Word Of Mouth Marketing: How To Encourage Your Audience To Share Your Show and Skyrocket Your Listeners?

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everybody. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy, and today we're going to talk about a subject of interest to new and old podcasters alike, even if you're experienced, but definitely you newbies out there. Also, we're going to talk about how to motivate your listeners to help promote your show, to share it with their friends, their connections on social media. That's what we're doing today. So I was inspired because I had a meeting with a relatively new podcaster actually today and I'm going to share some about that. They have a podcast called Let Me Speak to a Manager and it's got a really broad appeal. It's two co hosts, kind of like me and Tracy, except it's two guys. They've got a good friendly banter together and they're very new. They're still within their first eight weeks on iTunes. In fact, they're about a month in and They've already gotten 70 legitimate 5 star reviews on Apple podcasts. And I was shocked when I saw that. And I looked at them because they have, and to be completely transparent, they've got an average of, they've got like 10 episodes published and they have anywhere from 50 plays per episode to 175 per episode. So about 10,000 total episodes, which isn't.

Bad for a brand new show. Keep that in mind in context. That is not bad at all for a brand new show.

No, it's very good. In fact, we've seen shows that start at that pace getting featured as a new podcast. We've seen it, I've seen it over the summer, this year and all that. And the thing is, people are already reaching out to them. That is a little unusual. They're getting social engagement, not just social engagement, they're getting people reaching out to them in email saying, hey, I really love the show.

Well, I suspect that's because they already had a decent sized email list to begin with.

They had some following, they had some email lists, they certainly used it and announced it. Yes, but the people have reached out and Said, hey, I like the show. And so what they did in response to that is say, hey, would you mind going on Apple podcasts and giving us a review? They actually replied and made the ask. Now I know a lot of people in their shows, in their intros and outros or even during the show often say, hey, if you like the show, please go and give it a rating or review. Now Apple Podcasts is now, it didn't used to be, but it is now the only platform that you can leave a rating and a review on. That has changed. Others that used to are no longer doing it, but on Apple it's still a thing. And while I don't think it's the be all and end all to get.

Ratings and reviews, we've seen shows, we have shows, right, that have zero, like you know, like handful of reviews and they get top ranked and they have thousands of listeners and tens of thousands of listeners. So. So ratings and reviews has nothing to do with that in particular. But for some people who are review junkies, they love to see the reviews. And so that's a strategy on Amazon. You go, well, this thing has 300 reviews. Okay. And they're mostly five star. Okay, good, I'll check it out. They don't really always read the reviews, but they do check out a show because of that. And then the itunes. The Apple podcast rankings still has algorithmic factor that is based on reviews, but it's not the only factor.

When I checked out their show and I'm going to share it with you all here in a minute, I actually, I'm going to screen share. I've got some stuff to show you for those of you that are watching the video. For those of you on the podcast, you're going to want to go check out the blog post@poditize.com yeah, I got permission. It's okay. It's exposure. They're like, please show the world my podcast. Plus it's public. Anybody can go see this in their app. I'm not showing anything that is proprietary. But what you're gonna see is I started reading these reviews and what's amazing is all 70 of them are five star reviews and they're really all legitimate people. It's not like they went to some company that has a server farm and they just have all these different Apple IDs and they're going and leaving reviews. Because I've seen shows doing that. We've seen it in 2020. People that pay very expensive money, like $20,000 or more for a high Ticket high level program of launching a podcast for you and they guarantee you placement in a top ranked on Apple, which they shouldn't guarantee because they can't guarantee that, but they do. And they get you a ton of reviews right out of the gate. And I've read some of these reviews and a lot of them, I have to say, are pretty crappy. They're obviously written by people that did not listen to the show. So we don't advocate that, we don't support that. We believe in organic. So I want to show you a couple things. What you're seeing here is a screenshot of the Apple podcasts listening for this show. It's called Let me speak to a manager, Ian Matthews and Frank Cava. Now this is just the first page. What I want to then show you is the second page. This is the reviews. Now down at the bottom of any listing you can see a few reviews and you can hit see all. And when you see all, then you see these individual reviews. Okay. And you can see at the top everything is five star.

