Podcast Review Authenticity: How to Build Organic Ratings, Avoid Bot Scams, and Protect Audience Trust

This is Feed Your Brand with hosts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard.

Hey everyone, welcome to Feed Your Brand. I'm Tracy Hazard, and along with my co-host Tom Hazard, today we're going to talk about fake podcast reviews. Now, fake podcast reviews may not seem like they're a problem to you, but they are because you all know you're getting tons of solicitations from people offering you to get you hundreds of reviews. It happens all the time in my LinkedIn DMs. I don't know about you, Tom.

Not just in LinkedIn DMs. It is happening in my LinkedIn DMs for sure, but not just in LinkedIn DMs and other places too, and unsolicited emails and other things. And it's not just fake reviews. I think really what we're going to talk about today applies to a lot of fake things like Fake subscribers, fake downloads, you know, all sorts of fake things you can do for your show.

You can do it, but what we're gonna talk about today is should you do it?

And I'm sure it's tempting to a lot of you, especially if you're brand new and maybe you're worried, hey, I wanna put this out there and I don't want there to be these crickets. You know, singing when I publish my podcast, or I don't want people to see I don't have any reviews because they're going to think my show isn't any good yet. Every new show goes through this and you might feel a little insecurity and be thinking, hmm, maybe I should get some fake reviews or see how I can get some other than just organically. reaching out to your audience in a lot of very good ways that you can to make a reasonable ask for reviews. But really, there is no shortcut, I think, is going to be our overall message today. You can't shortcut this and, you know, jumpstart it.

Yeah, but I think there's someone out there saying, but there's all these people offering it, so it must have some value.

I'm sure people are thinking that.

I mean, there's a market for it, right? So if there's a market for it, it must have some value. And look, we see this. This is not any different than YouTube. There is a significant amount of business out there buying fake downloads, fake video views, and fake subscribers to your channel. Like, it's all the time.

Yeah, I have a customer very recently, a Poditise customer who I discovered had been paying a company monthly overseas to increase their YouTube subscribers and their video downloads. The thing is, they're not real people. And they're not engaging with you. They're not commenting on videos. They're not making requests of you. And guess what? YouTube can tell. Apple can tell. Spotify can tell. What's a real user and what's not? It's actually similar, Tracy, to what happens every election cycle is that there's, you know, a steep drop in activity on X, formerly Twitter, with a lot of accounts after an election because all the fake accounts get shut down.

Why keep doing it if there's no election? Right.

The people that were paying for it stopped paying for it because they don't need it anymore. And all of a sudden, your activity drops. That was a technical term, by the way. All right.

Yeah.

Sorry for those of you—

That's the elevator hitting the bottom, right?

Yeah. It's like the thing drops, the, the air being let out of the balloon, whatever. It just doesn't work and it can cause more harm than good.

Right. And so that's what I want to start with, Tom. There's some significant harms to your credibility, to your authenticity, to future sponsorship. To your ratings, to video views that you might get in the future, to your algorithm in general. All of those things do contribute and can create future harm. And here's the number one way. So I had someone come to me and say, "Hey, I got asked to be a part, be a guest on this guy's podcast and videocast, and he wants me to pay him." And it's only $250, so I'm thinking I should do it. What do you think? And I'm glad he asked me because it gave me a chance to go explore. And I don't, you know, I steer away. You've heard our episodes possibly in the past of us talking about not paying to be a guest, but sometimes there's a good reason to do it. Sometimes there's a, a really good situation and context in which you just wanna be a part of that community. So I go. And I check out this guy's YouTube channel and he's got 10,000 followers, which is what I was told by this guy who said, should I guest here? He said, he's got 10,000 followers on YouTube. I think that was, must have been what was in the email.

That was his credibility points. He thought, well, he's got 10,000 on YouTube, so it must be worth doing, right?

What, worth $250? And I was like, well, if it's only $250, it's not worth it. Like, that's what I was thinking in the back of my mind. I was like, that's too little if you legitimately definitely have 10,000 viewers. And so I go to the channel and sure enough, there's one video, one single really old video that has maybe 5,000, 6,000 views, and it's right at the front. And then every video after that, and every single one that was a podcast interview, 10 views, 30 views. Maybe the highest. So when you have 10,000 subscribers and 10 views on average per video—

Yeah, what does that tell you?

