Can we let you in on a little secret? The easiest way to grow your podcast audience is by improving your podcast.

That may sound simple - but it’s overlooked. The reality is: everybody and everyone is launching a podcast and it’s getting harder to stand out and stay on a podcast listener’s playlist.

There are now more than 30 million podcast episodes in the world and that number is growing quickly. If the average person only allocates 16 hours every week to listen to podcasts, how can you ensure you stay in the mix? How do you prevent yourself from being knocked out of the weekly must-listen-to playlist?

Instead of asking yourself: how can I grow my podcast audience, ask yourself:

How do I improve my podcast, so my listeners keep coming back for more, and spread the word about it?

That’s why we recommend two tactics that are often underrated:

Conduct a self-audit
Gather external feedback through customer research

These analyses will valuable insights that will direct the future of your podcast structure and content.

Conduct a podcast self-audit

Before starting any strategy or diving straight into tactics to revamp and change your podcast, take a step back and perform a self-audit.

An audit is defined as:

“an official inspection of an organization’s accounts, typically by an independent body”

A self-audit is therefore an inspection performed by a company onto itself (also known as an internal audit in accounting land).

While a thorough third party audit of your podcast would be lovely - it’s also unrealistic (unless of course you pay someone to do it). The purpose of the self-audit is to analyze your podcast from a 360 lens with an unbiased perspective so you can discover holes and blindspots that may have been lurking in the background, preventing you from having a top-notch series.

During the self-audit, aim to answer three key questions:

How can I improve my podcast so that listeners keep coming back?
What are my podcast oversights and gaps?
What change can I implement immediately, and what do I need to work towards in the future?

Our methodology is to get R&R: real and reflective.

Here are our recommended self-audit questions. Download an easy-to-complete worksheet in Google Documents here.

Would you listen to your own podcast?
Why or why not?
Are you being ‘too safe’ with your podcast content?
What is unique about your podcast? Is is really that unique?
What do you think you are doing really well?
What podcast best practices are you intentionally skipping? Why? Are you just being lazy, or is there a legitimate reason?
What could you be doing that’s better? Why aren’t you doing it?
What do you drop due to lack of time or resources?
Do you know who your audience is? Do you know what they like listening to? Are you just guessing?
Do you know what other podcasts your audience consumes?
Who are your podcast competitors?
What are your podcast competitors doing well?
Are you keeping up with what’s going on in the podcast industry in terms of trends, tools, and best practices? Why or why not?
How can you start keeping up with the industry so you don’t miss out on key developments?
If you had unlimited resources and time, what would you improve about your podcast?

Gather external feedback about your podcast through customer research

After conducting a self-audit, you need additional data from your listeners to round out a complete analysis of your podcast.

Ask your audience for feedback. Figure out what your listener’s goals are. And not just the ones who already support you. (Soliciting feedback from your mother doesn’t count!) If you create content that your listeners have specifically requested from you, they will be become even more loyal podcast advocates.

The goal is to understand what listeners enjoy about your podcast, what they want more of, and ideally, why some don’t listen beyond one episode.

Here are a few different ways to source feedback:

1.Conduct a listener survey

The best way of sending a survey is through your email list because you already have received explicit permission to send them direct communications (and if you don’t have an email list yet - we’ll talk about that in another article!)

Example: Dr. Peter Attia send out a 5-minute survey to listeners of The Drive podcast requesting feedback through a simple Survey Monkey link.

We recommend setting up a multiple choice form in Survey Monkey, Typeform, or Google Drive. It’s easier for listeners to fill out a survey and you’ll be more likely to get responses. Questions you can ask in a listener survey:

How did you first learn about our podcast?
Did you know about our brand before listening to the podcast?What were your favorite episodes?
Who were your favorite guests?
Who were your least favorite guests?
What topics are you interested in listening to?
What do you want to hear less of?
What do you think about our episode length? Do you prefer longer or shorter episodes?
What do you think about the frequency of our episode launches? Do you prefer more or less episodes?
How do you like our episode format?
How did you feel about our company before you listened to our show? How did you feel after?
Are you more likely to recommend our company to someone because of our podcast?
If we ended the show, how disappointed would you be on the following scale? (0 to 10, 0 = wouldn’t care, 5 = neutral, 10 = extremely disappointed)
How likely are you to recommend our podcast to a friend or colleague?
Please provide any general feedback you have about our podcast.