They should be one more since you saw them this morning. It's a 72. You said 71.

That was from memory. But anyway, they have 72 ratings and you can see. Love the podcast. Highly recommend. And if you read through these, these are real people, real Apple IDs. Now here's the brilliant thing as Frank and Ian have been doing. And of course you have to have published your show and you have to have some people reaching out to you before you can do this. And or some people that gave reviews that you know who they are. So you definitely want to foster listener engagement in order to learn who your listeners are. And if they reach out to say, hey, I love the show, make the ask, hey, would you mind leaving a review on Apple? They're probably willing to do it if they took the time to reach out to you and say, hey, I love the show. Obviously reach out to them to review it, but what do you do next? What can you do with that? And so we came up with a really neat concept. You see here on this next page. I see if I can blow that up and make it a little bigger. Let's do that. Okay. So I took their cover art, which is fun, actually. It's a neat caricature of the two of them. It's kind of in their sort of sense of humor and style. And what I've done is created an image where you've got the COVID art above and you got the review below. So there's a Couple things you can do with this, and that is put it out on social media. Create a social post on LinkedIn, create a social post on Facebook and tag them, the person that gave the review. Now, you need to be connected with them, so you gotta make sure you connect with them first.

Which is why I prefer the method of asking your anyone who leaves a review DM you message you on social media. That way you're sure that you're connected and they're likely to do it in their favorite platform. So if their favorite platform happens to be Instagram, they'll probably private message you there and say, hey, I left you a review, here's the username or whatever that is. And that way you can make sure that you're connecting and when you're tagging them, you really are following, they really are followers of yours.

But here's the thing, if you put it out there and you create a post and you tag them, they're going to see it. They're going to see, wow, look, they're giving me exposure. They're talking about me. And they're much more inclined then to share it with their followers or their connections or repost it in some way. So now you're getting them to give you exposure to their entire audience. And if they're listening to you, there are chances that there are other people they know who would be interested in your show as well.

Right? So this is the hack for you to go the other direction as podcast hosts go leave a review for another show that has a matched audience to yours. Create a post that looks like this. Tag the host of the show saying, hey, I just left you a review. That's ego bait right there. They are going to reshare that with their audience. So the key is that you want to make sure you don't waste your time doing that on shows that don't have an audience matched to you. But if you do this with ones that have an audience matched to you now, you force them to share you with their audience without you having to guest on their show. So you've saved yourself some time and you've given them a bonus. You gave them a review. So, you know, of course you want it to be a good, eloquent review, right? That shows that you're in the know and in the niche of the industry that they're in. So you want to write that review really well to make sure that you shine in the review just as much as they do. And that is going to be critical in that post. But this is A great way, a great hack to go the other direction as well. And hey, you're boosting the podcast industry and helping other podcasters get their show reviewed and get them seen. So good for you.

Yeah, people will reciprocate. If you're giving them exposure, you're giving them props, they're going to do the same thing for you. Certainly they're much more willing now.

Also, this is a LinkedIn strategy. I just want to go out there and mention this because many of you are probably already doing this on LinkedIn. So the LinkedIn strategy is I go give you a review and the law of reciprocity kicks in. So when you say, wow, that was so great, thank you for such a great review, then I go, would you leave me one? And you feel obligated to do it. So that's the way that goes.

I just went to another one. I've made a couple of these with some of the reviews. It's a really simple template. Cover art above, room for a review below. Look, this says must listen clearly when you read this, the person has listened to the show. And as Tracy was saying, if you're gonna go the other direction, leave a review of somebody else and promote it. Trying to get them to share and promote you. You definitely wanna give context. You wanna make it clear that you have listened to the show, you know something about it. This isn't the casual or passive thing, right?

That's right. You're matched that this show is matched to your audience, that you have knowledge in this area as well. And. And that's why you can properly evaluate it and review this show as being a quality show.