All of those are fake, right? And it tells YouTube your channel is not worth it. So that actually those more subscribers hurt you more than if you had less subscribers. Because if I had 100 subscribers and I was getting 10 views, That's 10%.

Right. You really, if you have just a little curiosity, and I hope most of you do, to go maybe not down a deep rabbit hole, but just to do a little due diligence, you know, on someone's podcast, their YouTube channel, you know, all sorts of things like this to find out, is what they're saying true? Now you're not always going to know, you're not going to be able to verify if they have 10,000 listeners on podcasts because there's not a lot of app— of listening apps that disclose that. There are some things that are disclosed. Spotify has, you know, some things that you can see, but you really can't look at it all. But if a podcaster really is trying to get you to pay to be a guest on their show, they can send you screenshots from Apple Podcasts. They could send you screenshots from other analytics and prove that, you know, what they're saying is true. But And when you look at the ratios, like you're saying, Tracy, it really pulls back the curtain on the wizard, so to speak, doesn't it?

Yeah. And so here's the thing. Look, when I am going to sponsor something, when I am going to pay for something, right? So thinking about your future sponsors, your future guests, your future partners, joint venture or whatever, if they do any little bit of digging, And they can just, I mean, all I did on that one was open up the channel homepage. Like I didn't do anything difficult, but I can do the same thing with your podcast and I can go down and look at your star reviews and your reviews, and I can tell instantly whether or not you are the kind of person who will pay for fake reviews because all the fake reviews say the same exact thing. They all look the same way. They all have no insight, no comments, no nothing that is of any value. They're all 5-star, right? Because that's what you paid someone to get you. And so it tells you no legitimate information. But if I say, wow, you're the kind of person who's gonna pay for fake reviews, what else are you willing to fake and lie to me about as a sponsor? Your credibility is in question from moment one. Now, I'm already skeptical as a sponsor about podcasts because I know that lots of podcasters lie about their stats or overstate, oh, I'm at the top of the charts on I'm in the top 1%. Like, who cares? And so there's a lot of that going on already that's just, you know, claiming more than you're worth. I mean, look, even Joe Rogan does it. All these podcasters are out there claiming their YouTube as a part of their podcast stats, and that's not the same thing. Video stats and podcast stats are not the same.

And as we've talked about on previous episodes, the top whatever percent that Listen Notes says you are doesn't really mean what you think it means. So be careful about touting that.

Right. And anyone who touts it, if you're in the know in the industry, you're immediately skeptical. You immediately go, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And so these are issues with credibility. So long-term credibility, you think I just need to give my show a jumpstart, but long-term it has negative effects on you. And that's what we wanna prevent here.

Absolutely. And there are ways, and this is the, the other thing we wanna share with you today. There are ways To actually focus on strategies that are going to get you more engagement with your listeners, and they will be more willing to actually leave you a review. And you can even make a request, you know, hey, if you're really enjoying the show, I would very much appreciate it if you would leave me a review on Apple if you're an Apple listener, because we need to get some reviews so other people can see how great the show is too. I mean, just something genuine from the heart like that, people are going to be more willing to do it. And when you do it, you're going to see results. Tracy, I want to share with you, I was on a call with an existing customer of ours at Potatize not 2 hours before we're recording this. And I'm having a conversation, looking at their analytics, and I was thrilled with the growth. Now this podcast's been maybe, I would say, doing this for a year and a half or so now. And their Spotify followers, which is one very true measurement of interest in your show. Okay. So Spotify followers and Apple followers, they call them followers now on Apple too. It used to be subscribers and you can sort of use these terms interchangeably, but this customer was very pleased because not only are they approaching 1,000 Spotify followers, which is really solid for an independent show, but that growth chart, that actual, you know, you plot all the growth of followers on Spotify. It's very, very steady going from the lower left to the upper right. It's a really good triangle on the graph that is continuing to grow.

