that. It's, that's what I feel like this ability to create in an unlimited way. And L is for my sweet dog Lucy, because she has taught me so much since she's come into my life and about gratefulness. And so those were like my way of doing it. Find your own way. Absolutely find your own way. So we gotta go because we've got to go on and do some more coaching and do some more things that we're gonna do. But Tomorrow, after you hear this, enjoy your Thanksgiving, enjoy your family and friends. And if you don't, just take a few moments to be grateful in your own life. And Tom and I are extremely grateful for every one of the people in our lives, all our clients, all of you listeners out there who spend a few moments, even those of you who just dip on your toe in the podcasting space and have watched one of our little video shorts or something like that. But the fact that you connected with us in the world means something to us. Heard something valuable today, but didn't get a chance to write it down? No worries. We've got you covered. We partnered up with podcastersunited.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social @UnitedWePod so you can get Feed Your Brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.