When you host a podcast, you spend a lot of time on technical tasks (creating, producing and editing), interviewing guests, and updating your podcast website. You do this all to build a large audience of people who will follow you, become raving fans, and hopefully buy your products or engage your services!

But if you don’t do a few key things to engage your audience, you will have a passive audience, not an engaged one.

I believe a passive audience of 10k people is worse than a highly engaged audience of 5k people.

Here are 4 key ways to engage your audience, create raving fans and grow your business with your podcast:

1. Add a segment to your podcast where you talk directly to your audience. A perfect example of this is Michael Hyatt’s podcast This Is Your Life. You’ll notice that Michael always starts out by introducing the topic he will cover or the guest he’ll interview. Then he says “I’ll be back in a moment with thoughts on this topic.” And a brief commercial plays for his program. How can you implement a similar strategy in your show?
2. Survey your audience! If you have an email list, send out a survey to your audience and ask them some questions about the podcast. What kinds of guests do they want to hear from? Which episode is their favorite? How long have they been listening? The answers may not be what you thought they’d be!
3. Tweet with your listeners! Twitter is a great platform to promote your content. I think if done correctly, you can use Hootsuite to pre-schedule lots of tweets that will drive traffic to your podcast. But make sure you are interacting directly with listeners and engage them personally. If your listeners feel like they are your friend, imagine how loyal they will be to the show! A great example of who does this well is Michael O’Neal.
4. Read ratings and reviews from ITunes on your podcast. Give a quick shout out at the beginning of the podcast to people who left you a 5 star review. As a listener, doesn’t it feel great to hear your name on the air!?

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