It didn't just go whoop, up and straight across. That's a sign of fake.

Right.

And this is what I want you to understand. It's like people think, oh, but you have to have an Apple account to make an Apple review on a podcast. And there are entire farms of humans who are out there creating these Apple accounts, creating fake reviews, fake stars, Fake follows, doing all of those things that is happening out there already. Just because you think they have to have an Apple account, so they must be human, isn't true.

Now, for those of you that are listening to the podcast, not watching the video, Tracy sort of held up her hands and made sort of air quotes around humans. And so she's being facetious and meant they're not actually real humans. It's a, you know, a farm of computers, a bot farm, which each one has an Apple ID. So they can leave a review and they can subscribe to a show.

But even if they are humans, because we do have like, you know, humans in who knows what country, like signing in, creating an account just for this purposes. And you have to remember that the reason we get so many of these direct messages in social is because they're already set up to boost apps. They were set up first to boost apps before they realized Well, we already have an Apple account. What else could we do with it? Oh, we could boost review on podcasts. So let's add that to our services and we'll just pitch that out in email and in direct messaging. So they just expanded their services. So sometimes they are a real human being, but they're not a real human who is going to listen to your show.

No, they're not. And that's the big difference. And you can see that now, if you have not syndicated your own show to Apple Podcasts, you can't see this, but there are some analytics in there. That you can see that show playthrough. And this is something Tracy and I talk about a lot. So when you have a lot of followers on Apple, and they talk about followers and listeners and engaged listeners, there's a lot of different, you know, metrics that they have in their beta analytics in Apple. And when you have an awful lot of followers and 10% playthrough, what does that tell you? Again, nobody is really listening because they're not real people. They're not really interested in your stuff, but. The good news is if you're putting out quality content, you're showing up for your audience on a regular basis. Guess what? There are people listening to you that are truly following you and are truly subscribed and they like your show. And other people like them would like to know about your show if they had awareness of it. So let's talk about what you can do.

Well, wait one minute before we head on that. I just wanna just highlight a couple of things cuz we've been seeing a lot of this going on. There's tons of regulatory action starting to take place around the world. So it might not be happening to you here in the US, but it might be happening to you in the UK or in other places. So I want you to be aware of this. We've been seeing tons of actions on the music side of things. We've been warning you about that all year and the image side of things as well. But now we're starting to see the same thing with reviews. Fake reviews can lead to significant penalties on a platform. Because the platforms themselves can now be fined by governments and by other agencies. And so they will just shut your show down, right? Remember, you're there at their good grace. Like you are not paying them to share your show, right? You're there for free. So if they decide you're too much trouble, they will shut you down. That has not happened as far as I know yet, but they have certainly shut down reviews and removed reviews. So you need to be careful because if you are the kind who's done nothing but pay for reviews and pay for all of that, and they see a lot of that faking, they may highlight you. You may get some legal consequences happening in the future. So keep that in mind. The other thing I wanna say is that if you see it happening to you in Amazon, they call it review bombing, right? So like, I think in other places, Yelp, they call it review bombing, but basically where one of your competitors goes in and then just gives you tons of fake reviews or truly fake positive reviews and negative reviews. It's on both sides of the coin there.

Mm-hmm.

So you can get 'em on both sides, but basically they do it purposefully fake so that it highlights your show and gets you alerted to the platform that you might be in violation. You need to report them, and that means that you need to pay attention to the reporting process. There is no way, there's no real takedown method in Apple or Spotify, but there is a reporting process. And so go ahead, when you see those things happening, don't ignore them. If you didn't do them, if you feel that that's happening to you, report it immediately before your channel gets harmed.

It's a good point, Tracy. And, you know, along those lines, I think we should also mention to our audience that we are seeing increased activity both on YouTube and on Spotify lately cracking down on, you know, regulatory issues. Now, it may not always be reviews and fake reviews. Sometimes it's copyrighted music that you may not have, you know, they question if you have permission to use. We're seeing a lot of this, especially YouTube and Spotify. And that can cause harm to your channel. It can cause a bad listener experience when all of a sudden part of your video is muted when you're trying to watch it and you don't understand that. Well, that's because there's some copyrighted music and trying to get around that issue. But all this stuff causes problems and it's only going to get worse because it's easier and easier for the AI bots to be checking your content. And they're also reading through those reviews and You know, a review that has no context and just says, this is a great show. And then I'm oversimplifying it, but there are some that do that and they don't give you any context as to the good reason why they think it's a good show. That lets them know, hmm, that review is probably not from a real listener. Yeah.