So what's really critical about this now is to make sure your listeners understand that you're wanting to hear from them, invite them to reach out to you, to comment, to share some thoughts, to propose a future topic they're interested in. Get them to reach out to you, and you can do it a few different ways. You can get them to connect with you on LinkedIn. You can get them to reach out over Facebook. You can get them, it's over here. That's why you got to move over to the middle. You want to stop the share.

Yeah.

You can get them to email you any which way, DM you over Facebook messenger, if that's one of your platforms. But you want to get them to connect directly so you can reach out to them. And when you have them connected, certainly you can make a post and tag them. And that's an easy way because it doesn't take Much for them to click that share button. But you can also DM them and send them this image that you created of their review with your cover art. And then ask them, hey, would you mind posting this on LinkedIn or mind posting this on Facebook? Or if they've emailed you, that's like gold. You've got a direct line to them, they've reached out to you, they're willing to hear from you. Email them that image and a suggestion of a post they could make. Make it so easy they can just copy and paste it into social and share it.

So I just want to say that I'm not a fan of trying to just get listeners to share your show in just that sort of passive way that so many of you do it. Where you go, yeah, hey, if you like the show, just share it. Because as a listener, and keep in mind that binge listeners and listeners who really care about podcasting, who are deep in the industry, that they aren't going to put themselves out there if they don't think your show is quality just because you asked them to. Okay? At the end of the day, they have to have gotten value from your show. So you. If it's really early on, it's too soon. They may not know yet that they really get value from your show yet. They may have enjoyed an episode, but they don't know if they're going to get enough from it. So doing it too soon can also be a problem. So just keep that in mind. You may have to do it for a while, but when you're out there asking for listeners to share it, it's a onesie twosies kind of thing, right? You're sharing it with one single person at a time. You know, if I'm going to share a show, the chances are really good. Like, Tom's friends do not read like I do. If I shared a book with them, they'd be like, what? That's not my style, right? So my doing this, I need to tag the right friends. And so I might only share a show with a few people at a time, right? I might only share a show with two or three people that I think might enjoy it. So you're not getting as broad an audience as the strategy of using the reviews and using your listener feedback by tagging it on social media and getting to share with that broader audience of who they're sharing with it. It's just not likely that I'm going to go out there and make a mass message unless it's something kind of like this where you're really, you're tagged, you're kind of pushed into engagement in the process. And by that engagement, their natural audience will see it and will hear it. And that's really important to be thinking about because you want to get a broader reach of listenership. You don't just want to get one or two at a time, right? And you definitely don't want to put a ton of eff into doing something that's only going to get you one or two at a time, right? So we want to do something that's really going to have more value. So if you're going to take the time to get reviews and do that, then make it have more power for you by using it on social media, by doing a rich tagging system, by engaging with that. With that being said, I want to go one step further on something that is so rare that people don't do enough of, but does get you because of the engagement process. Get your post seen when you're sharing your podcast, but it also gets you more listeners by doing this process. And that is to not just tag the guest of your show and not just say thank you for being a guest. What I try to do is my team because they post out for me. So it's on a schedule and it's all scheduled in through either buffer or through Meet Edgar, Hootsuite, whatever you use, my team uses Meet Edgar. But whatever that is, it's scheduled in there. So I don't pay attention to it as it's posting. But when it comes up, what happens is I'll see. Okay, that's what posted today. As I go in to engage in my LinkedIn or my Instagram or whatever it might be. And what I do then at that point is I reach out and I make a concerted message to the guest of the show. So I might say, hey guest, thank you so much for being on the show. You know, the thing that I learned the most about you was this and I really appreciate you telling you to share that and then ask a follow up question. So then I was like, you know, I should have asked you this and I asked the question. Now they're forced to answer, they're tagged, they're in front of this promotional that they're supposed to be participating in, right? Because they promised to promote the show. So now they have to answer. And usually their answers are great. And sometimes you can create this great dialogue that then gets listeners or viewers of the post to start diving in. And from that what I find a Lot of times is starting to. Someone will tag someone else, so they'll just say friend, and all of a sudden some other friend is like, oh, I should comment on that. I'm an expert there. So you've created it without them listening to the show yet, so they don't have to come back, find the post, and comment on it. You create an engagement and conversation without the show being heard yet. That's really great and important, and it helps you create those listenerships. The other thing that I try to do is because my show is for podcasters, the binge factor is for podcasters. So I try to tag some other podcasters who might have been previous guests on the show or who are clients. I try to tag them and say, you know, hey, Ottottcarson, you're gonna love this. There was a really great tip here you might be able to use. So that's how I try to do it, is also to engage some people who maybe don't listen to every episode, but, you know, they are probably listeners or at least subscribers of your show. And so you can do that. We used to do that on our 3D printing podcast. We used to do shout outs to a couple of people and say, oh, that's a great tip. So and so from Brazil would love this idea. And then when we made the post, we tagged that listener and we knew that because they reached out to us and we knew they were our binge listeners. And then of course, they'd start. They'd listen to the episode immediately and start commenting and share it with some friends. And so that's how you create this richer engagement, which eventually what it's doing is increasing listeners, but it's increasing the right listeners. And that's the really important part, because they're increasing with more active people, and that's who we want. At the end of the day.

