Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 34. Soliciting and Incorporating Listener Feedback

In This Practice

• Understanding your show's ability to acquire feedback

• Encouraging your audience to provide feedback

• Working listener feedback into your show

• Keeping track of feedback provided on other sites

Why do you podcast? Is it for money? Fame? Accolades from your peers? To give back to the world and help shift the balance toward the greater good? If you're like many podcasters, the answer to all of those is, “No, none of that, just doing this to communicate.” That means the currency we trade in is called FEEDBACK. In this practice, we discuss the various forms of feedback listeners can provide you — and how to make the most of their comments to enhance your show.

But a word of caution before we show you this particular peek behind the closed doors of the sausage factory: Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but you're not obliged to go along with it; you can take it or leave it at your own discretion. Remember that only a very small subsection of your audience will ever provide you with feedback — the vast majority of your listeners just listen passively, in varying degrees of happiness. Are the comments you receive indicative of the opinions of your audience at large? Or do they represent the lunatic fringe? You'll need to think about those two questions long and hard before making any lasting changes to your show based on the sparse and sporadic comments that come in from out there. Let's get started.

Is Your Show ...