Now on some platforms you can tag something as not helpful, which pushes it down. Go ahead and do that if you can. It's not available everywhere, but sometimes you can do things like that. So if you find some on there and you're concerned about them, push them as not helpful and try to get them down to the bottom, or go ahead and report them straight, report them if you know you don't know where they came from.

It's a good suggestion, Tracy. Yeah, I think, you know, some people also might be unhappy with a negative review. Maybe it's a true review from a listener, but a negative review, and that happens. I mean, even when I see a show that has 27 5-star ratings and they've got one 1-star rating, right? And they'll have a negative review. The only thing you really can do is push that down. And the way to push that down is to get more positive reviews. Now, can you ask, you know, your brother, your sister, your relatives, your mom, whoever, you know, who loves you to listen to your show and give a review? Yes, you can. I mean, those are real people, and especially if their last name may not be the same as yours. You know, because your sister got married, you know, then that may look a little more legitimate. You certainly— everybody starts there. I'm not going to pretend we don't all start there saying, oh, I need some reviews. Because when people look at a show, it's kind of a box that they just want to check. I don't think anybody really takes a deep dive and reads all the reviews on Apple. I really don't. They only display like 2 or maybe in some cases 4 at most. Even if you have, you know, dozens and you just wanna make sure those ones that are there hopefully are positive. If not, time to make a request for more positive reviews so that they just get pushed below the fold.

And that's the problem that I have, Tom, is like people think more is more. But look, I get notified by Google all the time that I am like the top reviewer of a location. It just happened really recently that I got notified and I sent a picture to my mom. I got notified that I was the top reviewer of her gallery. And in the review I wrote, the artists here are absolutely amazing. And, you know, as an artist myself, because I went to art school, right? Like, so it's a legitimate comment. Rosemary Davio's work is just beautiful. And so I put all this in the review for the Sandstone Gallery in Laguna Beach. And the next thing you know, it has hundreds, and it's on the location, like the Google Maps, and it's gotten hundreds and hundreds of views and thumbs up from people. So it becomes a helpful thing because it doesn't say, Tom is great.

Yeah.

This show is great, right? It says more. It says why you should walk in there, why you should Put this in your playlist, right? Thinking about that, that's gonna matter more than lots of great reviews that go thumbs up, 5 stars. Like nobody, nobody cares about that. And I have been a longtime binge listener of podcasts. This is my thing. This is what I do. And I can tell you, I have never once been influenced by reviews.

I agree. I do think it's just one of those things that, you know, it's important to have that box checked and have a few. And as long as there are no really negative ones showing, I don't even look at it. And please don't obsess over this as a podcaster.

Well, and it's not even about a negative one showing. Like, I will read a negative review on Amazon all day long. I will read what they had to say. So it's really about it being valuable information. So it may be that the negativity is exactly why I wanna listen to the show.

I guess depends on the review and what's written. Yeah.

Yeah. So you never know. Right. So the only time that a review comes into play to me is when you're comparing things, when you're comparing products, when you're comparing where to buy something, when you're comparing what to listen to. So if I've got 2 shows in the same genre and they're at the same number of episodes, that's when it matters. But for most listeners, the number of episodes matters way more than anything else because the number of episodes says you have the endurance to take what podcasting's not. You know, it's a marathon, so you've got the endurance. No. And number 2, you've got more content for me to consume, so there's bound to be more value in there. You wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't valuable to somebody listening. Where less is less.

