AP 0906: How Do I Get Feedback for My Podcast?

AskPat 906 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 906 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question coming in from Gerald today, but before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks, one of my favorite companies because they help serve me and millions of other small businesses with helping us manage our business finances, from managing the income and expenses, of course, but also forms that they will give you around tax season, which is really helpful. And finally, with invoicing. If you do any invoicing of any kind, you bill anybody, it takes some time to create those invoices. Well, with FreshBooks you can do it in less than thirty seconds. They look very professional, and through this system you'll be able to track who opens those invoices, who has paid you yet—and so you can get paid faster, because on the receiving end of many FreshBook invoices as well, just a couple clicks, boom, I can pay whoever I need to pay and it's done. So, if you wanna check it out for thirty days for free, all you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat, and just make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Awesome. Now here's today's question from Gerald.

Gerald: Hey, Pat. This is Gerald. I have a podcast, a current events podcast, and it's kinda witty. It's called Two Peas on a Podcast. I'll give you the information if you want it, but my question is, I have a meager following. We get about a hundred a week. I would say about twenty to thirty of those are people that know us; the rest are just random folks in the public. We do get some feedback on Twitter but not nearly enough, and I've recently created a closed group on Facebook for fans to join, and I've only got about fifteen people to join it. Even when I ask those fifteen people for feedback, whether it's a question about something that we have coming up or a poll that I'm asking for votes on, I just get very little to no feedback. This is from the folks that I know are listening on somewhat of a regular basis, so are there any tips or tricks that you could recommend to me to get feedback? Because I gotta be honest, it's kinda like pulling teeth.

We love doing the show, its just a hobby and we're having fun with it, but obviously knowing that people are listening through fan reaction is one of the greatest things that we receive as podcasters. Which I'm sure you as yourself, as I'm leaving you feedback right now, probably really appreciate. So anyway, sorry for the long-windedness, but anything you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Pat, and thanks for everything you do.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Gerald, what's up? Thank you so much for the question today. There's many different ways to collect feedback, and it seems like you're doing some of that already. Feedback is obviously very important, not only for getting encouragement from your audience too, but also to help you understand what to do next, or where you can improve, and all those kinds of things. I love getting feedback. One of my favorite ways to go about it is actually randomly selecting people on my email list and trying to get on a Skype call with them. I do this typically with ten people a month, and those conversations are golden. What's really cool about that method, Gerald, is if you only talk to one person you can still get a ton of information from them and a ton of insight, and just oftentimes after those calls I'm on a high because I'm like, “I just spoke to somebody who follows my brand and who listens to the show. Now I have this amazing information, but now I can put a voice to somebody who's in my audience and think about them in the future when I publish something.” It's so awesome.

But of course, in order to do that you have to get people's contact information, and I hope that you're collecting email addresses at this point, if anything to allow people to get easy access to your shows and your archives and your show notes, or all those kinds of things. If not, then it's gonna be a little bit more difficult. Utilizing social media is great as well, I love that you're using Twitter. You also have a Facebook group already, which is fantastic, but it could be like pulling teeth like you said. Now, you can reach out individually through direct messages on Facebook, for example, to just inquire and see if you can get any direct feedback from people, because sometimes the one-to-one interaction, it's gonna take a little bit more priority than the one-to-many, and when people know that you've taken the time to reach out to them and thank them, but also are just asking for something in return, it makes them feel special, right? It also makes them feel bad if they don't answer back, so that's what I would recommend doing, Gerald. Even with the fifteen people that you have on Facebook right now, just try to start having a conversation with them individually via direct message, and that way it's kind of not threatening, and it's just . . . Yes, it is kinda weird to have a person say, “Hey, can I get on the phone with you?” who you don't even know, but if there's a little bit of a relationship there already—and of course they know who you are, they're following you and your co-host on your show's Facebook group—then it's more likely that they can do that. That's the ultimate goal, but I think just initially reaching out in a direct manner, and you can do that obviously on Twitter as well, that would be a great way to go about it.

Now, once you start to build a bigger audience and it becomes a little bit more common, I will say the percentage of people in my audience who leave feedback when asked is obviously very small, so I wouldn't get discouraged by that. People who leave reviews, people who leave feedback, people who answer surveys, they're often a very small percentage of the overall audience. If you're just starting out or if you have a little bit of a, just a side-hobby show and not too much people listening—although 100 people is quite a bit when you think about it, per episode, I think you said—the number's gonna be really small to start. So don't get discouraged, just keep going, especially when it's a hobby. Just make sure you remember why you're doing it in the first place and that it's just something that is for fun, and keep it fun, right?

That's I want to encourage you to do. Gerald, thank you so much for your question, I appreciate you, and I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show. Again, your show is Two Peas on a Pod, like a podcast, that's cool, I like that. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like featured on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com, and you can ask right there on that page.

Thank you so much again, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Anna Quindlen. “If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.” Keep going with your heart, guys. Take care, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye for now.