One of the things I want to share with all of you is obviously, if you're listening to the podcast, you definitely want to go to the blog post@poditize.com to see the graphics that I was talking about, the screenshots of Apple podcasts and the graphics that I made. And I want to tell you all, I made these in about five minutes, literally. It did not take much. No special equipment, if you've got any. You know, every computer has the ability to take a screenshot of something. So I just went on Apple podcasts. I looked up the show I took a screenshot of. Even though I could get the COVID art and like download it somewhere, I Just took a screenshot of it and then I took a screenshot of the review, put one over the other, save it as a jpeg. Boom. Super easy. Doesn't take a graphics degree or a specialist to do it. Any of you can do this.

So there are other programs. Sometimes your screen screenshots on your computers are not high enough resolution so that when you blow it up and you try to put it into social media, it doesn't look as good. It's grainy. There are other programs that you can use. What is that? Screen capture 1.

I forgot that it's a plugin for Chrome browser, if you use Chrome called Awesome Screenshot.

Awesome Screenshot. There you go. I should have awesome Screenshot all of your reviews. You'll be able to cut and paste the sections of them really easily and the resolution will be much higher. So that's kind of a pet peeve for some people who are like really serious about their Instagram accounts is that it's going to be grainy if you try to use a screenshot. So going ahead and using other tools out there and I'm sure, hey, in the comments for this post, go ahead and mention if you guys use other tools to get screenshots that are higher resolution, please start mentioning that. Love that.

And another tool on Windows 10 that works great is called Snippet. So for those of you that are on Windows 10, that's important for you to know as well. So anyway, really simple, not complicated. Anybody can do it. We're just trying to give you some practical, tactical tips that you can take action with yourself to increase the number of listeners. You have to raise awareness of your podcast. I don't know a single podcast host that doesn't want to do that and isn't looking for ways to accomplish it. So that's why we thought we would show this.

It's like increasing listeners and encouraging engagement. Those two things, when you can do them simultaneously, you're helping yourself, obviously do less work, which we always want to do here, and be more effective. But those are the two things again and again. From all the binge factor interviews that I've done, that I hear from very successful podcasts, this is where they all feel weak in and they're always trying something new and trying different things. And what I have to say is that it's not a one size fits all. Some audiences are just not going to be okay with that. If you've got a podcast that's on something that's about deep healing and pain, people may not be willing to go out there, make the reviews and do what you need to do to share the show. However, I do guarantee you behind the scenes, they are direct messaging people who really need you. So your encouragement might be in a different way than something so public. So keep in mind your show, right?

Clearly there's context that's probably unique to every show, but there definitely are, I think, opportunities for every show to take action on your own, being the host or anybody else on your team to help raise awareness. And so, yeah, that's what I wanted to cover today. Well, thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll be back with another great episode. Next time, it's been Tom and Traci Hazard on feed.

You'd 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 podcasters united.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.