And I think the other thing that goes along with what you're saying, Tracy, is what people are looking at is not just how many episodes you have, but are you current? And how often are you showing up for me, the listener? If I'm going to subscribe or follow this podcast, is this a waste of my time? It's just going to be one more thing that happens to be in my library, but you're not doing anything new. Are you showing up once a month? Am I really into that? Maybe not. Maybe I'll go find another show that's showing up for me weekly, that, that's gonna play a role. So, I mean, look, the reviews are there. They're available in only some apps, not all. And yes, we all want to have some good ones. So I don't think you should obsess over it, but when it comes time for you to decide, you know what, I really would like to have some more reviews, or I don't have any and I want to get some. What should you do? Let's address that.

And I'm gonna say that what you hit on right there is probably the only important time from what we just said to you, the most important time to be considering about the reviews is in the beginning when you don't have that credibility of hundreds of episodes and you don't have that credibility of how long you've been doing this and you don't have a lot of core listeners yet. That's the time where the reviews might matter. It also does have some small amount of algorithmic assistance to you that we know of in Apple Podcasts. That's the only place that we know that it legitimately has that. It possibly does on Spotify as well, but we don't have any actual data to that.

That's right. So when you have a new podcast, like I said, start where you can. Friends and family's fine, but As you're getting, you know, half a dozen episodes in, maybe 10 or 12, I think it's important not to ask too early, like from episode 1, because you haven't put up enough content yet for people to really judge it yet and to form an opinion. So as you get to, I would say, 6 to 12 episodes, hopefully weekly, I'm going to suggest. So you've been doing it for, you know, a couple, 3 months.

Yeah.

Now is a good time to say, you know, and make an appeal. I mean, you have a podcast, you have a platform, you have a megaphone to be able to reach out to your audience, those that are listening, even if very few, and just make a personal, sincere request. And if you have anything that you have to offer in return, like a shout out on the podcast or anything of, you know, value to give them that doesn't cost money.

I don't—

nobody should be really, again, buying or paying for reviews, even if you're giving a reward to someone who does it. But is there, you know, something that you can do? Give a shout out on social media and a big thank you. You know, there are lots of things you can do that don't have to cost anything. And if people really are enjoying your show, they're going to be willing to do it.

So the other side of that, Tom, I think is saying that if they're already listening to your podcast, it's easier for them to make a review.

It's true.

So thinking about that, when you send out an email to people, they have to go log in, do it. But if they're already listening to your show, it's a little bit easier for them to make that review for you. They're in the right place.

Much easier. They can do it while they're listening to you. You know, you can make that request saying, hey, if you're in your Apple Podcast app right now and you're enjoying this show, Would you be willing to go leave a rating and review for me? Because that'll help other people know this show is worth them listening to also. And, you know, you can even just remind them. So, you know, if you're listening and you're in your app, you can do it right now. Now, if they're driving, they're not going to be able to do it, right? If they're sitting on their sofa in the evening or, you know, at their desk at some point while they're listening, then maybe they can do it. But you've got a lot of power in your voice and just a suggestion, because a lot of people, even if they like the show, They don't remember. They're not like you, Tracy. They're not a hyper-reviewer.

Right.

You are a hyper-reviewer, right?

I am. But here's another method that I think you should consider is your guests. But asking them at the time before you've recorded is a mistake. And especially for a new show, obviously you aren't live yet. But when you send them the notification that says, hey, your episode is live, and while you're there, Leave a review. It would be really helpful. The best thing you can do to thank me for this publicity is to leave me a review. That's a great time for them to do it. Also, sometimes you have to leave a teaser to say that, hey, I said something in my close I think you're going to want to hear. So it makes them actually listen to it too.

I think that's a great tip for, you know, building anticipation and getting people to listen through. And, you know, Tracy, I've experienced that. I've, you know, Agreed to be a guest on someone's show and they have this landing page and a form for me to fill out to apply, if you will, again, with air quotes here for those of you only listening, to apply to be a guest, even though they've asked me and I've already agreed, I got to go fill out their form. When I have a form that makes me check a box that says, you agree to go listen to my podcast and rate and review it before being interviewed. That I've had that happen legitimately. I'm not making this up. That's a big turnoff to me.

I canceled guest spots for that.

