How to Source Listener Questions Before You Have an Audience

Dave Jackson
00:00:00.480 - 00:00:11.040
There's a question on Reddit and two people want to start a podcast that will be focusing on listener questions. Except they don't have any listeners.

Mike Russle
00:00:12.320 - 00:00:36.620
Welcome to your podcast consultant. Small lessons with big value.

With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame podcaster is a featured speaker, author, and mentor to thousands. Now he wants to work with you. He's your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson
00:00:37.260 - 00:05:58.410
Yeah, so I saw this question on Reddit and it's from wannies here. That's what it says. A friend and I are prepping to launch a podcast for the writing community and geared toward debut authors.

Over time, we expect to organically get listener questions. But since launching the first three episodes at once, we don't have any content for this segment.

What is a good way to gain listener questions when you don't have any listeners yet? We would like to go ahead and include this in our launch to create some consistency and expectations around this segment.

I was probably, I don't know, 14 when I heard on the radio, yeah, back this is old if I'm saying radio. And somebody had said like, hey, Rockin Rick, can you play blah, blah blah. And Rockin Rick said, A 98.6point Blah, blah, blah, here it is.

And I was like, wow, cool. So I called the number and Rock and Rick answered the phone and I said, hey, Rockin Rick, can you play some Judas Priest?

And he was like, yeah, we can. That's not really on the list. But I can play you some lover boy. Can you request that?

And I was like, okay, hey Rockin Rick, can you play some lover boy? And he went on 96.5wkpp or whatever it was. And my bubble was burst. I was like, wait, all these people are calling in?

And getting immediate response was fake. So how do you get listeners onto your show? Get your cousin. Cause you should know your audience. You should know what new writers are thinking.

Get your cousin or somebody to send in a message. They could call it in, whatever it is. That's one way that we've learned from radio. Another one is just say, hey, today.

We're starting off the listener segment now for you to send in your question. We would love to have them.

And if you're using PodPage, you could just say, go to my website.com voicemail and whatever your URL is, just throw on a slash voicemail and it's there. And you could do that. But you could say, today's listener question is from me. I hear this all the time. And so I do that a lot with this show.

If you ever have a question, you can send it in, go to podcastconsultant.com voicemail see how that works and I'll be happy to play your question right here. But a lot of times it's just I've seen a lot of people asking this.

I'm doing a show for the school of podcasting where a guy who works with authors is talking about Shopify. Why? Because he heard a lot of people asking questions about Shopify. So you could just do that.

I will say I did a show once called the Dates From Hell show, and myself and my ex wife had a couple stories each and we launched with those and we had a special phone number to call in and we had custom sound. Yeah, we didn't have an audience and we ran out of stories before we gained an audience and that was the end of the Dates from Hell show.

So it's kind of iffy when your show is based on listener feedback and questions and you don't have any listeners yet. So either A, have somebody phone them in. I don't know that I would use AI for that.

Because you have to disclose or you should disclose when you're using AI. And if you don't have any, just say, here's one. I hear a lot. And then you really need to remind people, go to the website.com voicemail or whatever.

You have to get those in or email them in or smoke signals or whatever you're taking. You have to really remind them a lot to send in your questions and then be very gracious and very thankful when somebody sends them in.

And then you can even say, hey, I'm, you know, so and so's on this website. I'm going to put a link to your website so that they're getting promotions. So it's a way of saying thank you to that.

So it is kind of scary to launch a show based on listener feedback when you don't have any listeners. But if you don't, you've got to do something.

So either A, just explain this is a common question we hear, or B, explore, have somebody else send one in for you and pull off that little masquerade. But it is. It worked for me. I was like, wait, that's all it takes? When somebody hears their voice, they're like, that's all it takes?

Yeah, just go to my website.com voicemail and leave it there. If you need more help with your show, it's super simple.

Go over to schoolofpodcasting.com join and that will send you right over to our signup page that gives you courses, community and coaching. Yeah, you and I, five hours a month, can sit down and do one on one coaching. It's all there@schoolofpodcasting.com Use the coupon code Listener.

I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do.

I've been doing it for over 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.