2. Instagram story polls

This is a great alternative if you don’t have an email list. Figure out what your audience wants to listen to by asking them directly on social media. The beauty of a story poll is that you can post new questions regularly - even every day!

Learn more about creative ways to use Instagram Story polls here.

3. Organic social media posts

Depending on what social channels you are already active on, don’t forget about regular posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. People are accustomed to replying by way of comments on organic posts as long as the ask is clear. Twitter even has its own poll option.

Also, leverage the power of Facebook groups. They continue to explode in popularity and are a fantastic way to solicit feedback about podcast topics from target audiences, even if they aren’t your listeners (yet!).

4. Ask on your podcast!

Take advantage of your most loyal fans. You know which ones. The ones who comment on every single social media post, or those who send you a DM telling you how much they loved your recent episode.

Ask your listeners to send you feedback on your podcast - on your podcast! We love what Jen Glantz does on her podcast, “You’re Not Getting Any Younger.”

Listen in at the 1:15 mark as Jen asks for feedback directly.

“I would love to hear from you! What kind of guests do you want? What kind of topics do you want to hear from me? Feel free to hit me up on social media or send me an email and just say hello! I’m dying to hear from you. What do you like? what do you want more of? and who in the world do you want to hear from?”

And - when you do receive those comments - take it a step further and ask if you can send a list of questions (ahem, from your survey above) so they can share more feedback.

If yo’ure really brave, ask them to jump on a quick call! to conduct a ‘listener interview.’ Instagram now has a video call feature so you don’t need to worry about exchanging personal information.

5. Ask for real talk

If you have friends, colleagues, or mentor in the industry who you trust will provide honest feedback to you, don’t be afraid to reach out to them.

Ask for their sincere opinion. We can often dig deeper with friends, colleagues, and mentors than strangers, as they want you to succeed.

What was my best episode?
What was my worst episode?
Do you share my podcast with your friends and colleagues? Why not?
What can I improve that would prompt you to share it with others?

6. Consult with an expert

If all else fails, consider asking an industry expert who you’ve crossed paths with. After all, who would know podcasts better than somebody who works with podcasts themselves? (In fact, if you’re looking for advisory on your podcast, reach out to Pivot Six!)

I’m done my self-audit and I’ve gathered podcast feedback. Now what?

Now, you’ll (hopefully) have a plethora of data that will help you look at your podcast differently and make changes for the better.

We recommend that you:

1. Keep an inventory of all feedback you collected in a document so you can always reference where you started from and track every observation and comment you received. This will help you identify trends.

2. Reflect. What did you discover? What feedback surprised you? Were there any trends? What stood out to you the most? What can you pivot? What can you start to do more of, or less of?

3. Research more (if relevant). Did your audit or feedback lead to any unanswered questions? Do you need to validate any assumptions? Do you need to review more examples of podcasts? (If yes, check out Podyssey for a weekly podcast recommendation newsletter).

4. Set realistic goals. Now it’s time to plan any changes you want to make to your podcast. Perhaps listeners expressed a desire for shorter episodes. Or more topics on XYZ. Or better show notes. Or more podcasts per week! Create a list of all the things you’d like to do going forward, and most importantly, prioritize them. Rome wasn’t built in a day and changes cannot be implemented overnight.

Our rule of thumb for prioritizing? Start with the most impactful change first. This may be the most requested change from listeners, or perhaps the biggest red flag. For instance, if you noticed during the self-audit that all your competitors were launching shorter and shorter episodes, this could be the first change you should make.

5. Execute. It’s go time. Once you complete your changes, let audiences know. As Oprah said, people just want to be heard! Communicate that you made certain changes due to popular demand and listener requests.

6. Repeat. Conduct audits and seek external feedback on a regular basis. People change, listeners change, and trends change. It’s crucial that you keep up with the industry, and keep a pulse on your audience frequently. For a list of the best podcast resources, click here.

Comments, questions? Send us a note and let us know how your audit went, or if you need help interpreting audience feedback.

Looking for ways to grow your podcast audience? Check out our quick guide here.

How To Improve Your Podcast: Two Overlooked Ways