Yeah. And I have too. And, but the thing is, if I'm going to be a good guest, if I'm going to go do a good job, I'm going to go listen to a couple of your past episodes because I want to know what I'm getting into. That's the first thing. So I think any person who's being a guest should do that. Even if you only listen to portions of it, you don't have to spend hours and hours.

Okay. Well, see, for me, it's the opposite of that. Usually they'll be like, Do it on Apple Podcasts. Well, I don't have Apple.

Yeah, you're not an iPhone user. You're a, uh—

I don't have it. I can't do it.

I don't even know what other— what else there is than Apple iPhone, honestly. What do you listen?

I don't know. So funny. I have Spotify and CastBox and Overcast and all of those, so there's plenty out there that are non-Apple related, but I can't do it. So you want me to sign and check a box and do it? It's like, oh, Forget it. I'm not gonna— I'm not— that it says to me, you don't understand podcasting and I don't want to be on your show.

Right. But if I have a good experience, if you're inviting me on your show, I have a good experience, I feel it's a good show, then yeah, I'm willing to give back to you. You're giving me exposure in your show that has value to me as a guest. And sure, I'm willing to do it, but it's the law of reciprocity. It's not You know, a demand, a demand and a requirement. And so that's where I think some people go wrong. You're right.

Now, GoodPods is my favorite app for reviews. I love their process because you not only can review a show, you can review something while you're listening, and it says that you're reviewing it while you're listening. And I thought that— I think that's really fantastic. So if I allow my other people out there to hear what I'm listening to at the same time, So there I'm not only going in and doing my research to be a guest on that show, but I usually leave a review there while I'm listening to it and let every one of my followers know that I'm listening to it. So it really has a lot more magnified effect. Now, unfortunately, GoodPods is not as big an app as it should be. It's got so many amazing features. I can't believe somebody hasn't gobbled it up yet because it's such a good app because of what it can do over on the review side and on the like sort of social proof side of things.

You know, you people on the Android phone operating system really got, you know, thrown a disservice by Google when they killed Google Podcasts.

That one was really easy to review as well. Like, that one was so super easy to review. You could review an episode and a show and it was really well done.

And YouTube Music just is a very different experience. There are some good things about it, but there's also some really not so good things about it. It is not— and then Stitcher's gone. All the ones you used to listen to, Tracy, I think over the years you've had to switch listening apps multiple times because they just go away, right?

Yeah. That's why I'm not loyal to one. I try them all based on what I want to do. But, you know, here's the thing. You mentioned this. I'm a hyper-reviewer.

Not just a podcast, by the way.

No, of everything. A hyper-reviewer. And this is the thing. If you're asking for someone to review your show and you don't understand what it takes to review it, Or what's valuable when they do review it, then that means that you're not gonna reciprocate. You're never gonna review somebody else back. And this is what I find is like, you can ask, but you didn't do it. You didn't do it for the last time you guested. You didn't do it for the last show that your friends launched. Why should you expect your friends to do it for you?

Well, again, we're gonna come— you're right. You're talking about, again, the law of reciprocity. You've gotta serve and then you'll get back. So a lot of you. Especially starting out a podcast, are going to invite guests to be on your show. Some of those people are going to be podcasters who have their own show. In fact, you'd probably be really wise to choose a few of those early guests of your show who are podcasters for 2 reasons. Number one, you're going to be heard on their show. And guess what? Their audience are other people who listen to podcasts and they'll listen to multiple. So they might then start listening to yours too. That's number one. Number 2. You can leave a review on that person's show and send them an email and say, hey, just want you to know, I really enjoyed being on your show and I've left you a positive review on Apple. You probably don't even need to say, would you do that for me? They probably would feel a little guilty. It's like, whoa, they left me a review. I better go do that for them. Right? So it doesn't have to be a hard push or a hard ask, but there's also nothing wrong. With asking. So I think people just hope more than anything when it comes to this, don't they, Tracy? And, you know, my mantra in business— and I, I'm sorry, even if you're not in business, if you're a podcaster, it's a business of sorts, so this qualifies— hope is not a plan. Hope is not a strategy to achieve results. So You just need to take some action.

