Jason Says To Build Community
I’m listening to the current episode of Podcasting Underground and Jason is talking about the importance of building a sense of community around your podcast.
I absolutely agree.
I launched my first podcast with the sponsorship and support of a well established content website on the same topic (working at home). My sponsor gave me a dedicated area on her forum for discussion related to my show from week to week. We continued this forum section until just recently - finally letting it go because it had grown so quiet.
I believe the forum discussions died away because most of the conversation and comments take place between my audience and I on my blog and Twitter.
I didn’t mind letting the forum go. When something isn’t needed anymore it’s a waste of time and effort to try to keep it active by force of will. Better to let your listeners interact with you in the ways they want to.
If you are launching or have launched a podcast and you don’t have a great existing community to tap into, how to start building on on your own? Jason shared good tips and ideas on this, which a strong emphasis on having a blog for your podcast.
I liked his suggestion about using a plugin that lets your blog commenters subscribe to receive email alerts when anyone else comments on the same post. What a great way to keep the conversation going.
I’m thinking right now about the times that I’ve had a greater response as far as comments and questions from listeners and for me it’s usually in response to an email that I sent in regards to a recent show. It’s so easy to hit reply and send me a quick thought - and it feels more personal.
I really like that sort of feedback - and it is a good sign that I’m engaging my listeners, but it doesn’t take place in a public way like blog comments do so sometimes I write my subscriber to ask for permission to reprint her comments on my blog. (They usually say yes.)
How do you build community? Listen to Jason’s podcast for some ideas and be sure to share your own creative ideas with us.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Kelly,
That’s a great point that there are multiple tools to interact with your community (e.g. Twitter, blog comments, forums, etc.) and you can’t force them to use one or the other. You should try as many as you can and cultivate the ones that take.