As a podcaster, interacting with your community beyond your episode content is key to retaining and growing your audience. Making listeners feel personally connected and involved in your story keeps them coming back for more, AND sharing with their friends. Using your unique voice and discussing topics you are most passionate about will already create a dedicated audience. However, the most captive audience is the one that is engaged! That is why a call to action, is a great engagement tactic for interacting with your community!
Types of Calls to Action:
There are many ways to incorporate a call to action into your content for optimum audience engagement. For instance, you can ask your audience to subscribe, rate and review in iTunes, follow you on various social media platforms, or join your email list, to name a few. So how do you know which to use?
To start, you need to figure out exactly where you are with your podcast, where you want to get to, and how you think you can achieve that goal. For instance, if you are a new company that wants to build followers and brand exposure, you may want to ask listeners to follow you on social media and repost a piece of your content. On the other hand, if you are an established company with a good flow of followers, but want to expand your reach beyond your already established community, you might try asking listeners to rate and review your show. On iTunes for example, shows that are rated highly have a better chance of being recommended to new listeners as content they might be interested in.
Once you’ve figured out exactly what it is you want your audience to do, keep these key points in mind;
- be repetitive
- communicate what you want in a way that is clear and concise
- explain exactly HOW you want your community to complete the call to action by providing detailed instructions
- make it EASY, don’t make them search for the right buttons or links to click
- explain how THEY will benefit from completing the call to action, focus on what they get out of it, not what YOU are hoping to get out of it
- create a valid sense of urgency, so they know why they should do this NOW
- remove fear triggering words, “buy now” or even “subscribe” can seem too committal, make the stakes lower to eliminate any pressure
- include the call to action in two places on one post, this way they will see it at the top and at the bottom
Get creative with your calls to action and just give it a go! Different communities will respond differently to each of these tasks. Trying them out will help you discover what does and doesn’t work for your audience! Remember to be patient, not everyone will see your post and complete the call to action overnight. It can take a bit of time. Most importantly, have fun with it! At the end of the day, this is just another way to interact with your community and grow your podcast!