Yeah, absolutely. Now we have something where in our Showcaster player you can click on it to go to the rate and review page, right? And what it does is it just shows people how to rate and review, because a lot of times when our Showcaster player is the player on a web app— so that's for the people who maybe are not as used to using their podcast app— and so we've helped Provide an education process for them on how to rate and review, which then starts to give them a couple of apps that they could go try and use. And maybe in that process they'll get used to like, oh, I should really join. I didn't even know, like, I mean, my parents didn't even know they had an Apple Podcast app that was native to their phone. They didn't know what it looked like because who would think that this thing with the little, like, it looks like a Wi-Fi tower, like instead of a podcast app, right? So they had no idea what that is. And they, you know, they're not Spotify users, they're not music listeners.

Right.

Like that. My dad has records. So that's something that you can also do is it's not a bad idea to have a rate and review page on your site. We put one in our Showcaster that's generic. It goes to podcastersunited.org and shows people how to rate and review. You're welcome to use our rate and review page as yours just because it's simple. You can copy it, you can use our actual page and refer to it. That's totally fine.

Yeah, you can link to it. Yeah.

But sometimes depending on your audience, they might be an older demographic. They may not understand how to do this yet. And so helping them do that is also a service. So don't forget that, that just because we want you to get other listeners cuz it's faster and it's easier doesn't mean that those other ones out there, you aren't helping to educate them on the whole podcasting ecospace.

That's right. Well, I want to go back to paying for fake reviews, which, which happen, or for subscribers and followers. Like I mentioned, we have a customer who was paying, I think it was $200 or more a month to some company overseas to get them a certain amount of video views per month. And remember, they only have to be viewing it for a few seconds or maybe a whole minute in order for it to count as a view, right?

It's 30 seconds, I think.

Is it 30 seconds? And it really doesn't help you. If you really want to accelerate it and do something more than what we're talking about so far in this episode, which is organic, genuine ways to engage with your already the audience you have to request reviews. If you don't want to do that, or you don't just want to wait till you have and you're brand new, there are some ways you can accelerate it. And if you're willing to spend a little money, like a couple hundred dollars a month There are better ways to do it. And it's really ways to just boost, raise awareness of your show, advertise your show to new potential listeners. We have a Promocast system that does that. And, you know, if you're interested in that, you can check that out, but you don't have to pay any money to do this. But if you are willing to pay some money, just make sure you're doing something that's going to reach out to real people. Present the opportunity for listening to your show and encourage them to come and do it. And then they listen to your show, they're probably going to leave a review if they like it, or you can make an appeal within your show like we've talked about to do it. So there are things you can do to accelerate.

Faker reviews just isn't one of them.

I think it's very clear fake reviews, buying these things that are really bots, are not real people who gonna be the right people who wanna listen to your show. I mean, that's the thing. Every one of our podcasts is a niche of content of some kind, right? There are very few shows that are general interest and have a wide variety of things to cover. There are some, but very few. So usually we have a niche topic and there are specific kinds of people that are gonna wanna listen to our podcasts. I mean, if you have no interest in podcasting, you're not gonna listen to Feed Your Brand. Right? We're not trying to be a show for everybody. We have a narrow niche of people that are interested in these topics. So make sure that you understand that you've got people to address. There are places where you can find them and engage with them when they do, even if it's your first listener and try to engage with the people, invite them to comment, invite them to reach out to you on social media. Invite them to email you. Have an email address that's just for your show. So not sending it to your personal email. You know, people want to be more private and protect their private email and phone number. That's great. Guess what? You want to have a phone number and invite people to call you. You can have a Google Voice number that forwards to a normal phone. These are free things. There's lots of free tools. You don't even have to go that extreme. But the email address for your show, very important. Engage with people. Provide them value, invite them to share. Do they like what they're hearing? Would they like to hear something different? What do they like? What do they not like? If you're new, get some feedback. These are things that are going to encourage people to be willing to share your show with others, to review it, to help you be heard and found by more people. Okay.

So how to write a good review. Shall I just do my little quick recap on how to write a good review?

Yes, I think that's valuable. You should do that.

