What are the best practices for building a community through podcasting?

First, clearly define your target audience and tailor your content to their interests and needs. Encourage listener interaction by incorporating calls to action, feedback sessions, or listener polls in your episodes. Create a dedicated online space, such as a forum or social media group, where your audience can connect, share insights, and discuss podcast topics. Consistently respond to comments and engage with your community, making them feel valued and heard. Consider featuring listener stories or questions in your episodes to strengthen the sense of community involvement. Collaborate with your audience by incorporating their feedback and ideas, building a shared experience that extends beyond the podcast episodes.

Do we see your community being represented in your podcast? And note that "showing your community" doesn’t just mean posting photos of your paid clients, for example. There are other creative ways you can use an audio-only format (or in some cases: A video podcast) to showcase your people. For example, you can tell the transformation stories of your clients so that a podcast listener can see themselves in the shoes of your clients. Or, perhaps the listener may be able to resonate with the values or share similar lived experiences as your client. Ultimately, "community-building" via your show can happen when your target audience can easily SEE or IMAGINE themselves as being a part of your podcast community.

You can pick your niche based on the content you'd like to produce with your podcast. It's not always about what's in demand. Your podcast also doesn't need to be the same as everyone else's. Besides topical podcasts, you can venture into fictional podcasts if you are passionate about performing arts and radio drama. Audio fiction is making a comeback, and audiences love podcasts as an alternative to movies, TV shows and theater productions. You can do so much with audio. Just create a plot, a list of characters, a specific genre (lots of sci-fi and mystery podcasts are around like Welcome to Night Vale and Darkstead), and a cast. You can find multiple people interested in your podcast and have them record their lines.

Of course your audience is the base for the podcast. The same topic can be suitable for some people and just the opposite for other group. And the same topic can be told with different tone for one group or another. Your audience can prefer a serious tone or not. Once more, the audience is the foundation for the podcast.

I've said it tons of times before, but having a listener promise is CRITICAL to any podcast - what can the listener expect from every episode or interaction with the podcast?

There are only a few very big and famous podcasts that can talk about anything with people attention. The most common situation is that people listen to your podcast just for some topic. If you talk today about recipes, tomorrow about cinema and next Friday about holidays, it is quite probable that people don't engage with your podcast. Let me explain that you can talk about several topics, but it will be better for you if you do it in several podcast so people can connect to each to listen to what they are interested in.

Interacting with your audience is how you turn a group of listeners into a community. There are many ways to do this, so you'll want to find you niche. Maybe you can riff on voicemails like Theo Von, or maybe you can read listener emails like Oliver Hudson. You'll find your sweet spot - stick with it and do it often. The more listeners see it, the more they'll be likely to do it again.

Engaging with listeners is a no-brainer. Youtube comments are always amazing. In the case of audio podcasts, it is better to conduct live sessions on social media and bring over listeners to your social. I also recommend building a newsletter list which is the most intimate form of community for a podcast where you can give behind the scenes, year rewinds and much more.

If you think about audio podcast, interaction is the weakest part because most of platforms don't allow your audience talk to you. Youtube does, but audio platforms don't. So, you have to explain in your episodes and descriptions an alternative way (maybe an email) to connect with you so you can chat. Once that step is done, engagement is going to be bigger.

Don't rely solely on your podcast. A website is good, but much better: have a newsletter and try to get the people to subscribe to it. You then have a direct channel to your people - and also full control over this channel.

We run virtual speed networking events for our community. It brings people together in the accounting world, which is our audience. To move people from listening to our how over to being on these gatherings, we put an ad in the show every so often to remind them that these gatherings take place. We position it as a chance to stay relevant and join the conversation. We also bill it as a way to develop their professional network and their personal brand. These networking events attract a few hundred registrations and usually about half show up. We put the registration link in our podcast shownotes. I It's a new thing for us but numbers are rising steadily.

The best definition of a community that I've seen is "when two members organically interact without someone facilitating it" Create a space for listeners to interact ... maybe a FB group, twitter hashtag, etc.

Your listeners would like to engage with you beyond the podcast, and you can celebrate them by inviting them to guest on your podcast. In addition, you can offer exciting perks such as giving away free goodies that you can send them like printed stickers and posters. Also, you can get active on your podcast's social media and create posts that prompt them to answer. Polls can also work. Inviting them to continue being a part of the community will keep them engaged.

Love this - incentivize people to engage and participate. Maybe it's giveaways or personal videos to highly-engaged community members!

Remember, a community only exists when two members organically interact without the facilitation of a manager / owner. Talk to your audience - see how they want to engage... here are some ideas: Do most of your listeners exist in a specific geo / city? Consider holding an event! Do most of your listeners have a similar problem? Consider putting together a free webinar / workshop! etc.