So if you are going to now put out into the universe that you'd like reviews, then you better go out there and review some things. Let's kick off the law of reciprocity by doing it first. So here's what I do. I always think about if someone is reading this who is trying to make a choice between one or the other, a choice between my time, my money, whatever that is, and I'm deciding between 2 things. Why would I choose this? What's gonna make this— why is this uniquely valuable? And I also don't wanna waste someone's time. So if this is only good for a certain type of person, I wanna tell them that too. So those are just the 2 basic things that I put in every review that I give. I'm gonna tell you, I don't give positive reviews all the time. I do give negative reviews, especially on Amazon.

Right?

When something was bad, it was bad. But I tell them exactly why.

That's a great point, Tracy. I think a lot of people who leave a bad review just sort of trash them and say, I don't— this vendor can't— is not trustworthy. Don't ever buy from them if it's an Amazon review. But that doesn't say why.

And so I'm very clear about why, like, and it might not even be a, this is not worth buying. It's, you're gonna buy the wrong thing if you don't buy it a size up or a size down or whatever that might be.

Right.

Or the material's not what you expect. I'm a textile person, so that's very common to me. It's like, it's a lot thinner than you think it is, you know? So the stuff like that, just be clear about it. Just thinking about how you can be most useful to the person reading that review. That's simply it. You're a 5-star. I'm not honestly an overly 5-star person. So if I give something a 5-star, I really mean it.

Well, that's, that's another good point is to be, I guess, judicious with your ratings if you're going to rate it. But the review is— there are 2 different things, by the way. A rating and a review are actually different things. The review is the written part. Yeah, I think it's very important that you give just a little context. And really, that's what you're talking about, Tracy.

Absolutely. So think about how you want to do that. Go out and do that. Try some. And if you cannot figure out how to write a review, go use your AI. So what I have done before is I might take and copy and paste the description and the show name into Gemini, and I'll say, I need to write a 2-sentence review for this show. What should I say? Let it tell you, and then make it do a few options. And then just say, hey, I'd like to focus on How this is useful for podcasters. And then the next thing you know, it gives me even more context. It can help jumpstart your review. Now, I don't copy and paste that directly in ever, but if I'm struggling to write something original, I've done that before for suggesting to others, like it's really hard to write a review about yourself, right? So if you wanna write a testimonial, it's really hard to write a testimonial about yourself, but sometimes people need a jumpstart. So I will say, here's what I kind of like to have as a testimonial about me. I'd like it to be about this, this, and this. Give me some suggestions. You pop out those suggestions, you can pass them on to somebody and say, these are some examples.

You know, you're correct, Tracy. I hear what you're saying, and I'm realizing that's probably a pretty good thing to do for a lot of people is to provide, if you will, swipe copy. for a suggested review. It's a little arrogant on the one hand. On the other hand, a lot of people are just lazy, and if they had to write it themselves, they would never do it. So—

So a better way to do it is to go into your own reviews, and if you've got some good ones, is to just make a screenshot of it because that way they can't copy it, and just use those as examples of— here's some examples of some good ones. If you would do something similar, that would be great.

And if you don't have any, guess what? You could take an example of a review of someone else's show and say this kind of review, you know, so you could still do that even if you don't have any yet.

Yeah. Because when you copy the stars and everything, it doesn't, it's not related to the show as long as the actual review isn't related to the show.

Right. I wasn't even suggesting to pretend that it is for your show. Just saying, you know, like, here's an example of a couple of good reviews that if you'd be willing to do something similar, it'd be much appreciated or something like that.

Yeah. So anyway, we've gone on long enough about fake reviews and real reviews and all of those things, but I think, how do you wanna show up in the world? We wanna show up to real people. We wanna provide real value. And I guarantee you didn't do your show for these numbers. And if it is, and you're satisfied with this hollow win, I don't think you're actually, your show's actually gonna last because I think podcast listeners are smarter than that. I think that they understand when someone's being real and when someone's not.

Well, I think that's a great place to leave it there, Tracy. Great note to end on. Hope you've gotten some value out of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. You'll find the blog post for this episode at podcastersunited.org, and we'll be back next time with another great episode. Until then, signing off for Tom and Tracy on Feed Your Brand. 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.